Culture appreciation
Aug. 13th, 2019 01:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livIt's been a bit of a month, but I've managed to see two of my favourite artists and I want to record those happy experiences.
I really like living in a town where we can have a whim to go to a concert for our date tomorrow, and there almost always turns out to be something worth listening to on. In this case it was a performance of some Stravinsky choral stuff, by the University orchestra and a guest star operatic bass, in King's Chapel.
Now the thing about me and Stravinsky is that I was more or less brought up on The Rite of Spring. We very rarely listened to any recorded music in my childhood home, because my mother is deaf. But one thing we had on regular rotation was the Stravinsky. Which meant I became really familiar with it before I formed the expectation that all classical music is basically meant to sound like Beethoven. I wouldn't completely recommend a musical education that consists of listening to exactly one piece like that, but Stravinsky served as a pretty good bridge between more conventional western orchestral music, and Modern music.
As a result, I was excited by Stravinsky, andcjwatson was excited by the guest bass, so it made for an ideal date. We dressed up in pretty clothes just because we could, and had dinner in the exciting vegan burger place, Doppelganger, and then we went to the chapel. Now they'd really crammed people in, we were sitting in tiny uncomfortable chairs really squashed between other people, but it was totally worth it because it gave more people the opportunity to hear an amazing concert.
They started with excerpts from the opera, Boris Gudanov,which I wasn't familiar with at all but it's most delightfully Stravinsky [ETA 19/08: Turns out I completely forgot the programme and the opera isn't by Stravinksy at all, rather Mussorgsky. Thank you ghoti_mhic_uait for pointing out my confusion.]
And the promised operatic bass was sick so they had a last minute substitute, not even an understudy but another artist who just happened to know the music. He was very impressive, you'd never have known that he wasn't the person who had rehearsed the work. We both agreed we wanted to get a copy of the opera to listen to all the way through. I mean, it's a terrible depressing plot about an usurper murdering the rightful tsar and eventually dying in a state of overwhelming guilt. But gorgeous music!
During the interval we got to watch the sunset over the river and the absurdly pretty buildings of King's and the pretty people in evening dress. Could not have been more delightfully Cambridge. And then. An arrangement of a carol by Bach (I didn't know that Stravinsky had done that, but I suppose most composers write Bach variations at some point), Von Himmel hoch. I completely fell in love with it, though King's chapel is the wrong setting for Bach;cjwatson reckoned the echo time was getting on for seconds. And three psalms, including the most amazing setting of Ps 150; according to the programme notes Stravinsky was of the opinion that just because the psalm mentions cymbals, it doesn't mean all the music has to be forte. And it's really contemplative and fascinating.
Ascjwatson commented, that was a highly civilized date.
A couple of weeks later we had another highly civilized date, seeing the Chihuly exhibition at Kew. I had planned to go there the day after my last day of work, to kind of console myself about the job being over. I'm a huge fan of Chihuly, who does amazing things with glass and colour. So I was really excited to see the Kew exhibit.
I ended up being pulled in as a last minute Torah reader on the Saturday morning, so we didn't actually make it to the gardens until about 4 pm. But it was early enough in the summer that the gardens were open until 8, and actually we needed most of that. It was a bit rainy, so some of the time we hid in the tropical plants house and admired the ridiculously tall palm trees and other exciting things. And when the weather cleared a bit we wandered round looking for glass tentacled things. The map isn't very good, it marks sculptures as being near buildings that they are actually inside, so we almost missed the best piece in the exhibition, the glass lilies which blend perfectly with the real lilies in the waterlily house. But that made for a fun treasure hunt where we stumbled across all kinds of Kew treasures, from the most magnificent ancient oak to the ridiculous pagoda with 80 gilt dragons. There's a piece that's just listed as "Temperate house", which is a bunch of different sculptures, a completely breathtaking chandelier right in the centre, and then a bunch of other pieces scattered around the greenhouse, some of which you have to hunt for. And there's a collection of dozens of Chihuly's round "floats", like fantasy planets, created over decades and brought together in the Buddhist garden. And basically it was amazing and did a really good job of cheering me up about being unemployed.
We had dinner in an overpriced but very lovely café in Kew-the-suburb, because we hadn't wanted to leave until it was actually getting dark and they were kicking out visitors. So we got home a bit later than planned but it was an absolutely glorious day.
Then I wanted to takejack as well during the following week, so I bought an annual membership pass, which allows a member to bring one adult guest. So if anyone else wants to come and see the Chihuly with me, please give me a shout. I'm definitely planning to see it more times before it ends in October, and I'm totally up for looking at other exciting things in Kew once the exhibition is over.
It was really nice to see the sculptures a second time withjack. Even only a few days later, different things stood out to me, and anyway it was perfect to have a relaxed day walking through the beautiful garden and looking at amazing art.
I really like living in a town where we can have a whim to go to a concert for our date tomorrow, and there almost always turns out to be something worth listening to on. In this case it was a performance of some Stravinsky choral stuff, by the University orchestra and a guest star operatic bass, in King's Chapel.
Now the thing about me and Stravinsky is that I was more or less brought up on The Rite of Spring. We very rarely listened to any recorded music in my childhood home, because my mother is deaf. But one thing we had on regular rotation was the Stravinsky. Which meant I became really familiar with it before I formed the expectation that all classical music is basically meant to sound like Beethoven. I wouldn't completely recommend a musical education that consists of listening to exactly one piece like that, but Stravinsky served as a pretty good bridge between more conventional western orchestral music, and Modern music.
As a result, I was excited by Stravinsky, and
cjwatson was excited by the guest bass, so it made for an ideal date. We dressed up in pretty clothes just because we could, and had dinner in the exciting vegan burger place, Doppelganger, and then we went to the chapel. Now they'd really crammed people in, we were sitting in tiny uncomfortable chairs really squashed between other people, but it was totally worth it because it gave more people the opportunity to hear an amazing concert. They started with excerpts from the opera, Boris Gudanov,
ghoti_mhic_uait for pointing out my confusion.]And the promised operatic bass was sick so they had a last minute substitute, not even an understudy but another artist who just happened to know the music. He was very impressive, you'd never have known that he wasn't the person who had rehearsed the work. We both agreed we wanted to get a copy of the opera to listen to all the way through. I mean, it's a terrible depressing plot about an usurper murdering the rightful tsar and eventually dying in a state of overwhelming guilt. But gorgeous music!
During the interval we got to watch the sunset over the river and the absurdly pretty buildings of King's and the pretty people in evening dress. Could not have been more delightfully Cambridge. And then. An arrangement of a carol by Bach (I didn't know that Stravinsky had done that, but I suppose most composers write Bach variations at some point), Von Himmel hoch. I completely fell in love with it, though King's chapel is the wrong setting for Bach;
cjwatson reckoned the echo time was getting on for seconds. And three psalms, including the most amazing setting of Ps 150; according to the programme notes Stravinsky was of the opinion that just because the psalm mentions cymbals, it doesn't mean all the music has to be forte. And it's really contemplative and fascinating. As
cjwatson commented, that was a highly civilized date.A couple of weeks later we had another highly civilized date, seeing the Chihuly exhibition at Kew. I had planned to go there the day after my last day of work, to kind of console myself about the job being over. I'm a huge fan of Chihuly, who does amazing things with glass and colour. So I was really excited to see the Kew exhibit.
I ended up being pulled in as a last minute Torah reader on the Saturday morning, so we didn't actually make it to the gardens until about 4 pm. But it was early enough in the summer that the gardens were open until 8, and actually we needed most of that. It was a bit rainy, so some of the time we hid in the tropical plants house and admired the ridiculously tall palm trees and other exciting things. And when the weather cleared a bit we wandered round looking for glass tentacled things. The map isn't very good, it marks sculptures as being near buildings that they are actually inside, so we almost missed the best piece in the exhibition, the glass lilies which blend perfectly with the real lilies in the waterlily house. But that made for a fun treasure hunt where we stumbled across all kinds of Kew treasures, from the most magnificent ancient oak to the ridiculous pagoda with 80 gilt dragons. There's a piece that's just listed as "Temperate house", which is a bunch of different sculptures, a completely breathtaking chandelier right in the centre, and then a bunch of other pieces scattered around the greenhouse, some of which you have to hunt for. And there's a collection of dozens of Chihuly's round "floats", like fantasy planets, created over decades and brought together in the Buddhist garden. And basically it was amazing and did a really good job of cheering me up about being unemployed.
We had dinner in an overpriced but very lovely café in Kew-the-suburb, because we hadn't wanted to leave until it was actually getting dark and they were kicking out visitors. So we got home a bit later than planned but it was an absolutely glorious day.
Then I wanted to take
jack as well during the following week, so I bought an annual membership pass, which allows a member to bring one adult guest. So if anyone else wants to come and see the Chihuly with me, please give me a shout. I'm definitely planning to see it more times before it ends in October, and I'm totally up for looking at other exciting things in Kew once the exhibition is over.It was really nice to see the sculptures a second time with
jack. Even only a few days later, different things stood out to me, and anyway it was perfect to have a relaxed day walking through the beautiful garden and looking at amazing art.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-13 12:52 pm (UTC)Unless it was an actual staged production (with acting, etc) that's not particularly unusual in professional classical singing - most artists will have a selection of repertoire roles which they have prepared and can sing on basically zero notice because they already know the piece, and you don't normally work with the orchestra or conductor until the day before the concert or even the concert day itself, so slotting in last minute is actually kind of trivial. You weren't expecting to sing it today, but you did it three months ago in Milan and have a booking for next year in New York! Nobody has understudies for concert performances, as far as I know, you just ring around the agencies and ask the artist managers "who do you have who is free tonight and can do [piece]" and pick the best match.
And three psalms, including the most amazing setting of Ps 150
Was that the actual Symphony of Psalms, or something else? We've done SoP a bunch of times, it's very cool (but hard to sing!).
(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-14 09:50 am (UTC)And I did not know that it's normal for professional singers to sub in for solo roles at the last minute, so I learned something, thank you.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-14 10:07 am (UTC)And I did not know that it's normal for professional singers to sub in for solo roles at the last minute
Yeah, I mean, obviously normally it's all booked months in advance! But there's always short-notice changes happening somewhere, particularly because with singing you don't want to do it if you're even just mildly off-colour or have a scratchy throat or something. I think that stuff like big opera, where they do the same piece every day for weeks, may well be very different - what you were expecting is how I believe it works in theatre, which again does the long runs - but most concert performances you really are only doing one concert, or maybe two, in a project, so it doesn't make sense to build in that specific local redundancy, I think. Everyone's mobile anyway, doing concerts all over the place, and it's all short-term bookings (a couple of days or so) which means there's a kind of pool of available talent just generally?
My information is based on a mix of singing in concerts which have soloists and things I've heard my sister talk about (she's an artist manager mostly in opera, arranging bookings and logistics and so on for a set of client singers), so I think I'm right but I definitely don't know all the subtleties. :)