1. Thanks to Sheila for letting me know that Joshua Bell is featured in this month's Bon Appetit magazine. An interview by Amy Albert can be read here. The illustration (right) is by Masa.
2. Ten Dollar Dinners is a new cooking show on Food Network that the kids and I discovered after watching a marathon of "The Next Food Network Star" on New Year's Eve and Day (the show is the winner's "prize"). While I'm not sure our Massachusetts prices will allow me to make all of the meals for under ten dollars, I was pleasantly surprised to look at the recipes available and realize that a) most of the ingredients are ones I have on hand, b) most of the recipes contain foods my kids eat, and c) with a few minor modifications I can actually eat most of the foods prepared as directed (I don't eat eggs or soy in any form, and limit my dairy intake).
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, 2009 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Felix Mendelssohn, and I expect to hear and hopefully perform a lot of his music this year. The chorus I rehearse with on Monday nights is singing three works by the composer in our March concert, and I like all three, but my favorite is Verleih' uns Frieden, written in 1831, which was about the middle of Mendelssohn's heyday of composing:
As you can probably guess just by listening to that last clip, Mendelssohn was a master of melody. You can also tell by listening to the opening bars of any of the three movements of his violin concerto. The first movement's clip (chosen for where in the music the clip originates) is played by Israeli violinist and former child prodigy, Maxim Vengerov, and the last two movements are played by the incomparable Joshua Bell:
Mendelssohn was from a family with a strict work ethic--his father made Felix and his three siblings (including his older sister Fanny, a brilliant though unknown pianist and also a prolific composer in her own right) learn music, French, English, Italian, Latin, Greek, math, history, geography, politics, art, and foreign literature, among other things. Makes what we try to get done at home seem almost laughable, somehow.
Anyway, I'll save other enjoyable Mendelssohn compositions for another day. But before I post, I must tell you all about the live, HD broadcasts of Metropolitan Opera performances--live from New York, selected operas are broadcast on movie theatre screens around the U.S. and internationally! Check here to see if one is coming to a theatre near you. I'm planning to go this Wednesday night to an encore performance of Massenet's Thaïs with Renee Fleming singing the title role. The next live performance is scheduled for this Saturday at 2 p.m. EST: Puccini's La Rondine.
Here it is, the entry about the Beethoven Violin Concerto in D Major I mentioned two weeks ago. Of all the violin literature out there, this piece is the most inspiring to me in its attainability for the musician, its accessibility for the audience, and the pure joy of its themes. Beethoven's music in general is usually quite uplifting, and I look forward to beginning work on his Choral Fantasy in a week at the rehearsals of the community chorus with which I sing.
Once upon a time I actually used the first movement of the violin concerto as the basis of my master's thesis, which was a dissection of the technical aspects of the music in order to create exercises to learn the solo part more easily. In other words, I took the hard parts and broke them down and made up ways to practice them. Too many years later, I find that I can still more or less play the whole first movement (up until the cadenza, at least), with some skill even in these currently mostly unused fingers. I think that, for my 40th birthday, which looms ever nearer on the horizon, I will promise myself that I will continue working on this piece (maybe even the more difficult 3rd movement) with the eventual goal of performing it in some respect. Ack. Those words look scary in writing!
Here's the dreamy Joshua Bell playing the first part of the first movement (visit here, here, here, and here for the rest of the concerto--listen to the last one if you only have time for one more). Take a listen, and see if you can understand why it moves me so!
Here's my new favorite cd to listen to when my kids are in the car (can you tell I'm big on sneaky learning?): The Story of Classical Music, written by Darren Hensley and read by the latest addition to my virtual wall of heroes, Marin Alsop. About the cd, briefly--Alsop is very engaging, and Hensley includes the most interesting little nuggets about composers, some that I, with graduate level music history classes in my not-too-distant past, did not know. Definitely worth downloading!
I looked for Marin Alsop at iTunes, thinking that she made a terrific narrator and, if there were more cds out there with her on them, I'd definitely want to check them out. Turns out I already have one of them--Joshua Bell playing Corigliano's Red Violin Concerto with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Marin Alsop! I'm not plugged into the classical scene as much as I once was, so somehow I missed the emergence of this amazing (female!) conductor. There are recordings not only of her conducting the Baltimore Symphony, but also the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the London Philharmonic, among others. I can't wait to check out Mark O' Connor's Fiddle Concerto, with Alsop at the helm of the Concordia Orchestra, which is unfortunately (or fortunately, since I'd like to sleep at some point while it's still dark) not available on iTunes.
While making a name for herself as a conductor of core symphonic literature, Alsop also seems to be on a mission to make classical music accessible to new generations of the public. She has several podcasts, including Clueless about Classical? and Marin Alsop's Musical Journey, which are both free through iTunes. More podcasts, and a plethora of other interesting material, can be found here, at Alsop's website.
I was tagged by LB at 3 Ring Binder to post six things people don't know about me, and man, this is difficult. I consider myself a reserved person, so one would think there is a lot about me that people don't know. Maybe I'm just boring??? Sad, but possibly true.
Let's see--
1. My elementary school teachers thought I would grow up to be an artist (as in paint, pencil, paper, etc.).
2. One of my celebrity look-alikes was Mikhail Gorbachev. I believe I ticked the "gender: F" button after that revelation.
3. I've started writing a handful of short stories and never finished any of them.
4. I saw Andy Williams in concert with my parents when I was nineteen (and enjoyed the performance).
5. My college violin professor (at the dry campus of the Christian college I attended) bet me a bottle of wine and a bottle of whiskey that I would nail The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams in my senior recital (no, that's not me in the YouTube video, though I have worn a similar dress to perform a solo with an orchestra--mine was shorter. . . much). My dear teacher also threatened to make me drink a shot before going out on stage. Needless to say, she remains one of my favorite professors of all time.
6. I met Joshua Bell when I was eighteen!!!!! Shook his hand and chatted briefly, even (and I'm sure I was a witty eighteen-year-old--probably told him about my passion for Andy Williams). It was a small concert in a tiny church in central PA--just him and Samuel Sanders (pianist). I bet the seats weren't even half filled. He was but nineteen and just getting started as a soloist.
There, I feel better. I'm tagging my friend Barb over at the cardinal compass. Go, Barb, go!
