If you can donate to only one thing this year, I hope you'll make that a donation to the Chippewas of the Thames.
The Chippewas of the Thames First Nation is headed to the Supreme Court of Canada this month for an appeal hearing on the change to the pipeline which travels through Chippewas land, a change which members — along with critics and environmentalists — warn could lead to an environmental catastrophe.
The reversal has been greenlighted by the National Energy Board, but, the Chippewas aruge, without the Crown first fulfilling its constitutional duty to consult the First Nation.
While the appeal takes place at the Supreme Court, supporters are organizing a "fill-the-Hill" demonstration in Ottawa that aims to get attention on Parliament Hill down the street.
"The immediate plan now is to bring attention to the Supreme Court," said Chippewas of the Thames Chief Leslee White-Eye.
"If there is an opportunity to unify physically in support of water, future generations and a long-term plan, we can convey those messages and show that solidarity on the outside," said White-Eye.
"We want to work together. We want to be working with all Canadians on . . . in terms of water protection and the fossil fuel industry and nation-to-nation relationships with First Nations in Canada.
Chippewas of the Thames are appealing the National Energy Board's approval of Enbridge's Line 9 pipeline to the Supreme Court.
This project will carry tar sands diluted bitumen through southern Ontario and east for export.
Donate to the Chippewas Line 9 opposition GoFundMe campaign here.
Attend the Supreme Court Rally in Ottawa!
On November 30th, on unceded Algonquin territory in Ottawa, Clyde River Inuit and the Chippewas of the Thames First Nation are heading to the Supreme Court to uphold the legal right of Indigenous People to be consulted on energy projects that will impact their communities. A win at the court could be a watershed for the future of Indigenous rights and environmental justice.
Demand the NEB respect Indigenous Rights! Sign to support Chippewas of the Thames First Nation!
Photos by Laurel L. Russwurm released under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license. You'll find more photos in my Flickr album.
For starters, even though Canada has only 0.49% of the world population, we make the 10 Largest CO2 Emitters list.
Canada ranks 56th with only 5 countries (Korea, Japan, Australia, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia) ranking worse.
None of the countries have yet achieved any of the top 3 spots, because so far nobody is doing enough to prevent dangerous climate change.
Canada needs to make some serious changes before we can be considered part of the solution.
An Enemy of the People ~ Tonight!
Richard adapted Henrik Ibsen's classic 1882 play, setting it in contemporary Canada. This tale of environmental whistleblowing is especially poignant in a province that lived through the Walkerton Crisis, and even more so for those of us in the town of Elmira (Kitchener-Conestoga), where our aquifer was so badly compromised by industrial pollution, our municipal water supply must be piped in from Waterloo. Bob was struck by the similarity to our municipal environmental politics.
"As so many of you are aware, there was a disagreement on Green Party policy on Israel and Palestine after the Convention in August.
"Since that time, many of you have reached out with questions and concerns. There appeared to be growing division on this issue and as such, it was felt, for the good of the party, that we should work together to reach consensus on a slightly modified position.
"We are pleased to say that a resolution will be introduced in Calgary that has the full support of Dimitri Lascaris, who was the sponsor of the BDS motion in Ottawa in August, and our party leader, Elizabeth May. It also has the full support of Shadow Cabinet which was involved in creating this resolution.
"My overall objective is to ensure that pressure is brought to bear on the Israeli government to recognize the civil and political rights of Palestinians and put an end to the suffering of Palestinians in the illegally occupied territories and in refugee camps outside of those territories. I feel this resolution allows for this to happen in both practical and political ways" says Dimitri Lascaris.
"This is not the only resolution which will be on the floor at the Special General Meeting in Calgary on Dec. 3-4. However, due to the amount of conventional media attention and discussion on social media, we felt it was important to let you know ahead of time about the progress being made.
The Green Party of Canada is firmly committed to human rights, peaceful resolutions of conflict and international law. Of all the political parties in Canada, the GPC has the most thoughtful, detailed and balanced policy on the Israeli-Palestinian position of any party.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Green Party of Canada endorse the recognition of a Palestinian right to statehood within the internationally recognized borders as described in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242.
1. Support a two-state solution to the Israel- Palestine conflict that adheres to pre-1967 borders and also seeks to incorporate an international plan for stimulating economic prosperity in both nations.
2. Call on both sides to immediately stop the killing of civilians and adhere to international law.
3. Encourage the Canadian government to press for a mutually agreed upon honest broker to engage in bi-literal and multi-lateral peace talks involving Palestinians and Israelis.
4. Call on Arab countries to use their influence to broker an agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian National Authority to facilitate the promotion of peace amongst the competing Palestinian interests.
5. Call for an end to the collective siege of Gaza so that medical and humanitarian aid can be provided.
6. Actively support the efforts of civil society groups working for peace, human rights, and justice in the region.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Green Party of Canada would seek to introduce legislation that would amend the Canada Israel free trade agreement. This change would require Israel to label as Palestinian, products and services from lands recognized under international law as Palestinian territory.
BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Green Party of Canada fully condemn all illegal Israeli settlement expansions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as undeniable obstacles to the Israel-Palestine peace-process.
BE IT RESOLVED that the GPC urges the immediate cessation of hostilities between Israel and Palestine. The GPC will adopt a posture of engaged neutrality, opening all available diplomatic avenues in both Palestine and Israel to press for a peaceful resolution to the conflict consistent with the GPC's commitment to justice and custom of speaking truth to power.
There are two policies directly related to Israel and Palestine, which passed at the August 2016 BGM. The first policy was split out from the original resolution and passed by consensus. The second policy was passed by majority but not by consensus and will be repealed and replaced by this resolution if passed by consensus.
In the years since the GPC adopted this policy, to which we are still committed, the situation has worsened. The possibility of a two-state solution is diminishing directly due to the Netanyahu government's support for illegal expansion and increasingly brutal military occupation. Even over 200 former members of Israeli Defense Forces ("Security First") have decried the worsening security situation for Israelis and Palestinians – and laid the blame directly on Prime Minister Netanyahu's policies. The former Israeli military officers have raised the alarm of a "humanitarian crisis in Gaza" and the diminishing chances for a two-state solution.
Clearly, Canada needs to do more to register with the Israeli government that flouting international law and threatening the security of its own people while violating the human rights of Palestinians is not acceptable. In doing so, Canada must continue to condemn violence from the militant elements of Palestinian society.
but most votes don't count at all.
In spite of the grievous unfairness of Canada's winner-take-all electoral system, there are Green supporters all across Canada. And while the dropping vote share for Green candidates seems to suggest the party is losing support, the reverse is true. Unfortunately all too often, too many would be Green voters chose to vote strategically for a candidate they don't actually want to elect, to prevent one they really hate from winning the seat. This isn't just bad for the Green Party, it's bad for all Canadians, because the parliament that results fails to reflect the intentions of most voters.
Even though we have no Green MP in Waterloo Region (or even Ontario), we held our own Community Dialogue. Ours was not a partisan event, and we did attract non-Greens, but it shouldn't be surprising to anyone that an overwhelming majority of those in attendance supported adopting some form of Proportional Representation.
One young woman in my small group dialogue told us that her 2015 vote had actually elected someone for the very first time. But instead of making her feel good, it left her feeling hollow because now she has an MP she didn't want that she helped elect. When our votes don't count, how can anyone count on getting the government policy we want?
A group of Liberals in the Conservative Brantford-Brant held their own multipartisan Community Dialogue Event, inviting our own Temara Brown to participate. And the sitting Conservative MP attended as well.
One good thing is that a majority of Canadian voters (that is to say, those sixty-something % of eligible voters who voted) voted for candidates and parties that supported electoral reform. Since the Liberals promised an end to First Past The Post elections, and Mr. Trudeau promised to make every vote count, we've had a whirl wind Parliamentary electoral reform Consultation. Thousands of Canadians have participated across Canada, and everything we hear suggests predominent support for Proportional Representation.
And now the all party ERRÉ (Electoral Reform Reforme Électorale) Special Committee on Electoral Reform has begun deliberating over everything they've heard, from the experts as well as public input. The problem is that comments made by Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister Monsef sound as though the Government is beginning get cold feet. It is, after all, hard to get a government that won majority power with a minority of votes under a First Past The Post system to adopt a system of Proportional Representation that will limit their power to what they earn in votes.
We need to encourage the ERRÉ Committee to work toward a truly fair system ~ and that can only mean some form of Proportional Representation. We can let the ERRÉ Committee what we want by writing to them ourselves. The folks at Fair Vote Canada have made this easier for us with their automated tool that will send a letter urging the committee to recommend PR.
The best part is we don't have to send Fair Vote's letter. You can start with it, or edit it to say whatever you like, or start completely from scratch. No matter how you choose to get it done, it certainly can't hurt to remind the Committee and the Government that we are still watching, and, more importantly waiting to see what Canadian Proportional Representation will look like.


Happy Hours – Buy 1 Alcoholic Drink and get 2 free (not applicable on beers).
About 500 metres from Candolim Beach, Sukhmantra Resort & Spa provides an outdoor pool and free Wi-Fi. A multi-cuisine restaurant, as well as 24-hour room service, is available on-site. Parking is free of charge.Featuring modern decor, all air-conditioned rooms are fitted with tiled flooring. A 32-inch flat-screen TV, personal safe and balcony are included. En suite bathrooms are equipped with a hot-water rainshowers and a hairdryer.Sukhmantra Resort & Spa is 3.5 km from Sequrim Beach and 5 km from Aguada Fort. It is within 10 km from the Tibetian Markets, Saturday Night Market and the city centre. Dabolim International Airport is 45 km away.The resort provides laundry and dry cleaning services. Airport transfers can be arranged, at an extra charge.


Victim or architect of the future?
If you have worked with us before, you will know that at LGIT Smart Solutions we make meaning through delivering quality learning experiences that uplift and build profitable businesses and communities. So when South African trend and innovation strategist and Singularity University Faculty Member John Sanei published a book that promised to explain how to innovate your business so as to make a positive impact on millions if not billions of people, we were understandably interested to know more. In "What's your moonshot", Sanei throws out a critical challenge to us, and we have used it as a frame for this blog: Are you a victim or an architect of the future?
* Autonomous decision making (decentralising decisions) starts with simple decisions being taken by cyber-physical systems.
The skills and experience to implement these systems are severely lacking. Organisations have what the World Economic Forum calls a 'triple investment' to make in reskilling: reskilling at-risk workers, upskilling the broader workforce and building structures for a learning organisation.
Given our focus in the leadership space, in this blog we wanted to lift out a set of requirements for leaders that resonate strongly for us, defined by Adjunct Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School, Richard Jolly.
Are you getting ready to Reboot?
We have come a long way since steam and water mechanised production in the First Industrial Revolution. According to the World Economic Forum, the fourth and latest revolution is marked by increasingly blurred lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres. It brings innovations based on combinations of technologies, and in this world cyber-physical systems, automation and the Internet of Things (IoT) combine, releasing the potential for scalability and exponential growth. Everything we know will be impacted, customer expectations, product enhancements, collaborative innovation and organisational forms. The Fourth Industrial Revolution in particular is notable for its anticipated velocity, scope and systems impact. It might not seem like it right now, but change is coming, and it is coming quickly. Are you getting ready to Reboot?
The following statement sounds incredibly much like common sense. Persistence and effort only deliver returns when we truly believe that we can make change happen. You have to be in it to win it. Your own assumptions about what you can achieve, also called your mindset, have profound implications on how you navigate your path and as a result how much you will flourish in the future. At LGIT Smart Solutions, we believe that as the Fourth Industrial Revolution rolls on, the right mindset will be critical for not being left behind. Let's look at this concept of mindset in a bit more detail.
The alphabet soup that has emerged in the world since Tim Berners-Lee started the World Wide Web 20 years ago this year, is astounding. From IT to AI to AR to VR, we're all playing catch-up and the fantasy world that Star Wars and Star Trek made us believe in movies is finally coming true.
We already have Alexa and Siri, but it seems that before we have Data, R2D2 and C-3PO, we will probably have systems like Mother, the computer from Aliens, or HAL on The Discovery from 2001, or simply Computer from Star Trek.
Everyone wants to be able to say: 'I do what I love and I love what I do.' However, very few people can actually make this statement congruently. You truly say this when you are operating according to your highest values and you have accepted that along the journey you are willing to embrace equal amounts of pain and pleasure in order to achieve what you want. Only then, can you congruently say: "I do what I love and I love what I do" otherwise it is a fantasy!
All the decisions we make in our lives are based on our own, individual hierarchy of values. Your personal values system refers to your own, unique values that are specific only to you and are demonstrated daily in your life. Only when you are aligned with your values in every area of your life, do you feel fulfilled and content.
However, your personal value system which we are referring to here is not what society generally denotes as 'values' as they are not moral codes of existence but rather individualised responses to the world around us.
At LGIT Smart Solutions, we can help you to determine your individual hierarchy of values and teach you how to link your values in order to fulfil your goals and aspirations. You can experience a life filled with purpose and inspiration if you know what you want and you can only know what you want to achieve, if you know your personal hierarchy of values!
"LGIT facilitated an enlightening session at our Sales Indaba last week. The objective of the session was to get people to really understand their true values and then to link it to the companies mission and vision. This objective and a lot more was met with the team leaving there with a lot to think about and reflect on their personal as well as professional lives.
Connect with us to receive further information or register on this workshop.


Balsa modeling kit with 4 flying model planes to build and fly.
Guillow's Design Studio let's you be creative ... you are the designer. Kit comes with over 35 parts (balsawood wings, tails & bodies, plastic parts, rubber motors, etc) to let you build your own unique flying toy designs. Simple to build, easy to fly and hours of fun with 4 balsa wood flying model planes!


Abstract 17875: Translating 3D Printing into Clinical Practice: Do Patient-Specific Models Aid in Communicating with Parents of Children with Congenital Heart Disease?
Reply to d'Udekem et al.
Reply to dUdekem et al.


text:
Classical Music Agenda (April 2012)
April is shaping up to be just as busy as March, making it extremely difficult to whittle down this little list to just ten concerts we most want to hear. So we may be cheating slightly on the number, but think of it as keeping your options open. As always, there will be many more concerts to keep you entertained as the complete calendar runs through the sidebar.
The banner event for the month will be the Washington debut of the singular Italian soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci. While perhaps not well known here, she is a firebrand presence in Europe, as anyone who has watched her in performances captured on DVD. Vocal Arts D.C. will present her in a recital -- with pianist Donald Sulzen in a program entitled Echoes of the Belle Epoque (music by Fauré, Hahn, Tosti, Cilea, Mascagni, Respighi, and Refice) -- you will not want to miss (April 11, 7:30 pm), in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. Tickets: $45.
The daring little opera company UrbanArias returns for its annual festival, in the black box theater at the Artisphere in Rosslyn. There are two productions of operas you will not hear anywhere else: the world premiere of a "self-help opera" by Conrad Cummings and Michael Korie called Positions 1956, and a double-bill of Before Breakfast (Thomas Pasatieri and Frank Corsaro) and The Filthy Habit (Peter Hilliard and Matt Boresi). The productions are scheduled for various times from April 13 to 22. Tickets: $22.
For more recent opera, the Maryland Opera Studio, the collegiate company of the University of Maryland School of Music, will be giving tribute to the operas of American composer Dominick Argento this month. Performances will include stagings of Postcard from Morocco (April 20, 22, 26) and Miss Havisham's Fire (April 21, 26, 27, 29), plus a free performance of the song cycle The Andrée Expedition with baritone Robert Tudor and pianist Susan Slingland (April 22), all in the Clarice Smith Center. Tickets: $35.
Giovanni Paisiello is one of those composers whose fame in his own era is in stark contrast with the obscurity he suffers today. You have the rare opportunity to hear what is probably his most celebrated opera, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, the inspiration for Rossini's treatment of the same story. It will be performed by Opera Lafayette (April 14 and 15), in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, in a semi-staged production directed by Nick Olcott. Tickets: $65. Free tickets for kids (ages 7-17) are available for the April 15 performance.
CHAMBER MUSIC:
Regular readers know that when Marc-André Hamelin plays, Ionarts listens. Following his recent recitals presented by Washington Performing Arts Society, the Canadian pianist will perform a recital next week under the auspices of Pro Musica Hebraica (April 2, 7:30 pm) in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. The repertory is some of Hamelin's best, virtuosic pieces by Charles-Valentin Alkan and Frédéric Chopin, in a program called The Enigma of Paris. Tickets: $38.
Speaking of virtuosity, one of the crazy things that the chamber sextet eighth blackbird does is play challenging dissonant music from memory. Next week, they will perform an unusual program centered on Schoenberg's hallucinatory Pierrot lunaire, but with some Berg, Weill, and George Perle thrown in for good measure. Soprano Lucy Shelton, dancer Elyssa Dole, and percussionist Matthew Duvall join the group for a performance choreographed by Mark DeChiazza, in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater (April 3, 7:30 pm). Tickets: $32.
Three string quartets that specialize in playing contemporary music will be coming to town, so consider them a package deal. The Arditti String Quartet appears with pianist Stephen Drury (April 10, 7 pm) on the free concert series at the Library of Congress. The program, marking the John Cage centennial, includes music by Cage, Berg, Adès, and Bartók. At lunchtime the following day (April 11, 12:10 pm), the JACK Quartet gives a free concert, with music by Hosokawa and Ives, at the National Gallery of Art. Finally, the French Quatuor Diotima will give two concerts this month, first at La Maison Française, a concert to include the U.S. première of Philippe Manoury's "Tensio" for string quartet and electronics (April 12, 7:30 pm), and again in a free concert at the Library of Congress (April 13, 8 pm), in a program of older music by Schubert, Beethoven, and Smetana.
To round out your string quartet week, a trip to Charm City will give you another chance to hear the Takács Quartet (April 15, 5:30 pm), playing music by Debussy, Janáček, and Beethoven at Baltimore's Shriver Hall.
VISITING ORCHESTRAS:
Pioneering period instrument ensemble Concerto Köln is coming to town late in the month, in a free concert at the Library of Congress (April 20, 8 pm). Cellist Jan Freiheit joins them for music by Bach, Vivaldi, Sammartini, and others. Tickets: FREE.
Violist (and conductor) Yuri Bashmet and cellist Mischa Maisky join the Moscow Soloists Chamber Orchestra on their 20th anniversary tour this month, with a stop at the Music Center at Strathmore (April 27, 8 pm). The music includes chamber orchestra versions of pieces by Schubert, Haydn, Tchaikovsky, and Brahms. Tickets: $35 to $95.
LAGNIAPPE:
Alec Baldwin, star of the whimsical television series 30 Rock, is also an advocate for classical music. You can celebrate Arts Advocacy Day properly next month when Baldwin delivers what is sure to be a memorable Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy, in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall (April 16, 6:30 pm). This the 25th annual installment of this lecture, hosted by the organization Americans for the Arts and named for the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Tickets: FREE.
For more concerts, see the complete calendar for the month of April.
Filed under Calendar
Ionarts-at-Large: Leif Ove Andsnes - Understatement and Innovation
by jfl | Saturday, March 31, 2012
Haydn – yes! How wonderful to see that Leif Ove Andsnes—along with Solveig Kringlebotn and Truls Mørk Norway's foremost classical artist—brought a Haydn Sonata to his recital at Oslo Opera House. But to see the C-Minor Sonata (No.33, Hob.XVI:20) atop of the bill irked me amid delight. Haydn is not the warm-up, not the oh-this-is-nice-too piece amid more flashy Bartók, Debussy, and Chopin. Just like Haydn Symphonies, however desperately welcome they are in Philharmonic concerts, ought not be the 'warm-up overture' before the 'real composers'. But it's hard to grumble when Haydn is played with such sincerity (a humorous sincerity, as befits the composer) and earthbound preciousness as Andsnes did. He did so, unfazed by quadraphonic bronchial utterances from the audience that pockmarked all three movements with bemusing regularity.
J.Haydn, Five Piano Sonatas,
L.O.Andsnes
Bartók's Suite for Piano op.14 is a little engine that could, chugging away with whimsy, delight, and lots of rhythmic appeal… sides that Andsnes played up perfectly. It's a delight in concert, benefitting considerably—like so much Bartók—from live performance. Perhaps this is one reason why Andsnes, amid his vast output for Virgin Classics and EMI, has not recorded any solo-piano Bartók. Stylistically switching on a dime, Andsnes performed three of Debussy's Images: muscular tone paintings in his hands, rich in nuance and dynamic shades and gratifyingly devoid of clichéd pastels. Here, as elsewhere, a sense of innate rightness ruled. Andsnes makes musical points with everything he plays, but they're often so subtle, that it's hard to tell what point that might be. His success isn't accidental; it comes from being one of the great understated innovators among pianists.
The second half of the recital was given over to Chopin. First: four uninhibited, muscular waltzes without any faux-French flavor and none of the 'wilting lily' Chopin-pretensions. This was extraordinarily healthy, robust Chopin – as were the following two ballades and the first, B-Major, Nocturne. When it was over and done with, four encores placated the grateful, proud audience. The Chopin Waltz, the Rachmaninoff Étude-tableau, the Granados Spanish Dance were all welcome. But there was one more, he wanted to squeeze in. At least one bit of Grieg—the composer he has championed more than any other in his quarter of a century long career—in this otherwise Grieg-less Oslo recital. Unfortunately the Lyric Piece op.54/2 ("Gangar") is such a bloody ear-worm that leaving the opera house—which had incidentally showed itself a quality recital space—it dominated the memory at the exclusion of all the carefully balanced diversity that had come before.
Filed under Béla Bartók, Claude Debussy, Concert Reviews, Frédéric Chopin, Ionarts at Large, ionarts from Norway, jfl, Joseph Haydn
Ionarts-at-Large: Four Last Songs with Camilla Nylund
by jfl | Friday, March 30, 2012
When Marin Alsop and Paul Lewis were the attractions on the program of the Oslo Philharmonic (with Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto to add to the star power), the ungainly Oslo Concert Hall was sold out to the last, expanded seat. A week later Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs and Camilla Nylund headed the bill, with music director Jukka-Pekka Saraste conducting, and the attendance was scarcely half as large. They missed out, for starters, on Henri Dutilleux' atmpospheric, prettily meandering Mystére de l'instant: A 15 minute work for strings, dulcimer, and percussion that slips and slides toward its ambivalent conclusion with several neat, small solos for the first desks and timpanist along the way. Easy on the ears, nothing conservative patrons need to run away from, but nothing—admittedly—that will have tickets flying off the shelf.
Dutilleux, Mystére de l'instant ...,
H.Graf / Bordeaux Aquitaine NO
R.Wagner, R.Strauss, "Transformation",
C.Nylund / H.Lintu / Tampere PO
Mozart, "Symphonies 39 & 40,
R.Jacobs / Freiburg Baroque Orchestra
Camilla Nylund from the Finnish-Swedish town Vaasa (named after the Swedish king of crisp-bread fame) has delighted me in Munich and Salzburg and on record in the past. Her Four Last Songs continued in that line of pleasing memories. She swam herself free after a forcefully determined "Spring", where her voice had narrow, piercing moments. Her voice is not a lush instrument, and carries very easily over the orchestra without being forced. In her more malleable lower register, at its best display in "September", she can add just that hint of velvet that makes Strauss so seductive. An air of propriety gave way to gorgeousness with the last lines of "September", leading into a round and homogenous "At Bedtime". The now infamous Marimba ringtone's disruption was only brief and caused no scandal… but the following highlight of the mini-song cycle, the last stanza of "At Bedtime", was played as if the orchestra was not aware of the rarified beauty this moment contained. To put a positive spin on it: it wasn't milked for its unique beauty. It fit the greater scheme of the orchestra's performance: not perfect, very respectably, and a bit anonymously—much line with past experiences.
This combination made, for all the preceding beauty, looking forward to the concluding Mozart Symphony—No.39—difficult. It's very easy to underestimate how challenging it is to play Mozart, even late, heavier Mozart, after a bill of 20th century modernish/romantic fare. It's difficult enough for most modern philharmonic orchestras to play Mozart well when their musical blood has been coagulated by too much 'oomph-music', and Viennese classics coming out like bad-habit Schumann.
Happily it wasn't Mozart-as-Schumann in this case. And while it also wasn't light and tip-toed Mozart à la Freiburg Baroque Orchestra or even Concertebouw / Josef Krips, it was a thoroughly engaging, very crisply driven affair, combining sprightliness and body and energetic all the way to the finale. Sarastre steered his musicians with unfussy aplomb that made, individual kinks apart, for the best playing of the night and possibly for the best playing I have heard of the Oslo Philharmonic yet.
Filed under Concert Reviews, Ionarts at Large, ionarts from Norway, jfl, Richard Strauss, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Basil Twist on Opium
by Charles T. Downey | Friday, March 30, 2012
The pioneering puppeteer Basil Twist is in the area for a couple months, supervising a city-wide retrospective of his unusual productions, the Twist Festival D.C. After thoroughly enjoying his whimsical take on Stravinsky's Petrushka earlier this month, we were not going to miss the chance to see what is his most famous, breakthrough work, Symphonie fantastique, at the Clarice Smith Center last night. Twist took the music of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, composed in 1830, and made a completely abstract visual work that does not really tell the story the Berlioz wanted to tell but that is nonetheless just as strange and compelling. The puppeteers manipulate abstractions of shape and color inside a large tank of water, viewed by the audience through a stage-like opening about as large as a wide-screen television. Feather-like objects, floating veils, glowing fiber-optic cables, flashlights reflected with mirrors, and other things are dragged through the water like fishing lures, while other parts of this strange tableau, a sort of abstract painting set into motion, are created by lights glowing in the water, dyes released in clouds, and bubbles set floating.
It is one of the oddest things I have ever witnessed, and seeing the amount of work and coordination that went into creating it -- the audience is allowed a peep at the backstage area following the performance -- one could only marvel at the determination that must have been required to make this thing happen the first time (it was premiered in 1998). Berlioz's program symphony was one of the most influential works premiered in the 19th century. In it, Berlioz depicted a series of events based on his own life, initially subtitling it "Episodes from the Life of an Artist." It concerned Berlioz's obsession with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, how he turns his life inside out because of her, even drugging himself and hallucinating about being executed for murdering her and having his soul condemned to hell. Incredibly, Smithson learned later of the tribute, and she and Berlioz were married for a time, although it ended up unhappily for both of them.
Nelson Pressley, Basil Twist's 'Symphonie Fantastique' is spectacle of puppetry and fun (Washington Post, March 31)
Topher Forhecz, Classical music meets puppetry — underwater — at Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center (Montgomery County Gazette, March 29)
Doug Rule, Born to Puppeteer (Metro Weekly, March 29)
Elizabeth Blair, Basil Twist: A Genius, With Many A String Attached (NPR, March 24)
None of this story makes it into Twist's vision. Puppets of the sort Twist uses in his other productions would probably not seem that much different in water. In a note published in the program, Twist quotes painter Wassily Kandinsky as a way of explaining why he turned to abstraction in a puppet show of all things. As in Petrushka, the movements of the objects in the water tank are timed to the change of Berlioz's ideas in the musical score. About the only concession to Berlioz's program in Twist's vision is the swirling, almost mermaid-like object that appears whenever the symphony's main melodic idea appears in the music. Berlioz identified this theme as his idée fixe, a representation of his obsessive passion for Harriet, heard in different ways throughout the piece: played by the suave violins in first movement's "Dreams and Passions," as a waltz tune in "The Dance," just before the fall of the guillotine blade in the fourth movement, and as part of the witches sabbath in the fifth. (See this striking performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Charles Munch, not without its faults, but quite daring.)
Berlioz was overwhelmed by this obsession, falling in love with both the actress and Shakespeare because of her performance (she played Ophelia, Juliet, and several other roles). Berlioz wrote in his Memoirs, a thoroughly entertaining, if not always truthful, book (trans. Ernest Newman):
I became possessed by an intense, overpowering sense of sadness, that in my then sickly, nervous state produced a mental condition adequately to describe which would take a great physiologist. I could not sleep, I lost my spirits, my favorite studies became distasteful to me, I could not work, and I spent my time wandering aimlessly about Paris and its environs.
The third movement, In the Country, refers to Berlioz's reaction when another young woman, a pianist who was in love with him, told him lies about Harriet's affairs with her leading men. He left Paris and wandered around the country for a couple days, weeping and inconsolable, finally passing out in a ditch.
Twist much prefers to stage his performances with live music, something made possible by having pianist Christopher O'Riley on hand to play a transcription of Berlioz's score on the piano. O'Riley's transcription was mostly Franz Liszt's outlandishly difficult arrangement for solo piano, in which form many listeners across Europe first heard the work. In a brief conversation following the performance, O'Riley told me that he had made a few tweaks to the score, most notably by adding some appropriately doom-filled overtones to the strikes of the bells in the Witches Sabbath movement, which Liszt notated just as octaves. O'Riley got an impressive percentage of the notes (few can hit as many of them as Liszt reportedly did), grimacing with the effort in the more strenuous passages. Unfortunately, clumsy amplification of the piano ruined the effect of live music by magnifying the blemishes and giving a canned sound to the music. The barn-like acoustic of the theater may have made the amplification necessary, but with that kind of sound, one could have just as easily played a recording.
This unusual performance will be repeated tonight and tomorrow (March 30 and 31), at the Clarice Smith Center in College Park.
Filed under Concert Reviews, Hector Berlioz
Elias Quartet a Welcome Guest
Charles T. Downey, Elias Quartet, at Library of Congress, proves well worth discovering
Washington Post, March 30, 2012
Haydn / Schumann, Elias Quartet
Live, Wigmore Hall
(released on May 8)
The Czech music week at the end of the Kennedy Center's Music of Budapest, Prague and Vienna festival continued, unofficially, Wednesday night at the Library of Congress. The Elias Quartet, formed in 1998 at Manchester's Royal Northern Music Conservatory, made its Washington debut at the venue's free concert series, playing an all-Czech program with American pianist Jonathan Biss.
With a couple of live recordings at the Wigmore Hall (on that venue's private label) to its name, this talented string quartet is well worth discovering. Opening with Josef Suk's "Meditation on the Old Czech Chorale 'St. Wenceslas,' " the group found all the pathos and shimmering beauty in what could easily be an overly sentimental trifle. [Continue reading]
Elias String Quartet with Jonathan Biss (piano)
Josef Suk, Meditation on the Old Czech Chorale 'St. Wenceslas' (for string orchestra or string quartet)
Janáček, String Quartet No. 1 ("Kreutzer Sonata"), played here by the Janáček Quartet
Janáček, In the Mists
Dvořák, A major piano quintet, op. 81
Filed under Antonín Dvořák, Chamber Music, Concert Reviews, Leoš Janáček, Library of Congress, Washington Post
Superlørdag with the Kringkastingsorkestret
by jfl | Thursday, March 29, 2012
Yay, it's Superlørdag with the Kringkastingsorkestret! Say what? Why, "Super-Saturday" with Oslo's Norwegian Broadcasting Cooperation Symphony Orchestra (KORK), of course.
Super Saturdays are the surprisingly casual afternoon-outings of the orchestra that take place in the University's aula, famous for and dominated by the vast, rugged Edvard Munch paintings that hang—mural-like—on its walls. If some of them look like hasty figural studies—they're not, as an exhibition at the Munch museum showed: for each final product there exist dozens of preliminary versions from pencil sketch to drafts in oil. The three main canvases have a more polished look to them and depict, to the left: "History". To the right: "Alma Mater". Up front, as the centre piece of this virtual triptych, hangs the eventually fascinating picture "The Sun", radiating over orchestra and audience.
The KORK can't have it easy as the third orchestra in a town that hasn't struck me as particularly proud of the classical music element of its cultural offerings. It has journeyed from light music starting in 1946 under Øivind Bergh to a modern Radio Symphony Orchestra covering a vast repertoire that holds the flag of contemporary music up in Oslo. Along the way, which included shuddersome Eurovision Song Contest muzak-duty, they seem to have attained a smallish but loyal following. Certainly the crowd, shy of 300, that came out on this prematurely sunny Lørdag, March 24th, was distinct and much more heterogeneous than that seen at the Philharmonic or Opera.
It was rewarded, too. Principal conductor Thomas Søndergård led the orchestra in a light and breezy program that suited the weather and started with Prokofiev's First Symphony. Aided by the surprisingly fine, resonant acoustic with just the right amount of reverb, the KORK's performance had a definite spring in its step, yet was full and burnished and might be said to have—successfully—punched well above its weight.
Francis Poulenc's Piano Concerto is a natural charmer and Christian Ihle Hadland, who had put a smile on my face with Mozart when he substituted for Lars Vogt at the Oslo Philharmonic last year, married the music's light wit and ease seamlessly with its romantic sound. Poulenc himself will have known whether his Sinfonietta was meant as cute or serious, exotic or conventional, but I often can't—until the finale when it puts all the chips down on joie de vivre. The orchestra hadn't, by then, lost much of the engaged enthusiasm from the Prokofiev, and only little more of the initial accuracy… helping a good deal to making Superlørdag live up to its name.
Filed under Concert Reviews, Francis Poulenc, Ionarts at Large, ionarts from Norway, jfl, Sergei Prokofiev
Oslo Internasjonale Kirkemusikkfestival: Crux with Via Crucis
Liszt must be the most famous, least appreciated composer. Everyone knows him, no one listens to him. A sentiment that rang a bell with Esa Pekka Salonen: "Liszt is a case in point of course. As a name he is extremely well known, and who knows his music? Very few. Absolutely." Was he doing any Liszt? "Hmmm… It so happens that the orchestral repertoire is not the best Liszt. I'm a big fan of the late piano music and some orchestral pieces, also. I like the Faust Symphony a lot. But no, I haven't performed even that piece for the longest time.He's a composer I should take a better look at, actually. I just got the score of Christus last year. And I've been looking at it from time to time. That looks very beautiful."
It sounds beautiful, too. In fact it's perhaps the most touching, striking Liszt among the more obscure of his compositions, unashamed of touches of conventional beauty. I'm also intrigued by The Bells of Strasbourg (from which Wagner found inspiration for Parsifal) and many other works. In fact, I'm often very intrigued about off-the-beaten-path Liszt works, ready to discover and fall in love… only to be repelled or let down or gliding back into indifference after being met by the music with emotional ambivalence.
F.Liszt, Via crucis,
Z.Pad / Debrecen Kodaly Chorus / D.Karasszon
Via Crucis is one of those pieces that I go to in hope of finding that Liszt is indeed as popular to the ears as he is prominent… only to scurry and try again, elsewhere or with a new recording of Via Crucis again, a year later. To my ears, the original version for organ, chorus, and baritone, is more an organ work than a choral piece; a difficult one at that. Perhaps that's why recent recordings have gone for the version for piano and chorus, which is altogether more often recorded than the original. (Among the most successful, to my jaded ears, is a brand new performance with Roland Conil with Roland Hayrabedian and Musicatreize on Phaia Music PHU001)
The Accentus Chamber Choir under Laurence Equilbey (Brigitte Engerer on piano, naïve V5061) might have the most spot-on choral performance but can't ultimately make a case for the eclectic work. Among the versions with organ, Johannes Wenk (carus 83.144) and Dezső Karasszon (Hungaroton HCD 32685) come closest to suggestion cohesion and real, almost desperate earnestness to me.
The 2012 Oslo Church Music Festival had put the Passion and Passion music front, back, and center. Literally: it opened and closed with Bach's St. Matthew and St. John's Passion… and in the middle waited two domestic passion world premieres: Ketil Bjørnstad's "A passion for John Donne" Trond Kverno's St. Luke's Passion. Alas, the latter had to be cancelled and the concert at the Oslo Cathedral on Wednesday, March 14th had Via Crucis coupled with Kverno's St. Mark Passion in one of only two concerts I managed at the impressive and innovative Festival.
It's unusually to have the established composer/work up front, and the contemporary work second. At least it doesn't conform to standard concert programmer's 'sandwiching' techniques that are designed to expose ears to new, sometimes challenging music, by giving them as little incentive or opportunity to bolt. After hearing the two works side by side, the decision made sense: Liszt's work is the challenging one, and Kverno soothes.
The Oslo Domkor under Terje Kvam—lined up before the quaint, almost naïve carved bas-relief altar piece of the Cathedral—was not to blame for the Liszt-struggles. But the way the reminiscing organ part (Kåre Nordstoga) became a halting, staggering endurance test for the ears was. It must be anguished, handwringing expressions that Liszt wanted to compose into the often improvisatory-sounding music for the organist. And there must be a way to find the entry-point into something that's personal, deep-felt. Alas, just playing the notes correctly has no chance of making anything but awkwardness tangible… amid which the choral outbursts seem strangely misplaced. And what might be haunting stillness, ideally, becomes just a breakdown in communication. When Veronica comes around the corner in Station VI, the question arises whether the best bit in Liszt ought to be by old Johann Sebastian Bach.
During Trond Kverno's Markuspasjonen the chorus transformed from admirably persistent to a group that sparkled with energy and joy as they fed on the traditional, conventional harmonies of the music and its chugging rhythms. The fine acoustic of the Cathedral, with a pleasant reverb of just over one second (up to two and a half, at full throttle), made their contributions all the more effective. Roguishly handsome tenor Matthias Gillebo, with that hint of not too long ago having enjoyed a career as a mischievous chorister, sonorously crooned his part, written in close parallel to Gregorian chant, perhaps with one eye on the Graduale Romanum. With music that is always drawn back to a resting pitch from which it deviates rarely and only briefly when it does, the result bears more of a pacific, monodic quality than it remains memorable. Liszt, admittedly, has Kverno there.
Filed under Concert Reviews, Franz Liszt, Ionarts at Large, ionarts from Norway, jfl, Organ Music
More Czech Music
by Charles T. Downey | Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Mendelssohn / Mozart / Schubert, Elias String Quartet
(live, Wigmore Hall)
The Music of Budapest, Prague, and Vienna festival at the Kennedy Center brought plenty of music by Czech composers to our ears last week, performed by the National Symphony Orchestra and other ensembles. If there is no limit to the Czech music you like to hear -- especially when it comes to Leoš Janáček, in my case -- console yourself this evening with the latest free concert at the Library of Congress (March 28, 8 pm). The young Elias Quartet, an ensemble of young British musicians formed at Manchester's Royal Northern Music Conservatory, joins American pianist Jonathan Biss for an all-Czech program.
The Elias, which has a couple of live recordings at the Wigmore Hall (on that venue's private label) to its name, will perform Josef Suk's Meditation on the Old Czech Chorale 'St. Wenceslas', composed for string orchestra (when played by a string quartet, the contrabass part is omitted), and Janáček's first string quartet, known as the "Kreutzer Sonata" (played here by the Janáček Quartet). Truthfully, I have not yet been all that impressed by the playing of Jonathan Biss, but the high opinion of other listeners and critics encourages me to keep an open ear. He will perform selections from Janáček's piano work In the Mists and join the Elias Quartet for Antonín Dvořák's A major piano quintet, op. 81.
Filed under Antonín Dvořák, Calendar, Chamber Music, Leoš Janáček, Library of Congress
Art of the Fugue
by Charles T. Downey | Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Charles T. Downey, In Bach Consort's 'Art of the Fugue,' dour sameness prevails
Bach, Die Kunst der Fuge, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin
If the fugue is the most complex way to structure music, Bach's "Art of the Fugue" is the most enigmatic example of that complexity. It is the summa of the composer's contrapuntal endeavors, but it was still something of a surprise to see the National Presbyterian Church filled to capacity to hear the Washington Bach Consort perform it Sunday afternoon. This austere work, an elaboration of every possible fugal trick in the bag, is not one of the composer's most popular; indeed, this was the Bach Consort's first performance of it.
Most scholars agree that Bach intended the piece for the harpsichord, but this performance, like many others, was arranged for an ensemble: four string instruments, with some movements performed ably by J. Reilly Lewis and Scott Dettra on two harpsichords. Andrew Fouts, the group's new concertmaster, was exemplary on the highest part, playing with clean intonation and radiant tone. Two viols on the middle parts were too easily covered and sometimes rhythmically off-center (with one false start just before intermission), and the violone seemed not quite agile nor clear enough to suit the lowest part. [Continue reading]
J. S. Bach, Die Kunst der Fuge
Washington Bach Consort
National Presbyterian Church
Artful Fugue (Ionarts, August 22, 2011)
Filed under Concert Reviews, Early Music, Johann Sebastian Bach, Washington Bach Consort, Washington Post
Ehnes Takes on More Bartók
by Charles T. Downey | Monday, March 26, 2012
This article was first published at The Classical Review on March 26, 2012.
Bartók, Works for Violin and Piano, Vol. 1, J. Ehnes, A. Armstrong
CHAN 10705 | 80'30"
Canadian violinist James Ehnes is one of the most technically accomplished musicians playing today. The appeal of his performances, however, goes beyond the fireworks produced by his hands to the ideas infused into the music by his vivid musical intelligence.
He was even able to draw consistent musical interest from the sometimes vapid technical drudgery of Paganini's 24 Caprices, which he recorded for a second time a couple years ago (Onyx; first recording for Telarc, in 2003). Now, for Chandos, he has embarked on what may turn out to be the go-to set of Bartók's works for violin and piano.
One of the ways Ehnes lifts himself above some of the competition is by appealing to the completist streak in record buyers. He opened his Bartók traversal with an excellent recording of the composer's two Violin Concertos last year, packaged ingeniously with a fine performance of the Viola Concerto.
Likewise, this new disc is the first volume of a promised complete set of Bartók's works for violin and piano. With the partnership of earnestly talented pianist Andrew Armstrong, the selection of works -- the two sonatas with piano as main courses, with a sampler of smaller pieces -- receive performances that get to the heart of this music, both its savage and suave sides.
The most substantial work on the disc is the extended first Violin Sonata, in which Bartók reconciles his study of folk music and embracing of atonality.
Ehnes and Armstrong give an air of mystery to the slow section in the middle of the extended first movement of the First Sonata, the nocturnal murk of Bartók's "night music" style. Ehnes draws out a deliciously sweet tone on the long, unaccompanied passages in the slow movement, lending an air of ethereal quiet. He plays the 1715 Ex-Marsick Stradivarius, a rather exquisite instrument loaned to him by the mathematician and instrument collector David L. Fulton, whose generosity made possible Ehnes's 2008 recital disc Homage (Onyx), on which the violinist played 12 extraordinary instruments in Fulton's collection.
The appeal of this disc is further enhanced by a savant booklet essay by Bartók scholar Paul Griffiths. He lays out the evolution of the style of the composer's writing for the violin and unpicks what is happening harmonically and melodically in these works, especially drawing connections to the barbaric, disturbing score for the pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin (also completed around the time of the two sonatas, in the early 1920s). As Griffiths notes, the Second Sonata often sounds like a more compact rethinking of the First, and Ehnes and Armstrong bring out all of its sometimes grotesque contradictions, the Stravinsky-like motoric drive, the folk-inspired dance patterns, and barbaric violence.
The only reservation about Ehnes is that occasionally his cerebral approach misses some of the daringness showed by someone like Isabelle Faust, whose all-Bartók disc for Harmonia Mundi is the most important recent competition. To that, one should add, for authority, the immortal live recording by Joseph Szigeti and Béla Bartók himself, made at the Library of Congress. It contains only the Second Sonata and First Rhapsody, combined with Debussy and an epic performance of Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata, but it is still a must-have.
The little Andante in A major must be listed among the composer's juvenilia -- a "salon morsel" as Griffiths puts it -- but it is the sort of piece the completist will want to hear. The performances of the two Rhapsodies emphasize the light, even humorous side of folk dance they incorporate, a mixture of Romanian and Hungarian styles -- both pieces were composed in 1928, after parts of Hungary, including the Transylvanian village where Bartók was born, had, in the aftermath of World War I, become part of Romania.
The perky main theme of the second movement of Rhapsody No. 1 sounds a lot like the Shaker tune Simple Gifts set by Copland, another reminder of the importance of folk music in Bartók's music. The composer revisited this movement to give the end of this dreamy, Haydnesque movement a more barbaric sound.
As usual for Chandos, this disc is rendered in excellent sound, captured in Potton Hall in Dunwich, Suffolk, and engineered by Ben Connellan.
Filed under Béla Bartók, Briefly Noted, CD Reviews, The Classical Review
Sarcophagus Recovered in Geneva
Agathe Duparc is reporting this morning for Radio Télévision Suisse (Un sarcophage romain saisi aux Ports francs de Genève, March 26) that customs agents in Geneva have seized an invaluable Roman sarcophagus, among several other precious archeological objects. The seizure was part of an operation to investigate goods being held at the Ports Francs, where merchandise passing through customs can be stockpiled. The sarcophagus was discovered at the end of 2010, a monumental marble tomb dated to the second century AD. It is decorated with a relief sculpture showing the twelve labors of Hercules and is reportedly very similar to a sarcophagus currently on display (shown here) in the collection of the Antalya Müzesi, a Turkish archeological museum in Antalya. Turkish authorities have already made a legal claim to have the sarcophagus repatriated to Turkey, believing that it was illegally removed from the country following illegal excavations near Antalya. Other objects seized by authorities include two sarcophagi from Lebanon, in the shape of human bodies. The Hercules sarcophagues, Duparc also reports, was offered for sale in 2010 by Ali Aboutaam, owner of Phoenix Ancient Art, to Jean-Claude Gandur, archeological collector and patron of the Musée d'art et d'histoire in Geneva. "The deal was not concluded," she notes, "because the item already aroused suspicions."
Filed under Art, News
In Brief: Czech Edition
by Charles T. Downey | Sunday, March 25, 2012
Watch Mark Minkowski lead Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble in Schubert's 9th symphony (embedded here). Also the fifth symphony, the Unfinished, and the sixth. [ARTE Live Web]
Emmanuel Krivine conducts La Chambre Philharmonique in two Haydn symphonies -- 82 and 83, the Bear and the Hen -- and a Mozart violin concerto with Isabelle Faust as soloist. [France Musique]
From last October, La Scala's production of Rossini's La donna del lago, with Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]
Listen to Esa-Pekka Salonen conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra in music of Kodály and Bartók, including the latter's second violin concerto with Christian Tetzlaff. [France Musique]
Hear Renée Fleming and Marcelo Álvarez in the Opera National de Paris production of Massenet's Manon. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]
From the Théâtre du Châtelet, Daniele Gatti conducts Mahler's tenth symphony in the Deryck Cooke version. [France Musique]
From Barcelona, a concert by the Cuarteto Casals playing music of Mozart, Shostakovich, Schubert, and Bartók. [France Musique]
On Tuesday, watch the video of De Munt's production of Dvořák's Rusalka, directed by Stefan Herheim. [Théâtre de la Monnaie]
Musicians from Les Arts Florissants perform music by Purcell and other composers at the Opéra Comique. [France Musique]
Yet another film on Marie-Antoinette's and the final days of the French monarchy at Versailles is coming, this time directed by Benoît Jacquot (adapted from the novel by Chantal Thomas, Les adieux à la reine, winner of the Prix Femina in 2002) and starring Diane Kruger (Marie-Antoinette) and Virginie Ledoyen (La Princesse de Polignac). [Le Point]
Some photos of the costumes from the new film Les adieux à la reine. [L'Express]
From the Église Saint-Louis-en-l'Ile, a recital by organist Benjamin Alard, with music by Scheidemann, Scheidt, and Buxtehude. [France Musique]
An interview with two of the stars from Les adieux à la reine, Diane Kruger (Marie-Antoinette) and Léa Seydoux, who plays Sidonie Laborde, the servant whose job it is to read to the Queen. [L'Express]
The Quatuor Voce performs a recital in the Auditorium du Louvre, with music by Franck and Ravel. [France Musique]
Lise de la Salle and the Quatuor Modigliani speak about and play music for the program Salons de la Musique. [ARTE Live Web]
NSO Keeps Things in Czech
After the National Symphony Orchestra's blockbuster performance of Dvořák's Stabat mater on Thursday night, Christoph Eschenbach gave the singers and some members of his orchestra a night off. For this week's B side performance, to match a program of Hungarian dance music and Viennese light favorites in between heavy vocal performances the previous two weeks, Christoph Eschenbach offered an evening of Czech rarities. The evening was slightly long, perhaps one work too many, and at least some were heard to grumble at intermission about the fact that the first half consisted mostly of chamber music. Still, once again, one had to admire Eschenbach for programming works that had not been heard from the NSO in twenty years or, in one case, ever.
The main attraction was two unusual pieces for larger chamber ensemble by Leoš Janáček. Young Czech pianist Lukáš Vondráček was on hand to play the keyboard part in these works, which are sort of like miniature piano concertos with an odd assortment of companion instruments. The Concertino for piano, two violins, viola, clarinet, horn, and bassoon, from 1925, received its debut performance by the NSO. A companion work to Janáček's opera The Cunning Little Vixen, it features the instruments as forest animals: the piano in a frantic monologue with the horn in the Hedgehog first movement; a scurrying, chattering squirrel in Loren Kitt's turn on the piccolo clarinet in E♭; the three strings in discordant owl calls in the third movement; and all of them together in the final movement. It is a virtuosic piece, with a bear of a keyboard part, but it all sounded confident and well coordinated.
The results were less felicitous with Janáček's Capriccio, composed for Otakar Hollmann, a Czech pianist who had lost the use of his right hand due to injuries in the First World War. The part is no less difficult, of course, and Vondráček seemed to have it less assuredly in his fingers, his eyes remaining much more glued to the score. Six brass players (two trumpets, three trombones, and a guest musician on tenor tuba) gave the necessary anxiety to the ostinato figure that haunts the work's opening movements. The flute part, played with clarity by Aaron Goldman, dispelled those worries and took the work into a sort of Pelléas-like Symbolist ambiguity. Thanks in no small part to the leadership of the NSO's new assistant conductor, Ankush Kuman Bahl, the piece held together in spite of a few insecurities.
We probably could have done with only one of the serenades by Antonín Dvořák, although both of them had appeal. The D minor serenade, op. 44, is essentially a wind band piece, with lots of oom-pa-pa accompaniment and echoes of Mozart's Gran partita at some points. Most of the melodic weight falls to the first oboe, and principal oboist Nicholas Stovall was in good form, with strain evident only on some very high notes. If the composer's Stabat mater fell before his first experiments with incorporating folk music into his music, this piece showed some of his first successes in that direction. The serenade for strings, op. 22, was the best known piece on the program, although it, too, had not been heard from the NSO since 1992. Issues of sectional unity and intonation seemed to indicate that more rehearsal time would have been beneficial.
Filed under Antonín Dvořák, Chamber Music, Christoph Eschenbach, Concert Reviews, Leoš Janáček, National Symphony
For Your Consideration: 'Delicacy'
Last summer, rumors started to float about because Audrey Tautou, the jolie môme of French cinema, had made some noises about quitting the screen for good. Whether it happened sooner or later, one interviewer wrote, "if you want to see Tautou on screen again, you shouldn't hang about." Your latest chance opens today, La délicatesse, made last year by brothers Stéphane Foenkinos and David Foenkinos, adapted by the latter from his own novel, which was extremely popular in France. Tautou stars as Nathalie Kerr, a beautiful woman who has shut herself off from life after the premature death of her husband. This is not a great film by any means, a lesser example of the sort of quirky romantic comedy that is a specialty of French directors. Happily, this is not yet the end of Tautou's career: she is also working on other projects, with French directors, most notably in L'écume des jours, a new film by Michel Gondry (La science des rêves). That should be a good match.
Les frères Foenkinos followed a strange formula for a romantic comedy, in that half of the movie sets up the fairytale marriage of Nathalie with her late husband, François, played with scruffy appeal by Pio Marmaï. Happily, this does not turn into a French remake of Ghost. In reaction to her beloved husband's death, Nathalie throws herself into her work, for a vast and strange Swedish company in Paris, whose business is never really specified (nor does it need to be). The smarmy boss who hires her, played with sebaceous suavity by Bruno Todeschini, swoops in after her husband's death, hoping to consummate the attraction he has always felt. He has one of the best scenes of the film, when he is dressed down by Nathalie after a disastrous dinner of failed seduction.
In the film, the camera is seduced by Tautou, following her closely, documenting the line of her legs, her slender form, the curls of her hair (cinematography by Rémy Chevrin). Although Nathalie seems to have become cold to the influence of love, it is reawakened in the least expected of places, a plain and even unattractive man on her team at work, Markus. He is a good egg, though, a warm heart who makes Nathalie and us laugh. Nathalie's grandmother in the suburbs -- played with open-hearted sweetness by Monique Chaumette -- recognizes it immediately, saying about a minute after meeting him that he has "un bon front," a nice face. As played by Belgian actor François Damiens (who debuted with Jean Dujardin in OSS 117: Le Caire, nid d'espions) -- he has to make an approximation of speaking Swedish at one point in a funny scene with his parents visiting from Sweden -- he is an awkward shambles, a sad sack with the good luck of being in the right place at the right time, probably for the first time in his life.
Roger Ebert | Washington Post | NPR
New York Times | Village Voice | Movie Review Intelligence
In an interview in Paris Match, David Foenkinos identifies the subject of his story as "l'étrangeté de l'amour." Nathalie's friends and co-workers struggle to understand why Nathalie, so beautiful and so successful, would fall for someone like Markus, but the point is that love, sometimes, is blind. She tries to make it go away, trying to explain to Markus in straight-laced business cant, to which he responds, "Vous parlez comme une américaine. C'est jamais de bon signe" (You're speaking like an American. That's never a good sign). He perseveres, however, encouraged hilariously by watching a televised speech by then-candidate Barack Obama, about how "our time has come," causing him to sit up in bed with a big, goofy smile.
Also from the interview in Paris Match--
Stéphane Foenkinos: "En fait, ce film est "driste" : à la fois drôle et triste."
Audrey Tautou: "Par rapport à la chronologie de l'histoire… moi je dirais que c'est un film plus 'trôle' que 'driste' !"
The screenplay is not always so ingenious but it has its moments, as when Markus declares that he is going to stop looking at Nathalie to save himself possible pain ("Je me protège," he says, apparently in earnest). When he spends conversations with his head turned to one side, she says, "Vous aurez mal au cou comme ça" (You'll give yourself a neck ache like that), to which he answers, "Je préfère mal au cou qu'au cœur" (I prefer an ache in the neck more than in the heart). The sound of those syllables, "cou qu'au cœur," which Tautou repeats, are particularly funny because they are so grandiose and sing-songy at the same time. The score, by Emilie Simon, adds the same sort of pop whimsy, with some quasi-minimalist, gamelan-style percussive cues and a few whimsical songs. Not a life-transforming movie but a charming one.
This film opens tonight exclusively at the Landmark Bethesda Row cinema.
Filed under Film
Spring for Music
Long-time readers may recall that I declared blogging dead three years ago, and I suspect that it was actually dead long before that. What I meant was not that the best practitioners of what used to be called blogging had generally found their way into more traditional media or had otherwise dropped mostly or partially out of the game, although that is also largely true. What I meant was that acceptance of blogging by the mainstream media as something serious -- it was in 2007 and 2008 that publicists started to ask me out for coffee, flacks for horrible crossover recordings started to ask where they could send me a promo, when newspaper critics started writing "blogs" on newspaper Web sites (indeed were sometimes writing almost exclusively Web-only content in some cases), and when I was interviewed by a newspaper reporter as a local blogger -- spelled the end of the subversive blogger. It's just as well: blog and blogging are ugly-sounding words that will hopefully fall into disuse.
Well, not so fast. This week, a New York-based festival issued an Arts Blogger Challenge. This was pretty transparently a ploy to drive traffic to its site -- the group will be presenting six regional orchestras at Carnegie Hall in May, and they would like some coverage and clicks. A self-selected group of bloggers -- those who did not immediately withdraw their names in a fit of pique -- would be assembled into some sort of March Madness-like bracket and compete against one another by answering questions and being scored by a panel of judges and readers of the site. With the possibility of winning a $2,500 prize and, more importantly, the chance to have more potential readers find their way to Ionarts, it seemed unreasonable not at least to enter. To take part in the first round, all we had to do was answer the following question.
New York has long been considered the cultural capital of America. Is it still? If not, where?
The answer, it seems silly to have to point out, is that the concept of a cultural capital of America is no longer relevant in the Internet Age. New York has a certain concentration of cultural events worth seeing, it's true, but one has more and more access to them from other places. The New York City Opera may be dying, and the Metropolitan Opera is losing its edge, leading Alex Ross, for one, to write recently that "The quality of operatic programming and production in New York has plummeted." People all around the world can see for themselves by watching the Met HD broadcasts or listening on satellite radio, and they can compare what they hear and see with streaming audio or video from lots of other opera houses and concert halls from around the world. In my In Brief posts, a regular Sunday link dump feature, I list a large number of worthwhile audio or video streams from that week, from around Europe and other places. One could list many more, and there are now sites devoted entirely to cataloging them.
Most of the concerts reviewed here at Ionarts are based in Washington, where I live, and in Munich, where our German correspondent lives. The fact is that we often review artists who travel and are heard in both Washington and Munich at different times of the year -- and indeed in New York, too. We both had occasion recently to write about the same Jonathan Miller production of Così fan tutte, which came to both London and Washington. We both travel around our respective continents, too, and write about lots of other places. We write about new recordings and DVDs, too, meaning that our audience is a mixture -- local people who want to read about local performances and people from around the world who want more general content. We do not need to be in any one place to do this, and neither do our readers.
SVILUPPO:
See my further thoughts on this PR ploy masquerading as a contest.
New Work by Young Mozart Discovered and Performed
It's the story of hidden treasures and attics, all over again. Not a copy of the constitution, this time, nor a hitherto unknown Rubens on the back of a canvas. But just about as neat: A genuinely new, and by all accounts genuine keyboard miniature by the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The attic was that of a brass-band Kapellmeister and church musician in the Lech river valley, Tyrol. The Mozart-piece, part of a 160 page strong collection of keyboard works, titled: "Allegro molto" by "Del Signore Giovane Wolfgango Mozart". "Givoane", as in "junior" to distinguish the bit from several other, also authentic inclusions by his father, "Del Signore Mozart".
Musicologist Hildegard Herrmann-Schneider unearthed it, and the Mozarteum Foundation (Stiftung Mozarteum Salzburg) brought it to light earlier today, which included a performance by Florian Birsak on Mozart's own fortepiano. Here's an excerpt of the Allegro, most probably written when Mozart was 11:
Excerpt from the "Allegro molto" by W.A.Mozart, perf. Florian Birsak.
The entire 84 bar long work, lasting something shy of four minutes with its two repeats, will be released on iTunes tomorrow, Saturday, March 24rd. More information at http://allegro.mozarteum.at/
Filed under jfl, News, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, World Premiere Performance
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Prague's Week
Intensity Over Subtlety: NSO Excels at Stabat Mater
Classical Month in Washington (April)
Prague Philharmonia
L'Arpeggiata Cuts a Rug
Emerson Quartet Gives Thanks
In Brief: Allemonde Edition
'Petrushka': What a Twist!
NSO's Uplifting 'Fidelio'
Lori Laitman Retrospective
Oslo Internasjonale Kirkemusikkfestival: Bach as E...
Takács Quartet
Organic Bach
Musical Journey Through Norway
In Her Own Words: Christina Pluhar
Quotidian 'Folle Journée' in Charm City
Ionarts-at-Large: Oslo's Delightful Stable House o...
In Brief: Wagner Edition
Memories of Another Past: Stefan Herheim's "La Boh...
Dancing to Hungarian Folk Music
Housewarming at Bluebeard's Castle
Beckett and Koston Celebrated
'Tis the Season for Season Announcements
Winter Not Over Yet
Ionarts-at-Large: Henze to RunAway From
Trouble at the Opéra de Nice
For Winter's Rains and Ruins Are Over
La Gheorghiu Hams It Up
Benjamin Grosvenor, Prodigy Grown Up
Jerusalem Quartet at the Barns
Yefim Bronfman at Strathmore
In Brief: In Like a Lion Edition
Ionarts-at-Large: Berlioz' Damnation
Benjamin Grosvenor Hits the Big Time
Vienna Philharmonic Grinds It Out
2012 Whitney Biennial... meh

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Advanced Propulsion and Energy Laboratory
Laser and Optical Diagnostics for Next Generation Power Systems
Main PI
Combustion and Diagnostics
Hypersonics ACT-II
Army Research Lab – Collaboration
FAA Alternative Fuels Center/Database
Alternative Fuel Kinetics Research
ARL-Argonne APS Imaging
XPACC Plasma Combustion Center
Illinois Fire Service Institute
Online Links
Research Group of
Professor Tonghun Lee
Department of Mechanical Science & Engineering
First UAS Propulsion Center Workshop to be held on May 1-2
The first workshop for the CUP Industry-Academia Connection Days (workshop) will be help at the University of Illinois Chicago on May 1-2, 2019.
https://www.army.mil/article/219203/
Our group's gas turbine work selected as top 10 coolest science from ARL in 2018
Our group's work to image a firing gas turbine using the X-ray facility at Argonne National Laboratory has been selected as one of the top ten coolest science outcomes from the Army Research Laboratory.
accompanying article can be found at:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-12/uarl-lrt121718.php
ARL-Central Launches on Youtube
We are an integral part of the new ARL-Central situated in the Chicago area. ARL-Central officially launched in 2018 and will be focused on propulsion and material research for the Army. The new Center for UAS Propulsion will be part of the ARL-Central efforts. The official promotion video for ARL-Central was launched on Youtube.
Our research group is located on the main campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. For collaborative research opportunities, please use the contact below.
Main Contact: Professor Tonghun Lee
Mechanical Science and Engineering
1206 W. Green Street
Email: tonghun@illinois.edu
© 2019 the Board of Trustees at the University of Illinois


Location first. Here it is a 5 bedroom home in excellent condition. Popular Bate man area in cul-de-sac backing onto parkland. Listen to the creek below while si tting on your entertainment sized sundeck. Close to all levels of school. Home is in excellent shape with updated laminate flooring and a 1 yr old roof.


Image Title: Mid Century Modern Bookcase Display Cabinet 1960 In DuPage For Bookshelf Idea 14. Filename: mid-century-modern-bookcase-display-cabinet-1960-in-dupage-for-bookshelf-idea-14.jpg. Image Dimension: 662 x 750 pixels. Images Format: jpg/jpeg. Publisher/Author: Lourdes Beier. Uploaded Date: Thursday - March 15th. 2018 23:11:14 PM. Category: Architecture. Image Source: interiordesign.net.
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text:
ONLINE BANK: Lloyds to cut 6,000 jobs to create 8,200 digital ones, Natwest launches SME neobank
Digital hurts! In a sort-of-confusing announcement, Lloyds is getting rid of 6,000 jobs; but it's also adding another 8,000 jobs, for a net gain of 2,000, as part of a £3 billion plan to invest in digital banking. Why have a call center in Kent, if you can have a chatbot in Facebook Messenger? Reportedly, many of the existing staff will be re-skilled for new roles. But the reality is economic dislocation as a paper industry moves online -- data scientists and engineers are not the same as branch operators and lending officers.
As another example, take RBS/Natwest and their latest launch of Mettle, an SME neobank. The tech was built mobile-first by fintech consulting outfit 11:FS and Capco, with the capabilities of opening a business current account in minutes, build invoices, and automate payment reminders. Business financial management and forecasting would sit on top -- trying to apply the personal financial management concepts of the retail market in an SME market that would get immediate, tangible value of a Quickbooks with a bolted-on bank account. Think about who built this thing -- a third party composed of entrepreneurs who launched a set of neobanks and roboadvisors in the UK (Monzo, Starling, Nutmeg). You can't get something new without trying something new.
And the last data point is Zopa, which is the UK-based digital lender that hasn't gotten public (that would be Funding Circle). They've just raised £60 million to build out another next gen digital bank. The company already has the revenue side built out in place from p2p loans, having lent about £4 billion of personal credit since 2005. But without a banking license to take deposits, it doesn't have reliable capital for the bumpy economic cycle. Like every other personal finance Fintech out there, the company plans to offer savings accounts, credit cards, investments, and various other financing options. Everyone pivot together now!
Source: Finextra (Mettle), ComputerWorld (Mettle), Independent (Lloyds), Techcrunch (Zopa)
Tagged: neobank, digital lending, fintech, bankosaurus
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Across the pond: Stu gives his take on President Trump's upcoming state visit to the U.K. He says the British people should keep their dislike of the president in check, because they need America more than we need them.
Feel Good Finance: Stu gives his take on a new survey that shows Americans are feeling a lot better about finances. He says we have the booming stock market and President Trump's economic and tax policies to thank for the optimism!
Sending prayers to Sri Lanka: Stu gives his take on the terror attacks in Sri Lanka and says this direct attack on Christianity can't be forgotten and the world must respond to it accordingly.
Wild week ahead with Congress returning from vacation and markets nearing record highs. There is a lot of news to digest and Stu is ready for the excitement.
Watching Wall Street: Stu gives his take on the ongoing stock market rally and says everyone should pay attention to what's happening on Wall Street.
Taking a pause for Paris: Stu gives his take on the devastating fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral and says now is not the time for finger pointing or the blame game. Paris has suffered a major loss that we all can feel.
There is an employee backlash inside Google over the Heritage Foundation. The leader of the foundation was ousted from Google's new advisory council on artificial intelligence due to pressure from Google employees. Stu's take; those employees are engaging in character assassination.
Nick Bosa, a college football player predicted to be a top pick in the NFL draft, has deleted his old pro-Trump tweets. Bosa is worried those tweets could hurt his career. Stu says this is just a small example of the Trump Derangement Syndrome that's all too common right now.
Evolution of England: Stu gives his take on how the national mood is changing in the United Kingdom. He says people are fed up with Brexit and some of them would like a leader like President Trump.
Mad Maxine: Stu shares his take on Congresswoman Maxine Waters's continued push for impeachment, even after the Mueller probe found no evidence of collusion.
Shultz's shot at 2020: Stu gives his take on whether or not an independent can succeed in 2020.
Endless investigations: Stu says that Democrats will continue with ceaseless probes over the next two years.
Moderates on the rise: Stu says don't count out the moderate Democrats yet, including Joe Biden.
State of play for the presidency: Stu takes a closer look at the 2020 Democratic candidate pool. He says Biden's bid is all but over and things aren't looking good for some other candidates either.
'American Dream' or delusion? Stu says the 'American Dream' is still alive and well despite some saying the dream has died.
Battle for the border: Stu gives his take on the crisis at the southern border. He says action is needed to stop the flow of migrants into the U.S. and Democrats need to step up and help.
Laughs and liberals: Stu talks comedy as a pro-Trump comedy tour is hit with warnings not to come to Portland this week.
Brexit blunder: Stu gives his take on the UK's chaotic Brexit process and says it is dragging on so long because the elites want to subvert the will of the people.


Elegant and delicious, our Albacore Tuna in Olive Oil features a subtle, clean ocean flavor, with a satisfying firm texture. It's a rich source of essential omega-3 fatty acids and nutrients, with less fat than meat and poultry.
We are committed to sustainable fishing, and we source all of our tuna from MSC-certified fisheries. It's important to know where your food comes from—that's why each can of tuna has a unique code that enables you to track the origins of our wild-caught tuna.


I teach Science to students with special needs - so I always value many sources when I put together my lessons. I often get inspired and get new creative ideas - when I do my research on Lesson Planet.
Your young historians will design an ongoing travel scrapbook or blog as they learn about the major locations that have impacted the development of democracy in the world, including ancient Rome, Greece, England, and France.
Explore many aspects of the first modern Olympic Games in your classroom.
Rick Riordan's books provide a wonderful platform for the study of mythology.
For this social studies learning exercise, students research 8 topics about everyday life in Ancient Greece. Students also answer 5 questions about women in Ancient Greece.


Living with American Indian Art: The Hirschfield Collection contains numerous masterworks, the great majority of which have never been published or exhibited. This book brings the collection into the scholarly domain as surely as any museum publication, making it accessible to the rest of the world for the first time. Alan Hirschfield built the collection primarily with an art-based view, focusing on pieces that he has found to be interesting and attractive. As a result, there is broad representation of many different tribes and regions, and includes textiles, leather pouches, war shirts, dresses, vests, cradleboards, beadwork, weaponry, pottery, toys, and basketry. Whether you are a collector, a scholar, or someone interested in decorating with American Indian art, inspiration will be found in Hirschfield's approach.