Hiver, vous n��tes qu�un villain!
10:40 p.m.
I saw the optometrist today, who happens to be the brother-in-law of our Rochester friends (the guy who wrote the book on Berg for the Yale press and his pianist wife), although that information has absolutely no bearing on today�s tale, and after much discussion and fiddling with different machines for looking at my eyes in many different ways, the decision is that I get new contact lenses. Hooray! I have noticed that a) I�m not seeing as well as I used to distance-wise, b) my left lens always seems to be a little cloudy, giving me the impression I�m developing a cataract in that eye, and c) both lenses just aren�t as comfortable as they used to be. It turns out that the left lens has changed shape slightly and it is also heavily coated with protein deposits which all my diligent scrubbing does not seem to remove. To top it off, I have been wearing this same pair of contacts for eight years. I�ve never had them polished, and until the past several months, I never had any problem. So Alain assures me that I will have my eagle vision back and we can probably wait on the reading glasses for another year. Phew!
The concert tonight was clarinet and piano with cello. The clarinettist is a friend of ours who is doing her doctorate in performance at McGill in Montreal. This is one of her doctoral recitals, a pre-recital if you will, and her official one is on Sunday. Her pianist is an old friend of hers who came specially from Winnipeg to play for her. What a guy! The cellist is also an old acquaintance, who used to play with our new music ensemble but whom I had not seen for many years.
They started off the evening with a three-movement work by Clara Schumann, the only �classical� piece on the programme. This was followed by Lutoslawski, Penderecki, Morawetz (the token Canadian), Berg and Muczynski. Very fine playing all round and a great selection of repertoire. The Berg was stunning. The only pieces which did not fit, so to speak, were the Schumann, and as such were good ones to start with. Pauline admitted that they gave her the most trouble too, since she has been playing almost exclusively contemporary works of late. When she applied to do her doctorate, she had to argue with the powers-that-be to let her play the kind of repertoire she wanted. We really do live in a museum age.
Tomorrow morning we have another rehearsal for next week�s concert. Hubby promises that he has fixed all the computer bugs and that there will be no more crashes. Fingers crossed, folks.
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