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Category: walking in beauty

January 7, 2015

walking in beauty – January 6, 2015

Ivan Generalic - "Winter landscape" (1978)

“Winter landscape“ (1978)

Ivan Generalic

________

walking in beauty today, a proposition
I’ve taken on from a Navajo prayer as
a daily resolution, I of course looked for
beautiful things, literally at first, roses,
fresh air, sunlight, off to get some
Gerolsteiner, mineral water, at three
bottles for three dollars, a dollar
apiece, usually 2.29, to douse my
white wine, of which otherwise I drink
too liberally, some think, I’d pick up
my medication on the way, for blood
pressure, high cholesterol, geriatric
insufficiencies, drop off empties

in the mall, after the pharmacy, Richard
waved, another Richard, a vagrant, who
calls me buddy whenever I see him,
which is often, he used to sleep behind
the garbage bins at my place until
someone kicked him out, he’d greet me
effusively there every time I took out the
trash, hey buddy

that’s my name too, I said, I’d heard him
called Richard by one of his friends, but
that didn’t seem to register, he was in his
own other world

you know Rami, he said

not Rumi, I thought, the Persian poet,
surely not Rumi

not Rumi, the Persian poet, I asked,
ready, however inconceivably, for
maybe some Rumi, even only partly

Rami, Rami, he replied, your
superintendent

Remy, I laughed, my superintendent,
of course I know Rami

he took us out to New Year’s dinner, he
said, whereupon I was utterly inspired,
I’d never given Richard a dime, never
mind dinner

what a nice man, I admired

I shook his hand, it was warm, firm,
friendly, have a good new year, Richard

later I told Remy

you’re making the world a better place,
I told him, have a happy new year too,
you’re wonderful

he told me he hires Richard around the
yard, for landscaping, he usually spends
his pay at the liquor store

what are your plans for 2015, Remy had
asked him, I take it one day at a time,
Richard replied, Remy calls him Rick

the courage, Remy said of him, the
courage

later while I waited for the elevator, a
young tenant in my building, a sport,
came through the front door, how ‘re
you doin’, I asked, he’d been to
Penticton for the holidays

you, he asked

quiet, I said, family, you know, everybody
older than I am, if you can believe it

wow, he replied

wow indeed, I said back

later still, Mom and I went to dinner,
a nearby haunt, were given again
Frangelicos there on the house

to walking in beauty, we toasted,
counting our myriad blessings

she looked as ever exquisite

she wants to start a foundation, from
the money she’s going to get from
having reread “The Secret“, to help
all the people she wants to help, she
reasoned

go girl, I said

Richard

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September 4, 2011

Beethoven: piano concerto no 5, in E flat major, opus 73‏

"Beethoven" - Joseph Karl Stieler

“A portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven“ (1820)

Joseph Karl Stieler

_____________

you might say a triumvirate of piano concertos dominate
our Western musical culture, a veritable trinity of pianistic
masterworks that tower over, and have ruled, our musical
consciousness throughout the modern epoch, the
Rachmaninoff 3 has been one of them, but the 5th of
Beethoven is surely the granddaddy, the “Guppa” as a
favourite grandchild I know would say, the Olympian
Zeus, the Christian God the Father, of them all, in majesty
and authority, others quake in its overwhelming aura, it is
the sun to all the other stars

Glenn Gould is the standard still by which it should be
played, none yet, to my mind, has surpassed him

Karel Ancerl conducts the Toronto Symphony Orchestra,
a competent orchestration, overshadowed inevitably by
this prodigy, who nevertheless doesn’t ever flaunt his
finger play but remains faithful throughout to the
dictates, the tonal balances, of the music, it is 1972

I had mentioned “variations in volume, tempo, tonality,
the play of harmonization and discords” in Rachmaninoff,
note the strict adherence to tempo here, even the fastest
runs of notes are grounded in beat, more solid, less elusive
than the iridescent Rachmaninoffian allusions to Debussy,
you could set a metronome to the appropriate tempo of
each individual movement in Beethoven, it would remain
constant, apart from a few restrained ritardandos near
the end of some musical elaborations, until its very final
apotheosis, beat was ever an anchor for the fulgurating
Beethoven, an article of faith from which he strayed only
with great circumspection

note the language is not emotional, passionate and ardent,
but philosophical, metaphysical, Beethoven is confronting
cosmological considerations, existential realities, not the
more emotional concerns that confound us every day, it’s
God he’s talking to, eternity, not the incarnate tendrils
of the moment, not the poignant stuff even of soon
through Schubert a Chopin, Beethoven was at the start
of that Romantic Movement, indeed its very first
proponent, but not quite ready to wear his heart itself
on his sleeve, but a more spiritual, probing reason, whose
ardent metaphysical ratiocinations would set all the others
on fire, setting the stage for all the other stars

later, if you haven’t guessed what it’ll be already, I’ll
supply you with the third concerto, the Holy Ghost, of
the trinity, the Apollo, god of music and the sun, among
our concert greats

Richard

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September 4, 2011

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto no 3, in D minor, opus 30

fully 150 years after Mozart the concerto was still a thriving
musical form though it had undergone some modifications,
you’ll hear a more passionate account in Rachmaninoff than
the more lyrical, less emotionally overt compositions of
Mozart, the variations in volume, tempo, tonality, the play
of harmonization and discords, all incidentally within a single
movement, show the passage of time, of Beethoven, of Chopin,
of Debussy between Mozart and the more Romantic, Impressionistic
Rachmaninoff, note the sweeping ritardandos, where the beat is
drawn out, stretched for pathos, a Chopinesque insinuation into
music not found in earlier stuff, one imagines torrid expressions
of fervent sentiment, note the evanescent flurry of notes passing
by like the fleeting glitter of stars, the ephemerality of an
incorporeal idea that Debussy originated and brought to music,
and of course note the irrepressibility, the authority, the masculinity
of a volcanic Beethoven underpinning the lot, you can hear them all

the Vladimir Horowitz Piano Concerto no 3 of Rachmaninoff at
Carnegie Hall, January 8, 1978, with Eugene Ormandy leading the
New York Philharmonic Orchestra is, after Van Cliburn’s historic
1950s account, May 19, 1958, again at Carnegie Hall but under Kiril
Kondrashin this time, and the now defunct Symphony of the Air,
don’t ask, the one I then grew up with, it was riveting even without
the pictures

with pictures here he is again a few months later at Avery Fisher
Hall in New York, September 24, 1978, under Zubin Mehta with
again the New York Philharmonic, so good you’ll even forgive
Mehta his usual sentimental excesses

incidentally Horowitz was 74 at this concert, he is astounding

Vladimir Horowitz, colossus and legend, 1903 -1989

enjoy, be transported, be transfixed, you have been warned

Richard

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