your favorite Tolkien

I missed this when it was published a year ago, but in a list of File 770's best articles of the last year I found Cat Eldridge surveying a bunch of authors on the question, "What's Your Favorite Tolkien?"

Most of them picked either The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, indeed some hadn't read anything else by him, and a few who picked one of those two didn't like the other. A few went for the tale of Beren and Lúthien or The Children of Húrin.

The respondent who's closest to my own views is Elizabeth Hand, who picked The Lord of the Rings because "it imprinted on me at such an early age ... it was still a cult novel, and you had a real sense that you were in some secret, marvelous group of insiders who had visited a place not everyone knew about." Sort of, for me: I'm Hand's age and also imprinted on it from an early age in the 1960's. But I didn't feel part of a group of insiders; I felt terribly alone and clutched the book by myself. From my first reading at eleven, I never found anybody else who'd read Tolkien's work and wanted to talk about it until I was seventeen.* Six years, with no expectation that the durance will end, is a long time when you're that young. As a result, when I did finally find the Tolkien fans - remember that this was long before the public internet - I wanted never to leave, and I never have. Half of what makes up my life has been built around this.

As a result of that intense interest, I have, like Hand, been drawn to Tolkien's other works. She particularly notes the "History of Middle-earth" series, and says "I'm continually so amazed by what this one man came up with, the intensity and single mindedness of his obsession. And I get sucked into it all over again." And that is quite close to what I feel. Not the intensity so much as the sheer boundless creativity of one mind, its ability to deploy the illusion of reality so profoundly.

But one reason to focus on The Lord of the Rings is that it's so large. It'd probably be my choice of desert island book. But word for word, because it's quite short, my favorite Tolkien is something that nobody on the list mentioned: Smith of Wootton Major. I once wrote an article explaining why I thought it was a perfect fairy-story: partly because of what the author chose to leave out.

*I identified with a line about Gollum in The Hobbit (my introduction to Tolkien, and also a favorite): he "always spoke to himself through never having anyone else to speak to." That sums up my childhood relation to peers in a nutshell.

things I learned

from reading the Feb. 2 New Yorker

1. Nancy Kerrigan is now 56 and still skating.

2. Another reason to be happy I'm married: dating apps would not be for me. The sort of things they focus on have nothing to do with what I looked for in a partner.

3. Despite what they tell you about protest marches sparking political change, they don't amount to much. Disorganized movements that allow local groups to foster independent home-grown leadership are the way to go, despite the groups often developing contradictory principles. The article doesn't explain how it succeeds despite that.

4. Japan's leading political party has ties to the Moonies. That was why Shinzo Abe was assassinated: the assailant was angry because his mother had given all the family's money to the Moonies. And he blamed Abe ... how does that follow?

5. Research into chemicals in breast milk is corrupt and unreliable.

6. Tucker Carlson is evil. Sorry, I already knew that.

7. Maybe now I'll remember who David Foster Wallace is. I'd vaguely heard of him, but if you'd presented the name without context I'd have drawn a blank.

8. I'm missing something by never having heard Morton Feldman's music performed live, only on records.

9. Tolkien's "Ent" is a favorite word for crossword-puzzle makers. It keeps showing up.

Thing I learned from another article on the same subject as a New Yorker article:

1. The Easter Island statues should be called "statues." The word moai is probably inauthentic.

The time it takes to put out a weekly magazine is long enough, and the speed of events is fast enough, that it seems quaint that the issue's current events piece is about Greenland. Now we're talking about the murder of Alex Pretti and the possibly game-changing effect of all those videos on the narrative. My thought on that is, "Once, there was just Abraham Zapruder."

concert review: San Francisco Symphony

Jaap van Zweden, formerly of the NY Phil, conducted SFS's opening gala this year and is returning twice (this is his second of the three), making him and James Gaffigan, who's also conducting three programs, the closest things to a regular conductor that this director-less (and direction-less) orchestra has this season.

This week he was joined by the storied pianist Emanuel Ax for Mozart's Concerto No. 25, K. 503. Ax played lovely little sheens of notes, particularly shining in his delicate renditions of Mozart's curling phrases, and in some striking tone colors in the perkier moments of the finale. The orchestra was a bit more stolid. As with most other C Major orchestral works of this era, this concerto is heavy on the trumpets and the horns. Combine that with the stolidity and you get some rather dull and routine Mozart. But Ax made a good impression. He didn't play an encore, instead grabbing concertmaster Sasha Barantschik by the hand to drag him (and by courtesy the rest of the orchestra) offstage after the fourth curtain call. I've seen conductors make that move before, but never a soloist.

If Mozart was mixed, Bruckner's Seventh Symphony came out pretty well. Conducting Bruckner with skill means focusing on shaping those big paragraphs, and van Zweden had a good handle on that and on inserting the proper punctuation marks. Fairly brisk but not hurried in tempo, the music made coherent sense, though it could sometimes be less than seamless in flow. Van Zweden's only real quirk was a tendency to drop the volume suddenly in order to build it up afterwards. Balance was mostly good, though the brass in full cry would drown everybody else out even if they were all playing. The first two movements of the Seventh have more lush melodies for strings than any other Bruckner symphony, and these came out with full weight that eschewed opulence.

Most of my SFS concerts this season have been pretty packed, but for this one, though the main floor and terraces were full, the balconies were almost empty.

Usually I leave home for an SFS concert about 3.30, but I had a phone call from my doctor scheduled for 4 pm that couldn't be moved. So I was an hour later and the traffic was that much heavier. I'm driving all the way in instead of taking public transit for the last leg these days, parking in the Civic Center underground garage, and I arrived in time to have dinner at my favorite nearby Chinese place, at the cost of missing the pre-concert lecture.

say it right

Daniel Craig schools Stephen Colbert on how to pronounce his name. (It's "Craig" not "Cregg". "Cregg" is C.J. from The West Wing.)

Now, if only some guest would teach Colbert how to pronounce "Gollum" ...

happy Mozart

In lighter news, yesterday was Wolfgang Mozart's 270th birthday anniversary. Somehow this is a significant number, or more likely any number is an excuse to play Mozart, so the SF Symphony is going to be playing a lot of his music over the next few weeks. Meanwhile the local classical radio station, KDFC, celebrated the birthday itself by playing some music surrounding Mozart. Such as a piano variations on a Mozart aria by Carl Czerny, a composer of the next generation not noted for scintillating genius. And what they claimed was the best-known work of Wolfgang's father Leopold, the "Toy Symphony." What an insult to Leopold, who did claim the Toy Symphony at one point but is no longer considered a likely author, any more than various Haydn brothers to whom it's also been attributed. Besides, nobody should really want to take credit for this thoroughly uninspired work. Even lesser Mozarts deserve better than that.

Incidentally, it's properly pronounced in English as "mote zart," with a T in it, an approximation of the German pronunciation. I often hear non-musicians saying "moe's art," which is understandable but not au courant.

ahem

"FEMA told not to use the word 'ice' in storm mesaging to avoid confusion and online mockery" - CNN.

Yeah, because then this will happen:

concert review: Symphony San Jose

I don't often get to SSJ, despite its geographic convenience, but I wanted this one because they were playing Schumann's Fourth Symphony. Besides being my favorite Schumann, it's been cursed for the SSJ. George Cleve was going to lead it in 2015, but he canceled due to what proved to be his final illness, and his replacement substituted another Schumann symphony. Then in 2020 they scheduled it for a concert which disappeared into the pandemic.

But today it finally got played, under the baton of François López-Ferrer. And it was worth the trouble to come: a firm, energetic, and zippy performance, especially notable for not letting the slow interlude sections get drippy. Concertmaster Sam Weiser was especially good in the soft middle section of the Romanze movement.

This symphony exists in two forms; Schumann originally wrote it just after his light First "Spring" Symphony, and that version bears the same air, but he set it aside and reworked it ten years later. Though the second version is more often played, it's gotten a lot of criticism for being clotted and murky, but López-Ferrer likes it better this way (as do I), calling it heavier and deeper. It's in D Minor, and ought to sound that way; it's also built on the same template as Beethoven's Fifth, and it ought to sound that way too.

Similarly, or maybe not so similarly, there are two entirely different works known as Schubert's Rosamunde Overture, both of them repurposed from other operas, both of which Schubert may have used for different performances of Rosamunde. Or maybe not; it isn't clear. Anyway, López-Ferrer wasn't sure which one SSJ had until he got here. We heard the better-known one, the one from Die Zauberharfe, and maybe it ought to be called that. It was a crisp but rather blatty rendition.

Sibelius's Violin Concerto also comes in two versions, but the revised one is always the one that's played. Despite gorgeous tone from soloist Geneva Lewis, matching her gossamer sky-blue dress, it was a dull and flaccid performance under the baton, even the finale which is supposed to be jaunty. This is what we had to sit through to get to the Schumann.

two and a half concerts

San Francisco Symphony, Thursday
What do you do if you're conducting Beethoven's Fifth, the best-known symphony ever written? John Storgårds' answer is, lead it as if it's never been played before. The crispness, the intensity, and the variations in tempo and flow made this an exciting, even riveting, performance of the old masterworks. It helps to remember that, familiar as it now is, it's the most startling and revolutionary symphony ever written, which is what made it so iconic in the first place.
Seong-Jin Cho was probably badly cast as soloist in Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1. He's good with lyrical music, but this is a clangy and rigid concerto. Cho vamped ineffectively all over the keyboard while the string orchestra got to do the lyrical part. In the back, standing up whenever he was playing, was SFS principal trumpet Mark Inouye in the second soloist part. He was billed as a soloist and got to share an encore with Cho, but he came out with the orchestra as well as was seated with them.
And the US premiere of The Rapids of Life by 40-year-old Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen. This is perhaps the first piece of music ever written depicting the experience of giving birth: cascading down rapids is what the composer describes her rather quick labor as resembling. The comparison was not obvious from the music, which was ten minutes of fast-moving soundscape.

Sarah Cahill, Friday
Brief (one set, 70 minutes) piano recital featuring elegies and homages. Designed by the performer to bring us together in a time of loss and oppression. (The news out of the occupied territory that was formerly the state of Minnesota keeps getting worse.) I didn't attend this concert up in the City in person, but bought a livestream ticket; Old First's technicians have improved greatly since I last tried this during the pandemic. Cahill specializes in newer music, and there were pieces by the likes of Maggi Payne (written mostly for the foot pedals) and Sam Adams; also a Fugue to David Tudor by Lou Harrison that was twelve-tone (why, Lou, why?). But the bulk of the program, with each movement outweighing any other piece on the program, was Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin, which besides evoking Couperin's baroque elegance is in memory of a series of Ravel's friends who were killed in WW1.

California Symphony, Saturday
This concert was about the winds. Began with excerpts from Mozart's Don Giovanni arranged for the standard wind ensemble of the time (2 each of oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn), which is what they did in those days instead of playing it on the radio. Concluded with Schubert's Great C Major Symphony. Conductor Donato Cabrera pointed out that, unusually for the time, nearly all the themes are introduced by the winds, so he had the woodwind section seated in front around him (though the horns, which are just as important, stayed in back with the brass). This both magnified the sound of the winds and emphasized the parts where only the strings were playing. Pretty lively but not revelatory performance.
And the Cello Concerto by Friedrich Gulda, best-known as a pianist (he was Martha Argerich's teacher), with Nathan Chan as soloist, written in 1980 and one of the strangest and goofiest pieces of music I've ever heard. The orchestra was winds and a few brass, plus a drum kit, a bass player, and a guitarist who was mostly on acoustic but switched to an electric guitar for one section where those three played jazz/rock to alternate with the more sedate winds while the solo cello tried to keep up. Other sections included a stately minuet where the drummer switched to tambourine, and a raucous marching-band finale. Amused the audience no end.

world according to cat on top

Tybalt has different habits for the two of us. For one thing, he doesn't bug me when I'm sleeping, but he does bug B. As a result, we lock him out of the bedroom at night. This means that if I'm up and about, he pays me even more attention than he would otherwise.

He likes to climb up onto my shoulders and perch around the back of my neck for a while. (Usually he puts his front paws up on my chest, and I lift him up.) That way he can lick my hair. But he does this only when I'm standing; if I sit down he jumps off. When I'm working at the computer, he likes to prowl around my desk and knock things off. Like the trackball. If he's too annoying, I pick him up. Usually he climbs off me onto the table behind, then jumps down to the floor and back up on the desk again.

But sometimes when I pick him up, he will settle down and cuddle on my chest. He was doing that last night while I was registering for a ticket, and it wanted to send a confirmation code to my cell phone. Blast; the phone was in another room. So I got up, still holding Tybalt to my chest. He was quite startled at this, and climbed up onto his usual position on my shoulders. Then he jumped down when I sat down at the computer again.

fighting minor frustrations

1. Our tv set has been misbehaving. It was refusing to connect to the wifi on which we get streaming channels like Netflix, although our wifi is otherwise working fine. B., who has 95% of the tv set usage in the household, thinks it may be a lemon. Nevertheless I contacted AT&T, our ISP and cable provider (some people will say AT&T doesn't provide tv service, but it does) to fix it. And eventually a technician came by who fixed the problem. (Mostly: another streaming channel we just subscribed to isn't working right.) "What did you do?" I asked. He didn't really know. "Magic hands," he suggested, holding them up, and indeed he even looked rather like Ben Carson.
An earlier interaction on the phone had produced a suggestion that our router (modem) and receiver (the box that attaches to the tv) needed to be replaced. I doubted this would fix the problem, but I said OK and they shipped the boxes. I was immediately stuck when the instructions for the router showed you where to plug in the coaxial cable, but the actual router contained no such plug. So forget that. I asked Mr Magic Hands what to do with them, since we'd received conflicting instructions on whether to return or discard the old ones. He said return them, which meant take them in to a UPS store, which would ship them without charge to me.
So I took them in. They took one of the two boxes but refused to accept the other one, for reasons unclear. I refused to take it back. I said my job was to take them in to a UPS store; shipping was their responsibility. So I just left it there and walked out.
Then I called AT&T and reported this, and they promised not to charge me for failure to return equipment.

2. For a long time, one of my regular lunches has been a can of menudo soup supplemented with albóndigas, Mexican meatballs, which are lighter and tastier than Anglo meatballs. (They contain rice as binder.) I would defrost a handful from a bag of frozen albóndigas that I'd buy at Smart & Final.
But alas, it seems that Smart & Final no longer carries these. I've checked quite a few large Mexican groceries - a species quite common in this area - and none of them carry albóndigas in any form other than canned albóndiga soup, which is not what I want.
So I found a recipe online and made my own. They're not a match for the ones I used to buy, but good enough.