Posted in a bus shelter on Canterbury Road near my place. I find such signs of resistance on the part of local anarchists cheering, though it seems unlikely they will persuade any actual police to quit the force.
Archive for April, 2021
Letting off steam
April 18, 2021Back at the John Clancy
April 18, 2021A week ago now with D to the Australia Ensemble @ UNSW for the first of five concerts making up its 2021 series. P, my usual companion to these, was away.
Ominous placards identified the John Clancy Auditorium as some kind of restricted premises. We could have been trying to reenter the reactor at Fukushima. Most wore masks though we were informed during onstage announcement at the start that this was no longer a strict requirement.
Under the present Covid dispensation we were allocated socially distant seating. There was no interval and there were no refreshments available. The atmosphere was a bit subdued. With such sociable and occasional rugs pulled from beneath our feet I find myself missing them more than I ever anticipated.
The program was:
Percy GRAINGER | Three Folk Songs arr. Griffiths & Young (2010 rev. 2021)
Peter SCULTHORPE | Dream Tracks (1992) (clarinet, violin, piano).
Jean FRANÇAIX | Piano Trio in D major (1986)
Carl Maria von WEBER | Clarinet Quintet in B flat major, Op.34 (1811-15)
The Sculthorpe is a piece commissioned by the Verdehr Trio, a US group (now retired) who commissioned many works for this combination. Sculthorpe doesn’t feature anywhere on their trophy list of prominent composers. There is a performance by the Verdehr available on Youtube. I felt the AE players got more of what Sculthorpe was on about, which probably isn’t so surprising, though I can’t say I really warmed to it.
Otherwise it was a perky program, seemingly devised on the basis that we would all need a bit of cheering up.
The Weber was the main work. This capped off a big night for David Griffiths, the ensemble’s clarinettist and arranger of the Grainger (itself already an arrangement). There is rather a lot of yodelling up and down that three-octave range in the outer movements which was probably very exciting when Weber wrote it and still is, especially for clarinet fans. Retrospectively it has become a bit of a musical commonplace. The string writing is mostly humdrum – it is really just a kind of pocket concertino (though Weber also wrote one of those) – a waste of a good string quartet to be honest. I enjoyed the trio the most. I also liked Griffiths’ molto ghosto pianissimi in the slow movement.
OK, let’s not be so grudging, I did enjoy it all. I’m looking forward to more, hopefully with some of the present constraints unwound over time.
The program notes rendered the possessive of Françaix as Françaix’. Can this be right?
PS: more detailed account here.
A memory
April 15, 2021
It is just over five years since my father died.
I took this picture of an abandoned railway bridge over Boorowa Creek on the last long drive we took together, on Good Friday, from Canberra to Boorowa and back.
It was a pleasant drive on a fine day and I think he enjoyed it.
He was probably sitting in the car when I took this. As is so often the way, I did not think to take a picture of him – not that he particularly welcomed photographs by then. Nor do I have any recording of his voice.
Putting the boot in
April 13, 2021*Literally*, well, nowadays not, but just now the etymological penny finally dropped when I came across the word sabotage.
Catching up
April 13, 2021On Sunday we had M, N and P*, for lunch. N and P* are my former colleagues from many years ago. M, N’s partner, is also a lawyer.
Preparations for this begin a few days beforehand, but never soon enough for D. He is always anxious about the state of the house, what I plan to provide to eat and how far those plans have advanced.
I cook a stuffed pumpkin, the only recipe I have ever mastered from Julia Childs volume 1, picked up for that purpose in 1983. It is a simple but spectacular dish. There is some other food but this is the centrepiece. It is a success: people help themselves to more.
After the remains of the pumpkin have been cleared away, conversation turns to dealing with parents’ deceased estates. M says that the best thing is to do everything you can while the parent is still alive or, even if too late for that, before any institutions in question know otherwise. If property is otherwise jointly owned with the other parent, you may be able to avoid having to apply for probate at all.
P* mentions that super, if distributed after someone’s death, is taxed at 15%. To avoid this you need to take it out when you are alive.
The conversation, I hasten to add, is not confined to such technical topics.
Once I have completed the big washing up and put everything away, the house is lovely. “We must do this more often!” I comment brightly to D. D makes some sarcastic rejoinder about my great job doing the vacuuming.
The next day, although I never really got drunk, I have a terrible hangover. I haven’t been drinking so much lately and my body seems to have lost the knack of dealing with a sustained input of alcohol.
One topic we had not touched on was P*’s health. N is closer to P* than I am and I ask N about this in a post-party email exchange. N tells me that recent blood tests have revealed that last year’s chemotherapy may not have eradicated all of P*’s cancerous cells. P* is meeting P*’s doctors this Friday to see if they recommend further treatment, most likely radiation therapy.
Opera Australia winter 2021
April 2, 2021Opera Australia has announced its winter season. It will all be over within 8 weeks (22 June to 13 August). There are 4 productions.
The 2018 video-screens production of Aida is brought back and runs throughout the season for 15 performances.
Three other operas are given shortish runs one after the other. These are: Attila (in a way just completing the aborted run from last year – 6 performances); Otello (Kupfer production originally mounted in 2003, 5 performances) and Tales of Hoffmann (new production, 6 performances).
That’s a lot of Verdi, and even more if you take into account Ernani and Traviata already this year. On the other hand, two are rarities and there is a special reason to complete the run of Attila. By my reckoning, this is a third return for this Otello (after 2003, 2008 and 2014), which probably makes it right on time.
The announcement was by broadcast email sent at about 10 am on Wednesday. For some reason I first saw this at about 4pm. By 6.30 I had made my bookings. Even by then pickings were becoming slim and I could see that there are others who target the same sorts of seats I was after. I also tipped off two friends, one of whom, not being on email, could not have known. By Thursday lunch they had also made their own careful choices. You have to move quickly if you want the cheaper seats that suit you.
D and I will be going to Attila (which he missed in 2020) and Hoffmann, and I’m taking an extra point seat for Hoffmann. Neither of us was greatly tempted so soon by the digital Aida . At first I also chose seats for Otello for us both, but recoiled from the total cost. We’ve both seen this production more than once already. Perhaps I could have slipped in a point seat for myself (D won’t sit in these) but in the end frugality prevailed.
So much for my vaunted resolve to withdraw my custom from OA on account of its savage treatment of its orchestral musicians. It turns out cutting off your nose to spite your face can be quite hard to do. I find I need a little cheering up under current conditions, a bit of opera does the trick, and OA has the market (and the big government subsidy) cornered for the time being. But give it time. I can feel the bond loosening.
Stumbling on melons 