Long day, longer entry.
11:45 p.m.
Anyway, he needed new winter boots, so we eventually got away to Yell0w where we found him a suitable pair, ridiculously on sale, and stopped at Costco to buy a box of paper for the laser printer (it weighed 53 pounds on our bathroom scale) before I ate a hurried lunch and then skedaddled back to school for a 1 p.m. rehearsal of the quartet from Kismet, which went reasonably well, after which I wandered over to the bookstore to buy Buddy Boy a book for school ($128!!!) and ended up getting a travel clothesline and a neat transparent plastic pouch for taking my camera down to the beach, air and water tight to keep moisture and sand away from its delicate moving parts.
I bumped into the Duchess and invited her to accompany me to the Loft where I bought us both lattes (she’d never had one before) and we sat by a window and chatted about this and that: their impending move (the province has expropriated their land to reroute the highway and they’ve purchased a property nearby with the intention of lifting their house off its moorings and plunking it down on a new foundation), our kids, menopause, nutrition, etc. It was almost like old times. Almost. You see, as much as I love the Duchess and as much as she and I were extremely close friends once upon a time and I never felt I had to watch what I said around her, I now feel as though there is a whole encyclopaedia of topics that are taboo. Still, it was nice.
Then we had choir, during which the sextet I am in rehearsed Aftern00n Delight in a practice room until it was more or less right. Herr Doktor Professor took off halfway to attend the emergency meeting of the Association members regarding the business I wrote about yesterday, and I’m sure there’s an email in one of my inboxes (I haven’t checked yet) informing me of the outcome.
Home, supper with Buddy Boy, then out again to see a piano concert at the department, the one that was cancelled last Friday due to inclement weather. This is the very pianist who applied for the job that is now filled by the guy who is endearing himself to all and sundry NOT. I have very mixed feelings about the concert, especially about the way she plays, because she does much which annoys me and much which brings me almost to tears.
She started off with a Haydn sonata and I felt that it needed a lighter touch. She is an extremely powerful player, considering that she is a tiny Chinese woman who looks like she would blow away in a strong wind, but her handshake is stronger than most men’s. Because she put so much force behind each key stroke, the tone suffered, and this is our new (or semi-new) Hamburg Steinway which I have heard played exquisitely. However, the middle movement, a Menuet, was so incredibly beautiful at moments that I wanted to weep. I can’t explain.
She followed this up with three Schubert Lieder arranged by Liszt for piano solo: Gretchen am Spinnrade, Du bist die Ruh and Erlkönig. I know these pieces well; in fact, the two outer ones are going to be part of my recital next year: “Songs of Madness and Despair”, and I was just practising them yesterday. They seemed excruciatingly slow, and yet the writing is so dense, I don’t see how they could have been played more quickly. My reaction, at the end of the first one, was to whisper to Vlad sitting next to me, “Liszt sure was a bastard, eh?” And yet, they evoked such an emotional response in me that I was almost embarrassed. Very, very strange.
The second half was made up entirely of works written in 2003 and 2004 respectively by a Quebec composer, the same pieces she played at her concert in N0rth HatIey last summer, and again they evoked Ravel, Debussy and their ilk, sounding not at all as though they were written in this century by a living composer. These she played extremely well, even if the aesthetic was not to my taste.
Added to my discomfort was the fact that Vlad was cutting her down at every opportunity. During the Haydn, she poked me, and mimed falling asleep. During the Schubert she mimed turning a crank. The thing is, the artist tonight played everything note perfect. Her technique is amazing, and her musical expression astounding. Okay, so the Schubert was slower than Vlad would have liked it, the Haydn was a little studied. I don’t think that was reason for her to criticize, especially to someone who may have a different opinion. She did like the pieces in the second half, maybe because that’s more of a style with which she herself is comfortable. I just know that I absent myself as quickly as possible when Vlad starts talking like that.
I escaped after most of the food was gone at the reception to the Java, where a student ska band was creating much noise and young people were bopping in place to it. I missed Little Princess’ band, which had played earlier, but I still had fun, chatting to various of her friends and doing a bit of bopping myself.
I’m home now, having just emptied the dryer and brought my clean sheets upstairs to put on my naked bed (I’m not like Buddy Boy who will sleep on the mattress cover when his bed is unmade) and I must wake early to pick Hubby up from the Sh’brooke bus station where he arrives at 8:30 a.m. So, if I don’t stick around any longer, I’m sure you’ll forgive me.
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