Well, dear readers, I finessed the Kay Cole mixes and it will be off to mastering on Monday. I’m hoping we can announce just before Christmas, but that is wholly dependent on the cover being ready. I was up early and ready to finesse at eleven – that took just about an hour, faster than I thought it would go. Basically, we listened to the tracks, I removed some lip and mouth noise in places where no singing was occurring, I changed one word in one track to have a better consonant, we put a fade out at the end of one track, I did a special effect with reverb on the last word of one song, where I wanted her voice to recede a bit as if she was at the other end of a big, empty room. And that was it.
After that, I had a craving for kishka, so I went to Lenny’s Deli, where I’m very fond of the kishka. Unfortunately, it was kind of gross and I ate less than half. I also had a Caesar chicken wrap, and that was really quite good – it came with mini-latkes, also very good. Funnily, as I sat down I glanced over to my right and in the booth across from me sat Barbara Minkus, who I’ve worked with several times and who’s a friend, and director Susan Morgenstern. So, we chatted for a bit.
After that, I picked up one package but knew there were a couple of others, but the mail had JUST gotten there (at two) and they had to sort it. So, I came back at the end of the day and got the others – even then, one package that was supposed to be there, didn’t arrive so Amazon will have to make that right – it was all part of what should have been delivered, but this one seems to be in limbo somewhere even though my orders list had it to be delivered. Christmas must be taxing them.
Once home, I listened to three different Rachmaninov third symphonies – one I liked a lot (Paul Kletzki, whose second I also liked quite a bit), one was wacky (Stokowski, recorded when he was ninety-two – pretty bad), and one CD that has gotten the usual wags on Amazon to give nothing but five-star reviews – I read a few others, too, that raved about this conductor – horrible. Terrible muffled sound, an interpretation that put me to sleep, and these “reviewers” are just hopeless. I’d also gotten this guy’s second symphony and that was a bit better, sound-wise, but not performance wise. These people have no clew about this music and what it should sound like. For me, the good versions are so plentiful and so obvious, that when you hear a clunker it’s also obvious. Then I sat on my couch like so much fish.
I’d gotten a screener of the new Scorsese film, Silence. Everyone says it’s his Kurosawa film, but – he’s not Kurosawa, and this film literally put me to sleep after twenty-five minutes (it runs 160-plus minutes). It’s a real slog, but I guess I’ll try to finish it at some point. After that, I listened to a couple of SACDs. I heard the Khachaturian piano concerto, which is really wonderful. It was an old Everest recording, one of those recorded on 35mm magnetic film. It should sound better than it does, frankly – there’s a bit of wow, too, which is weird. But the concerto is great and very enjoyable. I listened to an SACD of more recent vintage – a Telarc Howard Hanson CD, with Telarc’s usual far way sound that just sucks the life out of the music – and people raved about Telarc back in the day as if it was some audiophile thing. Those ravers, of course, are silent now, now that everyone knows the Telarc sound is just not good. And I heard the SACD of Reiner playing Bartok – Concerto for Orchestra, which was standard two-channel stereo and which sounded great, and Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta in three-channel sound as recorded – that one is incredible-sounding and a great performance to boot.
Back at the computer, I listened to a Roberto Gerhard symphony and violin concerto – a complete change of pace, but I enjoyed both pieces very much. He’s not exactly a melody guy, but his orchestrations are really interesting and so is the sound of his music – some of it very much like film music. In fact, he wrote one film score that I know of and like – This Sporting Life, the Lindsay Anderson movie with Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts. Then it was on to the Erich Wolfgang Korngold Symphony in F sharp. I prefer the key of Gb, but that’s just me. It’s a wonderful piece, but a little less tonal than you’d think, at least the first movement. This performance was on a Varese Sarabande CD.
Today, I’ll be seeing the matinee of Merrily We Roll Along with our very own Sandy Bainum. It’s not a show I like very much, in fact I actively dislike it – I’ve seen several productions, including the one I recorded at the York Theater. I just can’t abide the book – the score has great songs in it (and a couple less than great songs), but the characters are so bitter and bleak for the first half of the show that I don’t know how you ever recover from that. Plus, Mr. Furth’s revisions make things worse – in some cases the super melodrama is almost laughable. I’ve already heard a great deal about this production – from a couple of yays to way more nays. I’d love to see a production that somehow makes it work, but I just don’t know that it’s even possible. I will, of course, have a full report. I may go early, park, and grab a sandwich somewhere. I do know that the show with intermission is in the two hour and fifty minute range. There are a couple of packages coming, but if they’re not there by noon I’m not sure I’ll be able to get back in time to get them.
This week is, of course, a ME week. We’ll be shipping out The Gang’s All Here – in fact, I think some of them actually went out yesterday, and we’ll do a Costco run and I’ll prepare for the annual Christmas Eve Do. We should have a nice crowd this year. Hoping for some screeners that I might actually enjoy, too.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, see a show, I must maybe pick up some packages if they’re there in time, I must eat, and I must relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, sorry that the craving I had for kishka was met with kishka that was slightly gross.