As I started my almost weekly drive from Austin to Houston this afternoon, the classical radio station (KMFA) was finishing Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, From the New World. After that, the announcer came on and said that on the occasion of Memorial Day, the station would join its listeners in a minute of silence to honor the servicemen and -women who had died. Silence dutifully followed.
I don't know about you, but while I am tremendously saddened by the lost of those young lives, and I am as ready as the next person to honor their memory, the last thing that comes to mind as a reaction to the current war, which has so far cost more than 4,000 such lives, is silence. In fact, what I want to do when I think of that war is scream. I want to scream to Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell and Rumsfeld (wherever the last two are now hiding in deserved disgrace): I know you didn't fire the bullets or arm the IEDs that killed these people, but you manufactured the conflict in which they were killed. You are thus complicit in their deaths. And the memory of these poor people is not well served by silence, it is better served by an outcry -- hopefully an outcry that will continue until November 4, Election Day, so that you are not succeeded by more of the same.
On the same drive a week earlier, I heard a reading from the book "War Wounds: a Father and Son Return to Vietnam" by Tom Bissell. One quote struck me, so I sent a text message to my own email address in order to remember to look it up, and I now have it as one of my email signatures, ready to be used for the right audience:
"War, when necessary, is unspeakable. When unnecessary, it is unforgivable."
Monday, May 26, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Love the Sorcerer, and the Witch Mezzo
I went to the Houston Symphony on Thursday evening, for a concert that had a Spanish theme throughout: De Falla's El Amor Brujo (which was translated in the program as "Love the Magician," although I think that "Love the Sorcerer" better conveys the ambiguous and sometimes malevolent tone of the piece); Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez; De Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain; and Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol. Altogether a long and rich concert, one that I would still recommend to people who read this early enough to be able to catch the Sunday matinee performance (tomorrow).
The only sour note (so to speak) came from the first piece, strictly because of the singer. I know that photos in programs are always dated, but this was so extreme that it makes Elizabeth II look positively age-sincere on UK stamps. I'm talking about someone looking 30 in the program, and being 60 in reality. She did look like a witch, which is actually quite appropriate for this piece, but was clearly not intentional. Her voice did not carry well (and I was in the middle of the fourth row). She sings opera, and that's perhaps why she kept taking dramatic poses and making exaggerated faces to convey the emotions of the gypsy girl, but it just looked absolutely ridiculous when just standing by herself in front of an orchestra. And her red-and-black gown must have been badly tailored at home (or else she needs to get a refund), because the left strap kept falling off. Believe me, any "wardrobe malfunction" would not have been very pretty to witness in her case!
While this was a shame, the next piece obliterated this bad experience quite nicely. The solo guitarist, Eliot Fisk, was amazing... and the audience recognized this so well that he played two encores: a transcription for the guitar of Paganini's Caprice n° 24, and a piece by Francisco Tárrega (it might have been Recuerdos de la Alhambra, but I'm not sure).
After the intermission (I told you it was a long concert) Shai Wosner was the pianist in De Falla's Noches en los jardines de España, which I found a little long and discursive, less packed with tense emotion as the rest of that composer's œuvre. And finally, as befits this sometimes very loud and brassy orchestra, Rimsky-Korsakov provided the sonorous (some would say "noisy") finale.
The only sour note (so to speak) came from the first piece, strictly because of the singer. I know that photos in programs are always dated, but this was so extreme that it makes Elizabeth II look positively age-sincere on UK stamps. I'm talking about someone looking 30 in the program, and being 60 in reality. She did look like a witch, which is actually quite appropriate for this piece, but was clearly not intentional. Her voice did not carry well (and I was in the middle of the fourth row). She sings opera, and that's perhaps why she kept taking dramatic poses and making exaggerated faces to convey the emotions of the gypsy girl, but it just looked absolutely ridiculous when just standing by herself in front of an orchestra. And her red-and-black gown must have been badly tailored at home (or else she needs to get a refund), because the left strap kept falling off. Believe me, any "wardrobe malfunction" would not have been very pretty to witness in her case!
While this was a shame, the next piece obliterated this bad experience quite nicely. The solo guitarist, Eliot Fisk, was amazing... and the audience recognized this so well that he played two encores: a transcription for the guitar of Paganini's Caprice n° 24, and a piece by Francisco Tárrega (it might have been Recuerdos de la Alhambra, but I'm not sure).
After the intermission (I told you it was a long concert) Shai Wosner was the pianist in De Falla's Noches en los jardines de España, which I found a little long and discursive, less packed with tense emotion as the rest of that composer's œuvre. And finally, as befits this sometimes very loud and brassy orchestra, Rimsky-Korsakov provided the sonorous (some would say "noisy") finale.
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