LA Phil

Next Friday we're going to see Gustavo Dudamel conducting at Disney Hall - Brahms and Bach - the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 played by Yefim Bronfman. The concert is entitled: Dudamel, Bronfman and Brahms. The entitlers don't even acknowledge that half the program, at least, is Bach. How often does Bach take the back seat or no seat on a program? The program is loaded with testosterone and ego, an excellent combination. I can't wait.

Yefim, a Russian, is a vigorous,  unrestrained pianist and should be interesting to watch him play the concerto - a 42 minute workout for any pianist. My favorite teacher of piano music on youtube is Jon Kimura Parker, a Canadian concert pianist and teacher. Below he discusses Brahm's first concerto which he explains began life as a sonata for two pianos. There's a fascinating back story about Brahms' affair with Clara Schuman (who was playing the second piano) which adds another dimension of suffering to the whole composition, but it would take pages to describe. Isn't there always suffering involved when a great work of art is wrenched out of a human being?

As for Bronfman..Philip Roth says it all here...

In The Human Stain by Philip Roth, the narrator attends a rehearsal at Tanglewood at which Bronfman performs. The following description is offered (pages 209–10):

Then Bronfman appears. Bronfman the brontosaur! Mr. Fortissimo. Enter Bronfman to play Prokofiev at such a pace and with such bravado as to knock my morbidity clear out of the ring. He is conspicuously massive through the upper torso, a force of nature camouflaged in a sweatshirt, somebody who has strolled into the Music Shed out of a circus where is the strongman and who takes on the piano as a ridiculous challenge to the gargantuan strength he revels in. Yefim Bronfman looks less like the person who is going to play the piano than like the guy who should be moving it. I had never before seen anybody go at a piano like this sturdy little barrel of an unshaven Russian Jew. When he's finished, I thought, they'll have to throw the thing out. He crushes it. He doesn't let that piano conceal a thing. Whatever's in there is going to come out, and come out with its hands in the air. And when it does, everything there out in the open, the last of the last pulsation, he himself gets up and goes, leaving behind him our redemption. With a jaunty wave, he is suddenly gone, and though he takes all his fire off with him like no less a force than Prometheus, our own lives now seem inextinguishable. Nobody is dying, nobody – not if Bronfman has anything to say about it.

The Bach program is exciting and includes the Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major which features the most famous piece of all Baroque music, the Air, or Air on G String. Here it is....

It's easy to see why this piece is so popular. I like the perpetual motion in the bass which is mostly octaves going up and down. It adds something like a beating pulse to the song and gives it a life-like dimension.

Three parts of the orchestral suite are dance numbers: a gavotte; bouree (fast little steps)and a gigue (from which we get the word "jig")...am I being pedantic? I'm using this blog as an excuse to do my research prior to the performance. The gavotte is a stately dance they say. The jig section should be self-explanatory.

The Bach Ricercar comes next. Considered one of the most important piano compositions of all, it was also one of the first. RICERCAR is an acronym for "Regis Iussu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica arte Resolute," which translates to "theme given by the king with additions resolved in the canonic style."
This is a great youtube to watch if you like Glenn Gould - it's too long but the first few minutes give you a feel for Glenn. At this stage of his life, he looks a bit like Stephen King. He hunches over the piano, singing to himself, playing themes with his right hand and conducting with his left, giving mini-lectures on Bach as he goes. Experts speculate that Glenn was on the autism spectrum which seems entirely possible given his eccentricities. In this video, he's sitting in the chair his father made for him which keeps him low on the piano...you can see it's all scratched up and beaten up, probably from being shipped to wherever he was playing. Gould was brilliant and good at everything he attempted...teaching, writing, lecturing, performing. Too bad he died at 50; who knows what he might have done later in his life.



The last item on the program is the Toccata and Fugue in D minor which everyone knows. I'm excited to hear it in the acoustically wonderful Disney Hall. The term toccata comes from the Italian word "Toccare" which means "to touch". A Toccata is a piece written for the keyboard or plucked stringed instrument which features fast moving passages and light fingering which employs and showcases the player's touch. It was often written and performed as a kind of resume. If you were auditioning a church organist, this is the piece you'd use for the test. Some speculate that whatever it was originally written for, it's now often used to test organs as it runs the gamut of an organ's capabilities. We last heard this in Copenhagen in the Cathedral where the thunderous organ made the seats vibrate and the imagination soar. Here's a very good version.


The concert is at 11:00 AM...the early concert goer's time slot. This gives all the rickety old concert geezers time to get home and have a good nap after all the excitement and it gives us a chance to beat the traffic back to Fallbrook.

Uncle Lorne McLeod

I'm attempting to write short biographies about the members of our family for the youngsters and to preserve, via scan, the newspaper clippings and other miscellaneous information I come across. 

Everyone loved my Uncle Lorne McLeod. He married my mother's sister, Addie. They never had children and I think this made them more interested in us - my sister and myself and my cousins too, than would have been the case if they'd had their own brood to worry about. Recently I found this yellowed newspaper article published when Lorne left his job at the Winnipeg Free Press. The article was dated, Thursday September 29th, 1977. The newspaper, "with colored comics" was selling for $.15 a copy.

Lorne grew up in Gladstone, Manitoba.  He died in Ocala, Florida where he resided for the last decade of his life. Here's his obituary. 

MCLEOD, LORNE PETER, 92


Ocala - Mr. Lorne Peter McLeod, 92, passed away on Friday, August 29, 2008 in his 93rd year. He was born and raised in Gladstone, Manitoba, Canada and served in the Royal Canadian Air Force in WWII. Lorne had a long career at the Winnipeg Free Press newspaper before taking early retirement in 1976 to spend more time with his first wife Addie (Fortier) during her final illness. After retirement he enjoyed spending summers at his cottage in the Whiteshell Provincial Park in Canada and winters in Belleview, Florida. After almost 20 years as a widower he married again in 1996 to Ramona (Helm), who predeceased him in 2006. Until a few years ago they led an active life and Lorne even produced a regular newsletter for his community, The Villas of Belleview. Lorne's health deteriorated in the past few years and he had been living at the Hawthorne Inn at Surry Place in Ocala. Lorne had no children but will be missed by his cousins, nieces, nephews and friends. We wish the thank all those who showed patience and kindness to Lorne in his last years. A memorial service will be held at Fort King Presbyterian Church in Ocala on Friday, September 5, 2008 at 1:00 PM. In lieu of flowers donations to Church Without Walls c/o Fort King Presbyterian Church, 13 N.E. 36 Avenue, Ocala, Fl, 34470 will be appreciated. Arrangements by HIERS-BAXLEY FUNERAL SERVICES, Ocala.

Published in Ocala Star-Banner from Sept. 4 to Sept. 6, 2008

And I found his grave in Gladstone which has only a temporary marker on it. This made me feel very sad. 

And here is Lorne's second wife's obit and grave. Ramona E. Helm McLeod Birth: Dec. 11th, 1916
Deat: July 28th, 2006
Ramona E. McLeod, 89, Ocala, Fla., passed away Friday, July 28, 2006, at Surrey Place in Ocala. Ramona was born December 11, 1916, in Weir, Kan., and was a longtime resident of Independence, Mo. She retired from Blue Ridge Bank and Trust Co. She was a volunteer at Truman Medical Center-Lakewood and was a member of the PEO. She was preceded in death by her husbands, George Robert Hisle and Bill Harvey, son, Donald Robert Hisle, her parents, Alonzo and Elizabeth Helm, and brother, Alonzo Helm Jr. She is survived by her husband, Lorne McLeod; her sister, Margaret Cameron; her grandchildren, LeAnn Degenhardt and husband, Tom, and Robert Hisle and wife, Cindy; her daughter-in-law, Patricia Hisle-Clark and husband, Larry Clark; three great-grandchildren, Matthew, Melinda and Timothy; and many nieces and nephews. A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 2, at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Independence. Burial will be at Westlawn Cemetery in Henryetta, Okla. Visitation will be held from 10 to 11 a.m. Wednesday at the church. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Trinity Presbyterian Church, 1400 Sheley Road, Independence, Mo. 64052, 816-252-5893 and/or Feisty Acres Cat Rescue, P.O. Box 693, Williston, Fla. 32696. Arrangements are under the direction of Speaks Suburban Chapel, Independence, 816-373-3600. Online condolences may be expressed to the family at www.speakschapel.com.  Burial: West Lawn Cemetery Henryetta Okmulgee County Oklahoma, USA     Family links:   Spouse:   Billy L Harvey (1915 - 1988)* On a lighter note, here's the weather forecast in Gladstone, Manitoba for today...you can see what most concerns farmers.

Today's Planning Forecast

Drying Index	21 (fair)
Growing Degree Days	4
Crop Heat Units	5
Sunrise	6:23
Sunset	20:51
Hours of Sunshine	3
UV Index	6.1 (Moderate)

Here's what the fields look like around Gladstone: Flax and canola are the crops. 

I was amused to read about Lorne's friendship with Elman Guttormson. Elman sounds like a character straight out of Prairie Home Companion. No doubt he was an interesting person and I'm sure my Uncle and Elman shared some good times. 

Elman Guttormson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Elman Kreisler Guttormson (March 24, 1929^[1] in Lundar, Manitoba^[2] – October 10, 2000) was a politician in Manitoba, Canada. He was aLiberal member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1956 to 1969.^[1]

The son of John Guttormson and Sigridur Johnson, Guttormson was educated at Lundar and United College. He worked for the Winnipeg Free Press newspaper as a reporter, covering fields as diverse as crime and horse racing. He won a national newspaper award in 1962, while serving as a member of the legislature. In 1952, he married Hildur Thorsteinson.^[2]

He was first elected to the legislature in a by-election on December 30, 1956 in the mid-northern constituency of St. George,^[1] defeating hisProgressive Conservative and CCF opponents by a comfortable margin. He served as a backbench supporter of Douglas Campbell's government for the next year and a half.

The Liberals were defeated provincially in the 1958 election, although Guttormson won his own seat by a wider margin than before. He was also re-elected without difficulty in the elections of 1959, 1962 and 1966. Guttormson also served as party whip.^[1]

The Liberals lost much of their support base in the 1969 election, and Guttormson lost his seat to Bill Uruski of the New Democratic Party^[1] by 398 votes. He sought a political comeback in the 1973 election, but lost to Uruski by an increased margin.

Guttormson supported the federal and provincial Liberal parties for his entire adult life. One of his daughters married Bob Axworthy,^[2] a relative ofLloyd Axworthy.^{[citation needed]}

Guttormson, later in his career, became a newspaper editor, retiring in 1993. He died in Winnipeg at the age of 71 following a long illness.^[2]

London Dining

On the way back from Dubai, we're stopping over in London for a week. One "free" stop is allowed on the frequent flyer tickets we have....after three weeks in the middle east, I'll be looking forward to a change of diet. And so, I'm researching restaurants within walking distance of our hotel. 

Who could resist Bubbledogs with such a great logo?

Bubbledogs is a champagne bar which serves hot dogs. About 15 kinds of hot dogs on the menu - some of them a bit of a stretch such as the macaroni and cheese dog, or the Chippy dog made of battered sausage and scraps. The champagne comes from small wineries. They have 12 - 15 on the list and they're priced from 6 - 11.50 P per glass.

Hot dog with egg and caviar.

The Kitchen Table back of Bubbledogs

Perhaps we'll make a reservation at the Kitchen Table located behind Bubbledogs which seats 12 - 14 people and serves a 14-course meal for 88 P. Too much to eat, but we'll try if it looks like fun. The courses vary nightly. Today's offerings are : oyster, chicken, scallop, monkfish, sole, truffle, asparagus, duck, goat, rhubarb, orange, caramel.

_________________________________________________________________________________

The Duck and Waffle is the kind of place we usually avoid. The highest restaurant in London, it's on the 40th floor of the Heron Tower - actually, it's the highest restaurant in the UK. But, the food is well rated on various sites around the internet. Some of the items that interested me are:

• Barbecue spiced pig ears
• Spicy ox cheek doughnut with apricot jam and smoked paprika sugar
• Bacon wrapped dates with manchego cheese and watercress salad
• Duck and Waffle (namesake dish): Crispy leg confit, fried duck egg, mustard maple syrup
• Roasted octopus with chorizo, potato, lemon, capers
• Fois Gras creme brulee with roasted lobster and toasted brioche
• Grilled asparagus with smoked buttermilk curd, dandelion and pickled walnuts

But then I read this restaurant review from Jay Rayner at the London Times and re-thought going there. Sure enjoyed the review though.

Jay Rayner

Saturday 1 September 2012 19.05 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 21 May 201403.10 EDT

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Heron Tower, 110 Bishopsgate, London EC2 (020 3640 7310). Meal for two, including wine and service, £110

Duck and Waffle, on the 40th floor of the Heron Tower in the City of London, was begging me to hate it. There were the usual stupidities of booking – email address, please; you can only have the table for as long as we permit; give us your first name, the bank account number of your third cousin – and the less-common stupidities of there being no sign for the place at ground level. There was the self-satisfied glimmer of the meeters and greeters and the waiter who insisted on explaining the menu – if a menu needs explaining something has gone wrong. And yet… and yet… Duck and Waffle is like that irritating bloke you see propping up the bar in his flash suit, with his £1,000 shoes and over-whitened teeth who seems horribly pleased with himself until you get talking to him and discover he's actually quite nice and has lots to say for himself.

It sits above the latest outpost of a chain called Sushisamba which I do actually hate, and I haven't even eaten there. I don't need to. It's a fusion of Japanese, Brazilian and Peruvian food, which is the sort of thing that makes me want to punch people, regardless of the interplay of the various national groups over the centuries. Even the name is a culinary non sequitur. Sushi is all "precise" and "delicate", samba is all "look at my arse" and "don't you want to do me".

I stood for a few minutes in the dining room. It's full of the sort of people who hate sushi and really want a grilled-chicken salad. It has an open terrace which will only be usable for four weeks of the year and which is surrounded by an easily leapable glass barrier – risky, given the way things have been in the City recently. Then again, a cull of bankers isn't such a bad idea.

Anyway, don't go there. It only encourages them. Instead go upstairs to the quieter Duck & Waffle with its bejewelled views over London like a shameless plunge of shiny moisturised cleavage and the menu of drunk's food. The title dish is two fluffy waffles with a hunk of crisp-skinned duck confit, a fried duck egg and a pitcher of spiced maple syrup. It's the sort of thing you'd only want to eat if you were so bladdered you felt the need to keep clicking your tongue against the roof of your mouth to see if your brain could register the movement. They also sell strips of crispy pig ear seasoned with sugar, salt and a few spices. It makes them taste like Frazzles, which is obviously genius. They come in brown paper bags. We ordered a second bag and only didn't order a third out of shame.

There was a smoked haddock scotch egg with a curried mayonnaise which was a cute riff on kedgeree, and knobbly limbs of grilled octopus with bits of chorizo and caper. There was a bowl of mussels and clams in a broth to be spilt down your pink TM Lewin shirt and a vibrant, zippy tomato salad with the word "heritage" in the title, which I'll forgive because the ingredients were so bang on. Best of all was a tiny burger of Herdwick mutton, with that funky meat-on-the-turn flavour you get from big-bollocked animals who have lived on a windblown hillside. Desserts are cakey things with ice cream, which is more drunk food. Save for a whole roast chicken, lobster or sea bream, everything costs about a tenner, which amounts to value for the food and the view.

Which makes the sharp knee-to–the-groin of the wine list so shocking. As is traditional I ordered the second-cheapest wine on the list. It was an Albariño at £30. They'd run out. Big surprise given that most people would have to be on Bob Diamond's severance payment to afford the rest. I went for the cheapest at £28. It tasted sordid. They intend to be open 24 hours a day so you can come to eat good-value food and be ripped off on the wine at any time, while watching London sleep. It's something every city needs.

Sepia Saturday 276: Naked Truth on parade.

Prompt information: Newlyweds. Babies. Newlyweds and babies. Babies and newlyweds. Cradles. Women with astonishing hairdo's.You might also want to consider book covers as well. Our theme image for Sepia Saturday 276 can accommodate all of these things as we visit the on-line archives of the Virginia Commonwealth Library.  

Eilleen at 9 months.

I chose babies this week as I have plenty of baby pictures in the photo albums. Above is my sister at nine months. My stash consists mostly of happy, gurgling, sweet babies. The most interesting illustrated baby depictions on the prompt, in my opinion, are the ones of the screaming baby with the single tooth. I love the way the cartoonists indicated stress by surrounding the faces with water droplets.The cartoon faces of the non-screaming baby are quite menacing on close examination...the child looks like a scary 50-year-old man in some of the drawings.

Remember when these nude photos were all the rage? I don't think it's done any longer.

My nude photo at 10 months. 

My photo was inserted in my Baby Book so I added these book scans, as book covers were suggested takes on the theme.

First page.

My baby book.

I searched for cartoon babies and didn't find anything I liked. But I did run across this live baby that seems almost as mad as the cartoon babies on the prompt. All he needs is water droplets flying off his head.

I tried to find a program which would allow me to sketch on the image, but nothing worked very well. I settled for a photoFunia treatment showing the screaming child being carefully drawn. The imaginary artist would have to have imaginary nerves of steel. 

Finally I found these babies matched with cartoons which I thought amusing.

Cindy Loo Who

Jake looks like Charlie Brown

Jones looks like Popeye

Sammy looks like Marshmallow Man

Rush on over to sepiasaturday for tales of super hair does and screaming kids. 

Cashew - First Birthday

Cashew celebrated his first birthday last week. The cats acted as if they knew something was up - but nothing was; we served no liver cake or special food. The little guy likes his Fancy Feast and hasn't yet discovered that we, the big people, are eating something different and we'd like to keep it like that. He eats his share of the FF and heads straight for bed where he does a cursory clean-up and conks out for 16 or 18 hours. His only shortcoming is in the grooming department; he needs a little assistance with his bottom from time to time (is this TMI?) but he's gradually improved; since he's been going outdoors for part of the day, he does a better job of clean up. Pink, the older cat, tolerates Cashew, and sometimes they even play together as in the birthday photo below. 

Birthday portrait: Pink and Cashew's wild party

He watches the TV screen - tracks light lines or objects moving quickly across the screen.

Cashew had great bathroom manners from his first day home. Never had an accident.

This photo was taken before he made his debut outdoors.

This looks like play but Pink is attempting to escape.

After the party, Pink couldn't do anything with his tail.

Cashew has learned to climb a small apple tree half-way and drops out of it to the ground.

After the party was over, Pink couldn't do anything with his tail!!

Sepia Saturday 275 :Almost All Wet

I managed to scare up three photos of myself semi-submerged to make a little theme for this week's prompt. It's a real stretch to pass these photos off as "sky" photos...as they're mostly about the water. I'm about four years old in the first photo, resting on my elbows in the tepid water of Grand Beach, Manitoba, apparently quite alone, except for the photographer. The sky looks almost clear...wispy summer prairie clouds. The photo was taken 68 years ago and the beach is quite different now.

In the next photo, I've become a teenager and I'm treading water in Dorothy Lake, Ontario. Again, there's not another soul to be seen. The sky was slightly overcast. At this age, I was starting to think about a get-away. I wanted to go to a city...somewhere with razzamatazz. I'd had enough peace and quiet for those years - could I just keep swimming? The most exciting thing to do at Dorothy Lake was to burn the leeches off our legs with burning cigarettes. Oh, I almost forgot - we could slap at the mosquitos too. 

The last one was taken last December at Angel Island resort off the coast of Flores Island in Indonesia. We shared the island with one guest - an accountant from Sweden. No one in sight. 

How about this Indonesian sky? My swimwear consists of a rash guard, hat, sunblock and sunglasses. After all these years, I'm still able to enjoy being almost all in. I wanted this particular picture to print and put in my wallet. I paid special attention to the smell of everything, the intensity of the colors, the feeling of the warm water lapping up against my skin and the silence. I'm hoping I can hold it all together in my memory to recall when necessary. 

And a little travelogue. Here's the charming, short airport at Labuan Bajo.

Here's where Angel Island is on a map (below) in case you need a bit of peace and quiet. We went: San Diego to Seattle to Dubai (two nights) to Jakarta to Denpasar, Bali (overnight) to Labuan Bajo (overnight) to Angel Island. 

Travel over to Sepia Saturday for more interesting stories inspired by old photographs. 

Selfie - Husband, me, water, sky.

Book Club April - The Buried Giant

We all agreed we didn't like this book, The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro. His first book in ten years; we were anticipating a doozie. Most of us have read, "Never let me Go" and "The Remains of the Day" and admire the writer. 

Book Cover - Deluxe Edition has edge colored pages

This tale takes place in Britain in the 6th or 7th century at the end of a war between Saxons and Britons. An elderly couple leaves their home to reunite with their son, lost to them for many years. It's very confusing; nothing is clear. Nobody can remember anything because a "mist" has made them forget almost everything and almost as fast as it happens. Events of the morning are fuzzy by afternoon. The saga goes on and on - a fantasy story replete with ogres, dragons, imps and knights. None of us are fans of this genre. 

Kazuo Ishiguro - casting a spell?

Strangely, we had one of our better discussions about this book. We shared lots of ideas; many of them quite unexpected. Even more oddly, after our discussion about forgetting everything or maybe because of the discussion about forgetting, we spend quite some time reminiscing and remembering events in our past. Is this a psychological trick hidden in pages of The Buried Giant? Is there an emanation from the dye on the black page edges on Roz's deluxe edition of the book? Did Ishiguro spend ten years figuring out how to cast a spell over his readers? It doesn't appear that he spent those years honing the story. Time-wise, he wrote one page every ten days. That leaves nine days for spell conjuring.

www.telegraph.co.uk, Photo: Carrie May

Why else, but under the influence of a spell, would one of our members tell us about streaking a bar in Idaho? Why would two others share stories about wearing hot pants to a bar to get in free? Why would we talk about our high school reunions and who was still hot for whom? I felt the urge to confess to having been on the run from the RCMP for a brief period but just barely managed to keep myself from spilling the beans.

www.bigissue.com, Illustration: Dom McKenzie

Were we drinking, do you ask? Well, a little red wine (two very nice bottles), some really spicy edamame from "Thai, Thai" and Twix bars for dessert. Perhaps we stumbled on a formula for True Confessions? 

 PLUS

PLUS

EQUALS = GUT SPILLING????

Nancy chose a cast for the potential movie and it's a good one. She asked for our suggestions and mine are listed beside hers below. Her movie version of the book would be memorable (ha). Not being able to compete with her, I went for the worst cast of all time, ala Ishtar. 

FT.com

   
           Nancy's Cast                                  My Cast

Axl: Max von Sydow                        Al Pacino
Beatrice: Maggie Smith                   Goldie Hawn
Wistan: Russel Crowe                     Arnold Schwarznegger
Sir Gawain: Anthony Hopkins        Steve Buscemi
Edwin: Andrew Garfield                 Chastity (Chas) Bono

Have any casting suggestions?