\t\t\t\ti hate it when, whilst complaining or merely commenting on one’s miserable weather, some bitter tart from some part of the country or world where it is 72 degrees and sunny feels s\/he must announce to you that their<\/i> weather is perfect, and don’t you wish you were here… it’s fucking obnoxious, though i know it is probably not meant in the spirit of obnoxisity. self-serving boorishness of that stripe is more, well, selfish then the shared spirit of commiseration which sometimes underlines obnoxious retorts to innocuous or even plaintive comments about the goddam weather.<\/p>\n
it reminds me, in a way, of Mabel. Mabel does not exist, at least not in the narrative in which i imagine her, but she exists in form if not in actual name. Mabel is the elderly woman introduced to an audience thus: “Meet Mabel. She’s 102.” A round of applause follows, applause for Mabel’s seemingly amazing achievement of reaching an unbelievable age of old. I know that it is not the spirit in which the gesture of the applause is meant, but to me this little ritual of applauding the unbelievably old is tasteless, and no different from going out to a cemetery and booing the dead.<\/p>\n
there is no substantive correlation between Mabel and the weather-assholes who comment on your 115-degree heat index by boasting of their perfect weather (as if they had anything to contribute to it, as if they somehow deserve to take credit for the sunny skies and the mild temperatures [and the low humidity {and the barometric pressure}]).<\/p>\n
I think the well-meaning ritual of applauding for Mabel, though, rather unpleasantly assumes that reaching such a ridiculous age is completely within the control of the aged.<\/p>\n
my point bring: i don’t care about your perfect weather. it does not make me want to live your life, or be you. nothing makes me want to live your life or be you. nothing.<\/p>\n
(i am probably not talking to you)<\/p>\n
…..<\/p>\n
in other news… is there any? are there any news? i seem to waste these days, each of them, like useless trinkets, like plastic diamonds.<\/p>\n
i made a fool of myself, only to myself, today. i spent an hour or so out and about with the new camera, the sony a55, only to reach the end of the jaunt to find that i had shot about 22 evaporatinal pictures, for THERE WAS NO MEMORY CARD IN THE FUCKING CAMERA. duh. and i remembered thinking, last night, that i had not quite straightened out my memory card situation for the new camera, and to remember this fact before venturing out with the new piece of ocular magnificence. alas, maybe the heat is getting the best of me (almost said “beast”), but i forgot to remember what i told myself not to forget…<\/p>\n
i need to get a newfangled SDXC card, and i intend to do so tomorrow, at B&H. yeah.<\/p>\n
…..<\/p>\n
i wandered again through the Busoni Piano Concerto today. i gotta get my money’s worth out of that $180 score. i have so many memories and associations regarding that concerto. whatever one might think of the music itself i regard Ogdon’s recording as one of the great breakthroughs in recorded piano music. and yet — i used to imagine the score as insurmountable, impossible for commoners to play or even contemplate. the score itself, and its concept (i consider it a “concept piece” in its way) seemed too vast and incomprehensible for any but the kenner, the savant, for John Ogdon.<\/p>\n
and then, all of a sudden, there were like 18 recordings of the concerto. record stores were suddenly flooded with Busoni Piano Concerto interpretations from big names, middle names, no-names. Everyone was playing the Busoni Piano Concerto!<\/p>\n
And then the fad receded.<\/p>\n
i saw Gerrick Ohlsson play this piece in Cleveland, while I was in college. a got a cheap ticket and a free ride to Severance Hall from a ‘cellist who taught at my college and who played in the aforementioned orchestra. On the way over she described her amusement at the concerto, and the bemusement of the Cleveland Orchestra members who felt a little silly playing this ridiculous and corny score. As she described it there was laughter among the orchestra players who occasionally looked around and asked each other “Did I really just play that?” And, by her account, the rehearsals with Ohlsson were not inspiring. She said he flubbed key passages, sounded like he barely had the piece in his hands, and just did not inspire confidence in the rehearsals.<\/p>\n
I saw the performance and was impressed. I have a soft spot for that concerto, and I thought the pianist did well. The program notes were hilarious, suggesting as they did that the male chorus which appears at the end of the concerto was originally supposed to be in the nude. This was apparently Busoni’s idea of expressing cleansing, or re-birth.<\/p>\n
As the ‘cellist explicated on our return drive after the concert, she said she had never seen a more complete transformation from rehearsal to performance. She was talking about the pianist, and by extension she was referring to the performance in general, as well as the music itself. She said that for all the half-assery of the rehearsals Gerrick Ohlssohn came through at the performance, lifting what she regarded as a silly puff piece from what she considered ludicrosity into the realm of respectibility and even excellence.<\/p>\n
i met Gerrick Ohlssohn in New York, soon after I moved here. I mentioned that performance to him. I don’t remember what he said. He is a big, big guy.<\/p>\n
as i wandered through the score today i felt, again, as i felt before: this really is not that hard a piece. it is not that hard to play. it is not a Kuhlau Sonatina but for all the epicality that surrounds the Busoni Concerto i find most of the passages, even the thunderous gong-smashing climaxes, to be pretty much sight-readable. a few passages are nso simple, but mostly the pages just turn past, not presenting terribly significant challenges.<\/p>\n
the piano writing is good, though.<\/p>\n
…..<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
i hate it when, whilst complaining or merely commenting on one’s miserable weather, some bitter tart from some part of the country or world where it is 72 degrees and sunny feels s\/he must announce to you that their weather is perfect, and don’t you wish you were here… it’s fucking obnoxious, though i know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-sa","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}