Went to hear the NSO Saturday night. Interesting program – Webern’s Langasmer Satz, Shoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, and Brahms’ Fourth. The Webern’s piece did not sound familiar, Shoenberg’s did, but I was pretty sure I had never heard it performed, only mentioned. So I expected the kind of twelve-tone thing that the composers are known for. I was looking forward to the show more for the idea of Webern and Schoenberg – the radical modernism expressed with the fewest possible notes – than because I genuinely expected to enjoy the music. I could not have been more wrong.
Langasmer Satz is an extremely early work, written when Webern was only 21, never published (hence no opus number), lost shortly after it was completed and not re-discovered until the 1960s. Originally for string quarter, the NSO played a string orchestra arrangement. It was gorgeous – lovely melodies, lush, Mahlerian strings, and only slight hints of the tension that would become Webern’s stock in trade a few short years later. The original quartet version was no doubt fascinating, but the orchestral rendering we heard worked perfectly – I would not take away a single part.
Schoenberg was also lush, beautiful and Mahlereqsue. My only complaint was its length – at over half an hour, it was too long by half, I thought. This was program music through and through, based on a poem by Richard Dehmel, so he needed the two separate development sections to match the narrative arc of the poem. Better to have stuck the violin arpeggios from the end into the first half and closed early. But that’s just me.
The Brahms, needless to say, was glorious. His Fourth is one of my favorite symphonies ever, if not the favorite, and hearing it live was nothing short of magic. Even though I know my recording (Solti leading Chicago) forwards and backwards, you can’t help but hearing more detail live. The forte sections pressed you into your seat with sheer energy, the flute solo in the closing movement took on a whole new dimension, and the trombones in the same movement sounded even more medieval and mysterious than they do on recordings. Great, great stuff all around.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
One man's trash...
I had an old laptop. Six years old, 40 GB drive, 256 MB memory, USB 1.0 ports, no wireless. Obsolete, right? I was all ready to recycle it, but then decided to see what happened if I put it up for sale on Craigslist. I listed it at $75, pretty much arbitrarily. I mean, I wouldn't pay $75 for something like that. Would you? I probably wouldn't take it for free -- it's just another thing to take up space in my house.
Well, between 10:00 p.m. last night and 9:00 a.m. this morning I had 19 e-mail messages, most willing to pay full price. I don't get it. What's more, the person who bought it didn't even open the box. It could have been filled with old magazines, for all she knew.
Well, between 10:00 p.m. last night and 9:00 a.m. this morning I had 19 e-mail messages, most willing to pay full price. I don't get it. What's more, the person who bought it didn't even open the box. It could have been filled with old magazines, for all she knew.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Bermuda
J. and I spent last week in Bermuda, on a belated honeymoon. It wasn’t the sort of trip that warrants one of my usual day-by-day travelogues, but I’ll offer a few impressions.
Bermuda is a pretty interesting place. A local told us that it was currently the wealthiest place in the world, though a more unbiased source puts it at number three, presumably behind Switzerland and Dubai. Still impressive for an island of 30 miles long by a mile across, where a hair over 60,000 people produce a GDP of over $4 billion per year. Some will go so far as to claim that there is no unemployment, but even those who do not endorse that claim generally agree that the 2% typically cited is largely voluntary.
Your worst enemy in Bermuda is the weather. Very strong winds – up to 40 knots on some days (46 mph) – combined with relatively chilly water (about 69 degrees F at the surface) precluded us from doing most of the water activities we had planned. So we did not go whale-watching even though April is officially Whale Month, did no snorkeling and no kayaking. The most unnerving thing is that while on the island, the winds are not obvious, but the whale people warned us of 12-foot waves less than a mile from shore, and the marine forecast on local television backed them up.
On the one truly nice day, we got out in a glass-bottom boat for a tour of the local coral reefs. It was gorgeous and absolutely fascinating. Corals of every imaginable shape, size and color practically brushed up against the bottom of the boat. There were some that looked like shrubs with blue branches, others resembled salad greens, and still others – J.’s favorites – were dead ringers for human brains. At least a dozen varieties of fish swam under the boat, ranging from a couple of inches to a couple of feet in size, from plain gray (but evidently very delicious) chubs to brightly striped sergeant-majors. We even saw a small shark and, later, a sea turtle surfacing to take a breath of air.
On our last day on the island, we did spend a couple of hours on the beach at Horseshoe Bay (until a passing rainstorm drove us off) and got into the water, which was crystal-clear, beautifully blue and delightfully refreshing. Bermuda’s sand has a reputation for being pink, but in person it’s not really. There is a bit of a reddish tint to it, thanks to microscopic crustaceans whose skeletons turn pink when they die, but mostly it looks like normal sand, just finer than what we’re used to on the Atlantic coast of the US.
For the rest of the time, we were confined to the island. Two of the major attractions are the Royal Naval Dockyard and the town of St. George. The Dockyard has historically been the largest of Bermuda’s forts and the center for its defense. It was borrowed by the US Navy during WWII to serve as a base for the support of its Atlantic supply convoys. Today, it features a large historical museum, some shopping and local crafts, and one of the most famous pubs in Bermuda (and the only one that brews its own beer) – the Frog and Onion. The museum, which we saw partly out of interest, but partly because we needed a place to get out of the rain, was interesting but offered far more historical detail than we could reasonably absorb. For a military and colonial history buff, it is a godsend. Beyond the museum, the biggest Dockyard attraction is probably the Bermuda Glassworks, where you can watch local and visiting artisans create colored glass pieces. Most of the works are attractive in a sunny, cheerful sort of way, and the prices are reasonable. We bought a Christmas ornament and a few small snail figurines as souvenirs for friends and relatives back home.
The Glassworks shares its building with the Bermuda Rum Cake Company. The rum cake is an island specialty – essentially a round pound cake soaked in dark rum. It is delicious, though a little goes a long way. Though several brands are available throughout the island, the Bermuda Rum Cake Company claims to be the only one that bakes theirs right in Bermuda. The rest are apparently made in the US and shipped back.
The historic town of St. George, which we visited a few days later, is located on the opposite end of the island. It was Bermuda’s original capital, and features the oldest buildings on the island, some dating from the XVII century (the island was settled in 1609). The centerpiece is St. Peter’s church, in continuous operation since the early 1700s. All this was interesting, but I found the town somewhat depressing. Since it was advertised as a major piece of local history and the Island’s most important tourist attraction, I expected some vibrancy or at least glitz, but the place had a decidedly dusty and forgotten feel about it. A few shops ringed the main square, but by the time we decided to stop in and browse, it was after 4:00 p.m. and everything was closed. Private houses started a few blocks from the center, and they were the least prosperous-looking we’ve seen anywhere in Bermuda. The large unfinished church, further damaged by a hurricane since construction was abandoned in the mid-1800s, and the ruin of a large house a block away only added to the joyless impression.
One pleasant surprise in St. George was the Bermuda Perfumery. It has been making perfume locally since 1928, and much of the original equipment is still in use. Everything is blended and bottled by hand. We took a tour of the old house in which it is presently located and did the olfactory equivalent of a tasting (a sniffing?) of their products. Their signature men’s cologne, unchanged since the early 1930s, is still made by collecting sawdust from local carpenters who use local Bermuda cedar in their work and macerating it in alcohol in upside-down jars to extract the oils.
About a kilometer from the center of St. George lies Fort St. Catherine, the second largest in Bermuda. It, too, is now a museum. We walked to it in the afternoon and found it completely deserted. We wondered around for a while, briefly looking at the exhibits and taking in the magnificent views of the ocean from the ramparts. The excruciating amount of detail about British naval artillery got very quickly even to me, who is occasionally capable of enjoying that sort of thing, though I must admit that I found fascinating the fact that a cannon originally commissioned in the 1880s was still in use by the Royal Navy in the 1950s.
Your second worst enemy in Bermuda is the food. When I was making our travel arrangements, I was struck by the abundance of cottages and housekeeping units relative to traditional hotels. We quickly found out why when we got there. Restaurants are outrageously expensive – a combination of the local economy and the fact that pretty much everything has to be imported. The cooking tradition is definitely pre-modern British – cook everything to death and serve it with a minimum of vegetables. There is some seafood being caught commercially in local waters, most notably wahoo, black grouper and some species of tuna, but we were not willing to pay gourmet restaurant prices, and lesser places just did not do it justice. The biggest disappointment was Bistro J. in downtown Hamilton (the capital and the only real city). It was a small place, about a dozen tables, quaint, candle-lit, good service, chalkboard menu that changed daily, and an impressive wine list, but the wahoo which both J. and I ordered was drier than a shoe sole. Pubs, of which there is a good number, offer decent food, but it’s not really distinctive and still pricey, though more reasonable than the upscale places.
The one bright spot in the otherwise bleak culinary landscape of Bermuda is the fish chowder, another island specialty. It is ubiquitous – every restaurant serves it regardless of the type of the rest of their cuisine, and it is usually excellent. Dark brown, thick with chunks of fresh and smoked fish and tender cubes of potato, it is deeply flavorful and usually served with cruets of black rum and sherry peppers (a slightly medicinal vinegary sauce) which you can use to doctor up your bowl to the extent you see fit. We’ve had several bowls over the course of the week and loved every singe spoonful.
Another meal worth mentioning was a late lunch at a place called Island Cuisine in Southampton, about 12 kilometers outside of Hamilton, where we stopped after a long meandering bike ride around the southern part of the island one day. Probably the least touristy of the places we’ve tried, it was essentially a Bermudian diner. We had delicious salt cod cakes – a humble version of our own crab cake made with potatoes and bacalao (dried salt cod soaked in milk), the most prominent evidence of Bermuda’s substantial Portuguese community.
One of the most pleasant aspects of the trip was our hotel, the Royal Palms. A little less than a kilometer outside of Hamilton proper, it was an oasis of peace and quiet in a place that was already pretty peaceful and quiet. The 1903 building was clean, comfortable, and in excellent condition, with smallish but impeccably kept rooms. The real treasure, though, were the lush, overgrown grounds filled with palm trees and rose bushes where you could happily while away an afternoon in a lawn chair with a good book. We were shocked that the hotel was almost completely empty -- we saw only one other couple regularly at breakfast, plus a smattering of business guests throughout the week, but on the whole the place was pretty much dead. It does cater to business visitors, evidently, and even political ones – one morning while having breakfast in the giant sunroom, we saw a man in business attire get into a white Chevy Impala with two large US flags flying on its front fenders.
There as a restaurant at the hotel, Ascots – reportedly one of the best on the island – but it was completely unaffordable. The bar, on the other hand, was very inviting and no more expensive than a moderately classy place in the US would be. We stopped there at the end of almost every evening to wind down over Bermuda’s signature drink – the Dark and Stormy, equal parts of black rum (Gosling’s is the locals’ favorite, though the volume producer is Bacardi, whose world headquarters are in Hamilton) and ginger beer. They were absolutely delicious. The spicy sweetness of the ginger beer which regular ginger ale lacks made all the difference.
Despite being thwarted in our attempts to spend time on the water, the week passed quickly, though by the end I felt like we were running out of things to do. If we were to go back, we would definitely rent a place with a real kitchen well outside of town, rent scooters (there are no car rentals in Bermuda) and do some research on where to get fresh fish directly from the fishermen and Bermuda onions (some are still grown on the island) from the farmers. If you can cook your own food, it’s a great place to relax.
Bermuda is a pretty interesting place. A local told us that it was currently the wealthiest place in the world, though a more unbiased source puts it at number three, presumably behind Switzerland and Dubai. Still impressive for an island of 30 miles long by a mile across, where a hair over 60,000 people produce a GDP of over $4 billion per year. Some will go so far as to claim that there is no unemployment, but even those who do not endorse that claim generally agree that the 2% typically cited is largely voluntary.
Your worst enemy in Bermuda is the weather. Very strong winds – up to 40 knots on some days (46 mph) – combined with relatively chilly water (about 69 degrees F at the surface) precluded us from doing most of the water activities we had planned. So we did not go whale-watching even though April is officially Whale Month, did no snorkeling and no kayaking. The most unnerving thing is that while on the island, the winds are not obvious, but the whale people warned us of 12-foot waves less than a mile from shore, and the marine forecast on local television backed them up.
On the one truly nice day, we got out in a glass-bottom boat for a tour of the local coral reefs. It was gorgeous and absolutely fascinating. Corals of every imaginable shape, size and color practically brushed up against the bottom of the boat. There were some that looked like shrubs with blue branches, others resembled salad greens, and still others – J.’s favorites – were dead ringers for human brains. At least a dozen varieties of fish swam under the boat, ranging from a couple of inches to a couple of feet in size, from plain gray (but evidently very delicious) chubs to brightly striped sergeant-majors. We even saw a small shark and, later, a sea turtle surfacing to take a breath of air.
On our last day on the island, we did spend a couple of hours on the beach at Horseshoe Bay (until a passing rainstorm drove us off) and got into the water, which was crystal-clear, beautifully blue and delightfully refreshing. Bermuda’s sand has a reputation for being pink, but in person it’s not really. There is a bit of a reddish tint to it, thanks to microscopic crustaceans whose skeletons turn pink when they die, but mostly it looks like normal sand, just finer than what we’re used to on the Atlantic coast of the US.For the rest of the time, we were confined to the island. Two of the major attractions are the Royal Naval Dockyard and the town of St. George. The Dockyard has historically been the largest of Bermuda’s forts and the center for its defense. It was borrowed by the US Navy during WWII to serve as a base for the support of its Atlantic supply convoys. Today, it features a large historical museum, some shopping and local crafts, and one of the most famous pubs in Bermuda (and the only one that brews its own beer) – the Frog and Onion. The museum, which we saw partly out of interest, but partly because we needed a place to get out of the rain, was interesting but offered far more historical detail than we could reasonably absorb. For a military and colonial history buff, it is a godsend. Beyond the museum, the biggest Dockyard attraction is probably the Bermuda Glassworks, where you can watch local and visiting artisans create colored glass pieces. Most of the works are attractive in a sunny, cheerful sort of way, and the prices are reasonable. We bought a Christmas ornament and a few small snail figurines as souvenirs for friends and relatives back home.
The Glassworks shares its building with the Bermuda Rum Cake Company. The rum cake is an island specialty – essentially a round pound cake soaked in dark rum. It is delicious, though a little goes a long way. Though several brands are available throughout the island, the Bermuda Rum Cake Company claims to be the only one that bakes theirs right in Bermuda. The rest are apparently made in the US and shipped back.
The historic town of St. George, which we visited a few days later, is located on the opposite end of the island. It was Bermuda’s original capital, and features the oldest buildings on the island, some dating from the XVII century (the island was settled in 1609). The centerpiece is St. Peter’s church, in continuous operation since the early 1700s. All this was interesting, but I found the town somewhat depressing. Since it was advertised as a major piece of local history and the Island’s most important tourist attraction, I expected some vibrancy or at least glitz, but the place had a decidedly dusty and forgotten feel about it. A few shops ringed the main square, but by the time we decided to stop in and browse, it was after 4:00 p.m. and everything was closed. Private houses started a few blocks from the center, and they were the least prosperous-looking we’ve seen anywhere in Bermuda. The large unfinished church, further damaged by a hurricane since construction was abandoned in the mid-1800s, and the ruin of a large house a block away only added to the joyless impression.
One pleasant surprise in St. George was the Bermuda Perfumery. It has been making perfume locally since 1928, and much of the original equipment is still in use. Everything is blended and bottled by hand. We took a tour of the old house in which it is presently located and did the olfactory equivalent of a tasting (a sniffing?) of their products. Their signature men’s cologne, unchanged since the early 1930s, is still made by collecting sawdust from local carpenters who use local Bermuda cedar in their work and macerating it in alcohol in upside-down jars to extract the oils.
About a kilometer from the center of St. George lies Fort St. Catherine, the second largest in Bermuda. It, too, is now a museum. We walked to it in the afternoon and found it completely deserted. We wondered around for a while, briefly looking at the exhibits and taking in the magnificent views of the ocean from the ramparts. The excruciating amount of detail about British naval artillery got very quickly even to me, who is occasionally capable of enjoying that sort of thing, though I must admit that I found fascinating the fact that a cannon originally commissioned in the 1880s was still in use by the Royal Navy in the 1950s.
Your second worst enemy in Bermuda is the food. When I was making our travel arrangements, I was struck by the abundance of cottages and housekeeping units relative to traditional hotels. We quickly found out why when we got there. Restaurants are outrageously expensive – a combination of the local economy and the fact that pretty much everything has to be imported. The cooking tradition is definitely pre-modern British – cook everything to death and serve it with a minimum of vegetables. There is some seafood being caught commercially in local waters, most notably wahoo, black grouper and some species of tuna, but we were not willing to pay gourmet restaurant prices, and lesser places just did not do it justice. The biggest disappointment was Bistro J. in downtown Hamilton (the capital and the only real city). It was a small place, about a dozen tables, quaint, candle-lit, good service, chalkboard menu that changed daily, and an impressive wine list, but the wahoo which both J. and I ordered was drier than a shoe sole. Pubs, of which there is a good number, offer decent food, but it’s not really distinctive and still pricey, though more reasonable than the upscale places.
The one bright spot in the otherwise bleak culinary landscape of Bermuda is the fish chowder, another island specialty. It is ubiquitous – every restaurant serves it regardless of the type of the rest of their cuisine, and it is usually excellent. Dark brown, thick with chunks of fresh and smoked fish and tender cubes of potato, it is deeply flavorful and usually served with cruets of black rum and sherry peppers (a slightly medicinal vinegary sauce) which you can use to doctor up your bowl to the extent you see fit. We’ve had several bowls over the course of the week and loved every singe spoonful.
Another meal worth mentioning was a late lunch at a place called Island Cuisine in Southampton, about 12 kilometers outside of Hamilton, where we stopped after a long meandering bike ride around the southern part of the island one day. Probably the least touristy of the places we’ve tried, it was essentially a Bermudian diner. We had delicious salt cod cakes – a humble version of our own crab cake made with potatoes and bacalao (dried salt cod soaked in milk), the most prominent evidence of Bermuda’s substantial Portuguese community.
One of the most pleasant aspects of the trip was our hotel, the Royal Palms. A little less than a kilometer outside of Hamilton proper, it was an oasis of peace and quiet in a place that was already pretty peaceful and quiet. The 1903 building was clean, comfortable, and in excellent condition, with smallish but impeccably kept rooms. The real treasure, though, were the lush, overgrown grounds filled with palm trees and rose bushes where you could happily while away an afternoon in a lawn chair with a good book. We were shocked that the hotel was almost completely empty -- we saw only one other couple regularly at breakfast, plus a smattering of business guests throughout the week, but on the whole the place was pretty much dead. It does cater to business visitors, evidently, and even political ones – one morning while having breakfast in the giant sunroom, we saw a man in business attire get into a white Chevy Impala with two large US flags flying on its front fenders.
There as a restaurant at the hotel, Ascots – reportedly one of the best on the island – but it was completely unaffordable. The bar, on the other hand, was very inviting and no more expensive than a moderately classy place in the US would be. We stopped there at the end of almost every evening to wind down over Bermuda’s signature drink – the Dark and Stormy, equal parts of black rum (Gosling’s is the locals’ favorite, though the volume producer is Bacardi, whose world headquarters are in Hamilton) and ginger beer. They were absolutely delicious. The spicy sweetness of the ginger beer which regular ginger ale lacks made all the difference.
Despite being thwarted in our attempts to spend time on the water, the week passed quickly, though by the end I felt like we were running out of things to do. If we were to go back, we would definitely rent a place with a real kitchen well outside of town, rent scooters (there are no car rentals in Bermuda) and do some research on where to get fresh fish directly from the fishermen and Bermuda onions (some are still grown on the island) from the farmers. If you can cook your own food, it’s a great place to relax.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Rant: Weddings
There was a report on NPR last week about people scaling back on lavish weddings due to the implosion of the economy. "Hallelujah," I exclaimed to myself and felt instantly better even though I was slogging North along congested Rt. 295 in pouring rain on the way to the Baltimore Airport. "If there is anything positive for our culture that will come out of the recession, this must surely be it." They were interviewing a woman who was shopping for a wedding dress at a thrift store. She really wanted a fairy-tale wedding, she said, but was worried that she would lose her job later this year, so she was sticking to a strict budget. "Attagirl," I thought. "Let's hope that this is the beginning of a major trend in our society." Then she dropped the bomb -- that budget was $15,000. 15K on a wedding when you're about to lose your job?! What would she have spent if we weren't in a recession? THAT number, it turned out, was more like $35,000. What the hell are these people thinking? And where do they get that kind of money? They blow everything they've got, or borrow it, apparently, and then can't afford a normal down payment for that McMansion they so want, so they take out an ARM with no money down, and we all know where that got us. Thirty five thousand? Even here in DC, one of the most expensive areas for real estate in the country, where house prices in desirable neighborhoods are off no more than 2-3%, $35K is 10% on a very livable condo. And they blow it on a single day of frilly tackiness, bad food, worse music, and drunken revelry they won't even remember the following day. Any wonder we're in such a mess?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
