Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to the highly-praised conductor conducting Shostakovich in a set that gets many, many kudos. I’m afraid I’m not getting it. I have a ton of complete Shostakovich symphony cycles and I find things to like in most of them, plus I have various performances that aren’t part of complete cycles that I also treasure. First of all, it would help if this weren’t mastered so ineptly – all at very low volumes, which, of course, is the one thing you don’t want in a Shostakovich symphony. These are not what I’d call dramatic performances at all. The band is quite good (they’re Shostakovich’s favorite orchestra), and I’ve liked Temirkanov with other composers, but I have never heard Shostakovich so boring in my life. Maybe if these were mastered differently, I’d feel differently, but I just am not understanding the love here. I’ll finish up the six discs (I’m on disc four as I write these here notes), but I can’t imagine I’ll be returning to these anytime soon, not when there are much better alternatives. Prior to that, I listened to Carl Nielsen’s Saul and David opera, and that I quite enjoyed. But it’s Chandos, so I’m not in love with the sound of it, and while I suppose the performances are okay, I didn’t love any of them. There’s only one other studio recording that I know of, originally issued on Unicorn with Jascha Horenstein conducting – I really like his work – and that one is sung in English and has some well-known singers, so I found a copy on eBay for seven bucks and bought it. And earlier, I finished watching the final two episodes of Mildred Pierce. I gather it’s completely faithful to the James M. Cain novel, including the use of much of the novel’s dialogue. The Joan Crawford film is very different from the book and tries hard to be a film noir. But that’s not what Cain wrote. In any case, to cut to the chase, I really liked it a lot. Todd Haynes was the perfect director for it, and he does his usual great job. He just knows where to put the camera and how to tell a story. I’ve never been a huge fan of Kate Winslet, but she’s really wonderful in this – a great performance that won a well-deserved EMMY for her. Equally good are Melisso Leo as her best friend, Evan Rachel Wood as the adult Veda (the young girl who plays Veda as a child is also excellent), and the large supporting cast. I liked Guy Pearce but the guy is alarmingly too thin and I find it difficult to even look at him. The big surprise in the film is Mare Winningham as Ida – she gives an absolutely stellar performance – it took me a while to figure out it was her. Carter Burwell’s score is nice and so is the use of period music. But where everything excels is the physical production – the great sets, fantastic costumes (Ann Roth), and the stand-in locations for Los Angeles. It’s really hard to believe this was shot on the East Coast – it really captures the LA look and feel for almost all of it. They shot it there because they got incredible tax credits for doing so, but in one of the featurettes, they said if they’d shot it in LA they couldn’t have made it look as authentic – that, of course, is nonsense. Yes, you’d have to be careful of angles, but there are still neighborhoods that are intact in terms of period buildings and a little CGI would have taken care of the rest. But what they’ve achieved here is pretty amazing. Anyway, highly recommended by the likes of me if you can find a copy. The Blu-ray is of very high quality.
Yesterday was a Sunday. I did get nine hours of sleep, I did answer e-mails, I did pick up the charger for the charger, bought some ground beef at Gelson’s, came home, charged the charger, which took several hours of charging. I then made about six ounces of rigatoni with red sauce, onions, and four ounces of the ground beef. That was really excellent, and I ate it all up. Then I had an hour conversation with my darling Cindy Williams – she and her director loved the piece of special material I wrote for her, and they were only switching up a word or two. There was one lyric line in the third verse that didn’t feel right, so after we finished, I rewrote it and it’s better and funnier now – I sent it to her. She’ll be in LA next week and she’ll come over and we’ll set the key and I’ll get a track made for her.
After that, I sat on my couch like so much fish and watched the final two episodes of Mildred Pierce – one ran a little over an hour (which is what most of them run) and the final episode was ninety minutes.
After that, I did a quick Ralph’s run for some liquid refreshment, buying three twelve-packs of Diet Coke (on sale) and ten bottles of Sparkling Ice (on sale) – the savings over what just those items would have cost at Gelson’s was fifteen bucks. I also needed butter and that was two bucks cheaper than Gelson’s, so I saved a whopping seventeen dollars. I came home, put it all away, then had some toast and jam for my snack. And then I began the music listening, which is continuing. The volume level has picked up on symphony 13, so that’s good. Sound is still a bit distant for my taste, but it’s certainly better than the first four CDs. And, amazingly, whilst listening, I wrote the two sets of liner notes, which I had to do in order to extract the release blurbs from them, so that’s done and I think we’ll try to announce either tonight at midnight or tomorrow at midnight.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, but since I finished the liner notes all I need to do today is get the track samples done. I’ll also eat, hopefully pick up some packages, and then I want to clean out the trunk of my car so I can put the charged charger back there, ready in case I need it. I presume the charge holds if I haven’t actually used it, but I’ll check it every few days and recharge if I need to. And then at some point, I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
The rest of the week is meetings and meals, a rehearsal with the singer, a Zoom thing with David Wechter, I have to set up an interview for that book that I wrote a chapter for, and I believe the helper’s mom is back today and she really has a lot to catch up on and she needs to get it done pronto, as we should have the last two releases in by the end of the week and those will need to be shipped. Then she’ll have a few weeks respite.
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, get track samples done, eat, hopefully pick up packages, clean out the motor car trunk, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What have been your favorite miniseries – old and new? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have finally seen the Mildred Pierce that’s the real Mildred Pierce.