Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, two days before we ring in the New Year. Most years lately have flown by, like a gazelle doing a triple pirouette whilst eating a cheese sandwich on pumpernickel, but this year has not flown by, this year has been a very long year, for all the reasons you can probably imagine. Otherwise, like most evenings for the past couple of months, I’m spending the late evening hours listening to music, which I’ve been doing for most of the day, as well. For example, I listened to the English National Opera CD of Street Scene and I must say I didn’t really care for it all that much, which surprised me because I liked the YouTube video very much. But it turns out that video was a couple of years after their initial production, which is why it has a different cast and I much prefer the video cast to the recording cast, I must say. First of all, the video cast are better actors and Street Scene has a lot of dialogue. In this recording there is a great deal of bad shmacting going on and the attempts at accents are really from hunger for the most part. Some of the singers are okay, some less so, the conductor is Carl Davis, who’s excellent, but I prefer the guy who conducted for the video. When this CD came out it was in Dolby Surround, which I find absolutely absurd for a theater piece. And since I’m not listening to it in surround, the voices that were mixed to come from the rear channels (like there are voices coming from BEHIND the audience – that’s just ridiculous), in the two-track listening experience sound like they’re in a whole different borough and you can barely hear them. When the cast isn’t singing, the band can be heard okay, but when they’re singing, the band is simply too distant – the Mauceri recording also suffers from that but not as bad. I’m glad to have heard it, and yes, you get to hear a very young Catherine Zeta-Jones, if that’s of interest to you, which it wasn’t to me, but I don’t think I need to hear it again. For a complete Street Scene, it’s really the Mauceri all the way, although there is missing dialogue on the Mauceri, and that’s fine by me.
I also listened to a really interesting Decca Entartete CD, an opera by Hans Krasa called Verlobung im Traum. Krasa was yet another wonderful composer whose life was cut short at forty-four when the Nazis murdered him at a concentration camp. This opera is haunting in a way, has strains of both tonal and beautiful music along with a more astringent Schoenberg type sound (Krasa loved Schoenberg), and I really enjoyed it. Also included on the CD is a youthful symphony, which I liked but didn’t love. He also wrote a children’s opera while in the camps, and it was performed in the camps over fifty times – it’s since been rediscovered and has several recordings and has had many productions with children’s opera groups. It also spawned an American translation by none other than Tony Kushner, as well as a book of Kushner’s translation, illustrated by Maurice Sendak. It’s called Brundibar, and I’m anxious to hear it. Then I listened to a wonderful CD of Kurt Atterberg music – his gorgeous piano concerto, a rhapsody for piano and orchestra, and one other piece – a really fantastic CD from CPO. I love Atterberg. Now, as I write these here notes, I’m relistening to another Entartete composer I love named Karol Rathaus – two symphonies that are terrific, along with a melodically wonderful ballet.
Yesterday was a day certainly. I got almost eight hours of sleep, got up, answered e-mails, did some work on the computer, thankfully the motor car started right up, then I picked up a couple of packages, including another screener of a film I have no interest in watching, stopped at Gelson’s and got a chicken Caesar salad and some garlic bread for food, came home, was about to serve up the salad when I got a telephonic call from Vitello’s telling me my order was ready. Yep, I completely forgot I’d ordered food in advance despite the rather large piece of paper sitting in front of the computer that said: PICK UP VITELLO’S AT TWO ON TUESDAY in big old letters. Yep. So, thankfully the Caesar is good until Thursday, so I ran over to Vitello’s and picked up my food and got back here as fast as I could, which wasn’t fast at all, either coming or going, thanks to some of the most moronic drivers I’ve ever seen. Miraculously, the spaghetti and meatballs were still really hot, so that was good. It was a very good meal and I’d also gotten a small Caesar and that was excellent, too, and the whole thing wasn’t too terrible, calorie-wise – in fact, it was downright friendly.
After that, I had to do stuff for project one, mostly listening and taking notes, so I did that, and then at some point I finally sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I finished watching the final thirty minutes of The Boys from Brazil. The director doesn’t seem to know what movie he’s making at that point, so we go into gore land, although it is fun to see Peck and Olivier rolling around the floor, biting ears and hands, getting shot, and then attacked by a bunch of killer dogs. The young lad who’s tasked with playing the titular “boys” is not quite up to the task except in looks. And then it ends. But that Goldsmith score is a treasure and the photography by Henri Decae really is beautiful – he did many of my favorite French films, including Sundays and Cybele, Bob le Flambeur, Elevator to the Gallows, Purple Noon, The 400 Blows, Le Samourai, La Cercle Rouge, and also American films like Night of the Generals, The Only Game in Town, and Bobby Deerfield. One of the greats.
After that, I made one of the garlic bread things and had that for my snack and it was very good, albeit a bit flavorless. No sweets at all. The rest you know.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I’ll do more project one listening, I’ll pray the motor car will start, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages and an important envelope or two, I’ll do a bit of clarification on project two, I’ll have the chicken Caesar and the rest of the garlic bread thing, and then I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow is, of course, the final day of 2020 and we will have our big Annual New Year’s Rockin’ Eve right here at haineshisway.com and we want a full jernt so we can all pray for light and sanity and a better New Year. Then on New Year’s Day I begin on my new novel, and I’m looking forward to that.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, do whatever needs doing, I’ll do project one stuff, I’ll pray the motor car will start, I’ll hopefully pick up packages and an important envelope or two, eat, work on project two, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy that the year that didn’t fly by is almost done.