Classical giggle

Thanks again to Alex Ross, who pointed out, with illustration,

Susan Sarandon reading that Brad Pitt was nominated for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Britten"

at last month's Golden Globes ceremony. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. I may just have to watch the Academy Awards (WARNING: turn volume down if you click this link--aack, have headache now) in a couple of days to see if anything as amusing happens during that show.

The New Yorker on Mendelssohn

By far the most enjoyable article I've read about Mendelssohn so far in this, his bicentenary year, was in today's New Yorker online, written by Alex Ross, whose blog, The Rest is Noise, you'll notice in my sidebar (under music blogs):

“He never lost control of himself,” Wagner once said of Mendelssohn. The fundamental problem for so many Romantically inclined listeners was that Mendelssohn had no interest in what the scholar Peter Mercer-Taylor has called “unchecked personal self-expression.” Instead, his oratorios, choruses, glees, and parlor songs were intended to foster fellow-feeling and to serve as an aesthetic model for the upright life. In this, he succeeded triumphantly; there are still Mendelssohn Clubs—community choruses and singing societies—in cities across America. The challenge for contemporary performers is to tease out the complexity that dwells below a deceptively well-bred surface.

Read the rest of the article here. Illustration: Andrè Carrilho

And from this article I now have a biography to read--Mendelssohn: a Life in Music, by R. Larry Todd.

And one more thing. . .

I'm having a fine time not watching a movie I just got from Netflix, Sweet Violets, or something like that (actually, no, it's Purple Violets written by, directed by, and starring Ed Burns--it's usually an omen when all three are the same person, though there are some exceptions), which has got to be the most boring movie I think I've seen since, hmm, I can't remember when. While "enjoying" the flick, I'm also catching up on my blog reading, so here is yet another enjoyable tidbit for those of you who are not fans of the current Republican veep candidate. Thanks much to Alex Ross for this entertaining video. The music is Steve Reich's Different Trains, and the speaker, well, I won't name names.