[art] Endless Forms, Fitzwilliam, 11.09.09

Endless Forms -- Fitzwilliam, 11.09.09 (closed 4.10.09)
Exhibition site

Highlights included:

• William Dyce's Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th 1858: geologising middle-class families. Donati's comet is in the sky overhead, visible by day, but nobody looks up.


• Patrick Syme's edition of Werner's Nomenclature of Colours
Arranged so as to Render it Highly Useful to the Arts and Sciences, Particularly Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralogy and Morbid Anatomy: Annexed to which are Examples Selected from Well-Known Objects in the Animal, Vegetable and Mineral Kingdoms. Darwin used this for his descriptions of specimens. The Google version omits the Examples, which is a shame:


• Landseer's The Cat's Paw, which is a nasty and deeply disturbing depiction of animal 'cruelty'.

I did enjoy the exhibition but it really needed a second visit for me to pull it together in my head: and that first visit was just after my interview with the employment agency that landed me full-time employment ...

[theatre] La Cage Aux Folles, Playhouse Theatre, 19.10.09

La Cage Aux Folles -- Playhouse Theatre

Featuring the subtle and restrained ... no, sorry, doesn't work. Featuring John Barrowman, who is shouty and melodramatic (which is just right for the character and the production) but not exactly acting. He does carry off the costumes well, though. And I warmed to him when he lost it a bit in the improv -- he was clearly having such fun.

Marvellous set: curiously asexual and wholesome, good clean fun (the lewdest thing is JB eating a croissant) despite the louche subject matter and the ultra-camp ambience.

[concert] Mendelssohn / Brahms, Philharmonia @ RFH, 22.10.09

Philharmonia, Christoph von Dohnányi: piano, Yefim Bronfman
Mendelssohn: Midsummer Night's Dream Overture
Brahms: Symphony no 3 in F major
Brahms: Concerto for Piano no 2 in B flat major

The Mendelssohn doesn't really do anything for me, but it's pleasant.
The Brahms Symphony hooked me in the first phrase! The finale is like an intricately patterned and textured living carpet, organic and velvety and prickly and glittery. Ravishingly romantic (and Romantic).

A depressing %age of the audience left at the interval ...

I love the Brahms Piano Concerti and know them both pretty much by heart, so it's always interesting to find something new. I hear the inbetweens, the sussurus of strings, more clearly when I can see them and see how they fit into the changing seascape (water moving, rise and fall) of the piece.

And that fabulous campanile cadence in the second movement sends shivers down my spine.

The delicacy of those eerie faltering phrases in the 3rd is almost drowned out from the choir seats: the orchestra's in the way.

4th is civilised and domestic and matutinal: con brio for sure!

Bronfman is in his fifties, quite a change from the usual young virtuosi: it's fascinating to watch him play, a real sense of intimacy and familiarity, a sense that he's played this piece many times and explores it more each time.

[concert] Shostakovich / Rachmaninoff, Philharmonia @ RFH, 5.11.09

Review @ ArtsDesk.com

Philharmonia, Mikhail Pletnev: piano, Nikolai Lugansky
Shostakovich - Festival Overture
Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto #1 in F sharp minor
Rachmaninoff - Symphony #2 in E minor

The Shostakovich is humorous and playful and martial -- doesn't capture me at all despite Pletnev's obvious enjoyment.

Rachmaninoff hadn't quite got the hang of piano concertos when he wrote the first one. (I'm not clear whether this was the original version or the heavily-revised 1917 version.) Lots of splendid phrases and promising crescendos but they didn't seem to fit together. Less distinctively Rachmaninoff at the beginning, very Romantic: then it got hectic, fabulous modulations (like Brahms!)

Lugansky's playing bright and crisp and precise but he seemed too ... formal? cool? detached?

Rachmaninoff Symphony #2: I've never really got the hang of the symphonies but this was delightful. The acoustics were weird and wonderful, the xylophone apparently somewhere above and behind me! And the music's perfect Rachmaninoff: cold and clear and Russian, moments that sound like Piano Concerto #3, moments that remind me of Spartacus. The 4th movement is marvellous: raucous, hectic, then resolving to fugue in a descending carillon, every instrument fitting together.

For this I missed fireworks, but it was worth it.

A good day

Today I have:
- sat in the sun with coffee
- written up some belated reviews
- swum 500m (and cycled there and back, sans pain)
- spent about 4 hours travelling, mostly very chilled and pleasantly filled with e-books and new music (Saltillo, Shearwater, Blitzen Trapper)
- spent 40 minutes worshipping at the shrine of Rachmaninoff -- Piano Concerto #3, Ludensky, definitely up there with Argerich and Volodos in terms of galvanising performance. (Also some Tchaikovsky and Sibelius)
- had drinks at the BFI bar with ladymoonray, swisstone and Hilda. Espresso martini mmmmmm
- meandered around the RFH shop and acquired Christmas tat
- found proof positive of NZ co-writer's latest production. YAY!

happyhappyhappy. Bed now with purry kitty.