Recent(ish) culture
Wednesday, July 29th, 2015 07:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranthGosh, I used to blog daily. How...?
Beethoven - Symphony #9 -- Warsaw Philharmonic, Cadogan Hall, 20-May-15
First half was Szymanowski's Stabat Mater, in which all the interesting stuff happened in the bass, sufficient to distract me from what I still hear as dissonance. Splendid contralto (Hannah Pedley), especially when her voice was paired with woodwind. And a sweet moment of unison at the end.
Then: BEETHOVEN'S NINTH SYMPHONY, a sacrament of my religion. Every time I hear it I find something new: this time it was the echoes of the 5th symphony throughout the first movement. And this time around I heard the scales at the end of the first movement as Fate weaving, passes of the shuttle.
All the human condition is here (I wrote during the performance): triumph and joviality and delicate complexity in 2nd movement, and of course that ceaseless striving climb. Even if life sours there is the courtly triumphal public moment.
The third movement is still unrevealed to me. 'music to watch the gathering dusk by'.
And the final movement: again, I noticed new things, like the way that the initial theme is played entirely on a single string (the highest) of the double bass.
Soloists were off to one side where we couldn't see them, rather than at the front of the stage as usual. And the tenor strained to be audible over the brass section. But all in all, utterly splendid and awe-inspiring and moving.
I think there should be a singalongaNinth -- along the lines of 'Messiah from scratch'.
'Alternative Worlds' - Elizabeth Knox and Janine Matthewson -- Kings College London, 31-May-15
"Fiction is the great god of the world of feeling ... the lies that we tell to tell the truth truer."
Elizabeth Knox was mainly talking about Wake, which I think is one of her finest (and most sfnal) novels: Janina Matthewson was talking about Of Things Gone Astray, her first novel. Both spoke about finding the magical in the ordinary: also about love and loss, finding extraordinary solutions for 'ordinary' situations (a woman becomes literally rooted to the spot), and about their influences. Advice for new writers of genre fiction? "There's an audience for everything, don't just pick a genre, play!" (JM) "Build the story first, the world will coalesce around it ... One good idea isn't enough for a novel: have three, to set up poles and tensions." (EK)
But the really magical thing was talking to Elizabeth Knox afterwards and getting a hug because she recognised my blog name.
Waiting for Godot, Barbican Theatre, 9-Jun-15
Mostly booked this because of the two leads: Richard Roxburgh as Estragon, Hugo Weaving as Vladimir. [Why yes, it is in my calendar as 'Waiting for Elrond and Dracula'.] Roxburgh is a brilliantly physical actor -- watching invisible Things crawling from his boot, for instance -- and Hugo Weaving's voice is hypnotic. I'd never actually seen a performance of this play, and I engaged with it more than I'd managed on the printed page. I found the class oppression really unsettling, and the whole play worked far better for middle-aged me than for teenaged-me. "We've lost our rights," says one. "We got rid of 'em," says the other. Plus ça change ...
It is long though. I toyed for some time with the notion that Vladimir is a woman (wincing at the mention of giving birth; buttoning and unbuttoning trouser-fly as though there's nothing there to hide): it would make an interesting variant.
Jurassic World, Odeon Greenwich, 12-Jun-15
No, this is not a feminist movie in the slightest. A strong, intelligent female is shunned and isolated, and when she escapes from her situation she is hunted down like an animal, because that is what she is: Indominus Rex. (Note however that it takes other females to deliver the coup de grace.)
I will not discuss the feminist aspects of the humans, because there aren't any.
However, I enjoyed this film a great deal on a very simple level. DINOSAURS!! Some good CGI! That kid out of Iron Man 3! Chris Pratt being quite Indiana Jones-ish, and having all the good lines. But mostly: DINOSAURS!!!
Oresteia, Almeida Theatre, 15-Jun-15
"Forewarned is forearmed, not forestalled."
This production was utterly compelling: I don't think I have ever been at a live performance that held my attention for nearly four hours without any lapses of boredom / daydreaming / wild speculation. It's a modern setting, a reimagining, with a framing narrative of forensic psychiatry: Orestes is questioned by a therapist with an agenda, Iphigenia's sacrifice is broadcast TV. There are fixed times of death: there are deliberate echoes of Bush, Blairs T & C, Cameron ... Agamemnon and Aegisthus, in a nice twist, are played by the same actor, Angus Wright. (Though for my money Lia Williams' Clytemnestra stole the show.)
It's a tremendously novelish production: POV switches, unreliable narrators, flashbacks, that framing narrative. It's also a transformative work, questioning and subverting the misogyny of the original and leading us to doubt the very existence of at least one character. And it was also one of the most physically alarming productions I've seen: sudden darkness and the sound of a great wind, and Anne and I shrieked and clutched one another, because the effect, the timing, the simplicity were so effective.
Beethoven - Fidelio Overture / Piano Concerto #3 / Symphony #5, Dresden Philharmonic (conductor: Sanderling) & Freddy Kempf, Cadogan Hall, 18-Jun-15
Kempf is marvellous: gave the Third Piano Concerto a jazzy, slavic groove that reminded me of the Choral Fantasia. I felt this concerto was happy Beethoven -- peaceful at worst, laughing at best.
Symphony #5 also more joyous than I remembered, but I love the slippery weirdness of the strings before the resolution.
[After this concert we attempted to calculate the calorific requirements for a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. We used horribly generic figures from CalorieCount.Com and came up with 9146 calories. Which is less than I would have thought.]
Beethoven - Prometheus Overture / Piano Concerto #5, Dresden Philharmonic (conductor: Sanderling) & Freddy Kempf, Cadogan Hall, 22-Jun-15
Why yes, there was a second half to this concert -- the Seventh Symphony -- but we skipped it because a good performance [which the Dresden Philharmonic looked set to deliver] would have been too much after such an amazing Emperor. Kempf did some interesting things: the tenderness in the second movement theme became almost mechanical the second time around.
Once again I thought I could identify a borrowing -- Elvis Presley's 'I Can't Help Falling in Love With You' echoes that tender theme. Though the internet claims it has more to do with Martini's 'Plaisir d’amour' and with Berlioz ...
To Kill a Mockingbird, Barbican Theatre, 11-Jul-15
I had managed to escape having To Kill a Mockingbird as an O-level set text, so I'd only just read the book when I saw this production. Robert Sean Leonard (who, alone of all the cast, wandered onto stage in a low-key kind of way, and stood with his back to us for a while) was excellent as Atticus , and with slightly more humour than I believe he's portrayed in the film version. The children were very good, too. The stage adaptation did leave out some of my favourite bits (and added in others which I'm told reference the film), but it held together pretty well. My only criticism was that the ending felt ... unfinished, inconclusive, in a way that works better on the page than on the stage.
Many fangirls in audience, self included, but all very well-behaved.
Ant-Man, Cineworld West India Quay, 17-Jul-15
To say this is not my favourite Marvel movie is an understatement. It may in fact be my least favourite post-2008 Marvel movie. Sexist, racist, plot like a (tediously familiar) sieve: also -- inevitably -- insects, which are not my favourite thing right now for reasons involving infestations. There were some good bits, but I'm afraid my favourite bit of all was right at the end of the credits.
Beethoven - Symphony #9 -- Warsaw Philharmonic, Cadogan Hall, 20-May-15
First half was Szymanowski's Stabat Mater, in which all the interesting stuff happened in the bass, sufficient to distract me from what I still hear as dissonance. Splendid contralto (Hannah Pedley), especially when her voice was paired with woodwind. And a sweet moment of unison at the end.
Then: BEETHOVEN'S NINTH SYMPHONY, a sacrament of my religion. Every time I hear it I find something new: this time it was the echoes of the 5th symphony throughout the first movement. And this time around I heard the scales at the end of the first movement as Fate weaving, passes of the shuttle.
All the human condition is here (I wrote during the performance): triumph and joviality and delicate complexity in 2nd movement, and of course that ceaseless striving climb. Even if life sours there is the courtly triumphal public moment.
The third movement is still unrevealed to me. 'music to watch the gathering dusk by'.
And the final movement: again, I noticed new things, like the way that the initial theme is played entirely on a single string (the highest) of the double bass.
Soloists were off to one side where we couldn't see them, rather than at the front of the stage as usual. And the tenor strained to be audible over the brass section. But all in all, utterly splendid and awe-inspiring and moving.
I think there should be a singalongaNinth -- along the lines of 'Messiah from scratch'.
'Alternative Worlds' - Elizabeth Knox and Janine Matthewson -- Kings College London, 31-May-15
"Fiction is the great god of the world of feeling ... the lies that we tell to tell the truth truer."
Elizabeth Knox was mainly talking about Wake, which I think is one of her finest (and most sfnal) novels: Janina Matthewson was talking about Of Things Gone Astray, her first novel. Both spoke about finding the magical in the ordinary: also about love and loss, finding extraordinary solutions for 'ordinary' situations (a woman becomes literally rooted to the spot), and about their influences. Advice for new writers of genre fiction? "There's an audience for everything, don't just pick a genre, play!" (JM) "Build the story first, the world will coalesce around it ... One good idea isn't enough for a novel: have three, to set up poles and tensions." (EK)
But the really magical thing was talking to Elizabeth Knox afterwards and getting a hug because she recognised my blog name.
Waiting for Godot, Barbican Theatre, 9-Jun-15
Mostly booked this because of the two leads: Richard Roxburgh as Estragon, Hugo Weaving as Vladimir. [Why yes, it is in my calendar as 'Waiting for Elrond and Dracula'.] Roxburgh is a brilliantly physical actor -- watching invisible Things crawling from his boot, for instance -- and Hugo Weaving's voice is hypnotic. I'd never actually seen a performance of this play, and I engaged with it more than I'd managed on the printed page. I found the class oppression really unsettling, and the whole play worked far better for middle-aged me than for teenaged-me. "We've lost our rights," says one. "We got rid of 'em," says the other. Plus ça change ...
It is long though. I toyed for some time with the notion that Vladimir is a woman (wincing at the mention of giving birth; buttoning and unbuttoning trouser-fly as though there's nothing there to hide): it would make an interesting variant.
Jurassic World, Odeon Greenwich, 12-Jun-15
No, this is not a feminist movie in the slightest. A strong, intelligent female is shunned and isolated, and when she escapes from her situation she is hunted down like an animal, because that is what she is: Indominus Rex. (Note however that it takes other females to deliver the coup de grace.)
I will not discuss the feminist aspects of the humans, because there aren't any.
However, I enjoyed this film a great deal on a very simple level. DINOSAURS!! Some good CGI! That kid out of Iron Man 3! Chris Pratt being quite Indiana Jones-ish, and having all the good lines. But mostly: DINOSAURS!!!
Oresteia, Almeida Theatre, 15-Jun-15
"Forewarned is forearmed, not forestalled."
This production was utterly compelling: I don't think I have ever been at a live performance that held my attention for nearly four hours without any lapses of boredom / daydreaming / wild speculation. It's a modern setting, a reimagining, with a framing narrative of forensic psychiatry: Orestes is questioned by a therapist with an agenda, Iphigenia's sacrifice is broadcast TV. There are fixed times of death: there are deliberate echoes of Bush, Blairs T & C, Cameron ... Agamemnon and Aegisthus, in a nice twist, are played by the same actor, Angus Wright. (Though for my money Lia Williams' Clytemnestra stole the show.)
It's a tremendously novelish production: POV switches, unreliable narrators, flashbacks, that framing narrative. It's also a transformative work, questioning and subverting the misogyny of the original and leading us to doubt the very existence of at least one character. And it was also one of the most physically alarming productions I've seen: sudden darkness and the sound of a great wind, and Anne and I shrieked and clutched one another, because the effect, the timing, the simplicity were so effective.
Beethoven - Fidelio Overture / Piano Concerto #3 / Symphony #5, Dresden Philharmonic (conductor: Sanderling) & Freddy Kempf, Cadogan Hall, 18-Jun-15
Kempf is marvellous: gave the Third Piano Concerto a jazzy, slavic groove that reminded me of the Choral Fantasia. I felt this concerto was happy Beethoven -- peaceful at worst, laughing at best.
Symphony #5 also more joyous than I remembered, but I love the slippery weirdness of the strings before the resolution.
[After this concert we attempted to calculate the calorific requirements for a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. We used horribly generic figures from CalorieCount.Com and came up with 9146 calories. Which is less than I would have thought.]
Beethoven - Prometheus Overture / Piano Concerto #5, Dresden Philharmonic (conductor: Sanderling) & Freddy Kempf, Cadogan Hall, 22-Jun-15
Why yes, there was a second half to this concert -- the Seventh Symphony -- but we skipped it because a good performance [which the Dresden Philharmonic looked set to deliver] would have been too much after such an amazing Emperor. Kempf did some interesting things: the tenderness in the second movement theme became almost mechanical the second time around.
Once again I thought I could identify a borrowing -- Elvis Presley's 'I Can't Help Falling in Love With You' echoes that tender theme. Though the internet claims it has more to do with Martini's 'Plaisir d’amour' and with Berlioz ...
To Kill a Mockingbird, Barbican Theatre, 11-Jul-15
I had managed to escape having To Kill a Mockingbird as an O-level set text, so I'd only just read the book when I saw this production. Robert Sean Leonard (who, alone of all the cast, wandered onto stage in a low-key kind of way, and stood with his back to us for a while) was excellent as Atticus , and with slightly more humour than I believe he's portrayed in the film version. The children were very good, too. The stage adaptation did leave out some of my favourite bits (and added in others which I'm told reference the film), but it held together pretty well. My only criticism was that the ending felt ... unfinished, inconclusive, in a way that works better on the page than on the stage.
Many fangirls in audience, self included, but all very well-behaved.
Ant-Man, Cineworld West India Quay, 17-Jul-15
To say this is not my favourite Marvel movie is an understatement. It may in fact be my least favourite post-2008 Marvel movie. Sexist, racist, plot like a (tediously familiar) sieve: also -- inevitably -- insects, which are not my favourite thing right now for reasons involving infestations. There were some good bits, but I'm afraid my favourite bit of all was right at the end of the credits.
