Mostly Music
sábado, agosto 31
Stolen from Lynn (Poet and Peasant)
If music were food and drink...
Dvorak would be home made wheat bread, still warm from the oven.
Bach would be very fine tea, subtley flavored, delicately stimulating, not too sweet.
Beethoven would be a hearty meal with roast beef for the main course and a light dessert.
Haydn would be fresh strawberries with whipped topping.
Vivaldi would be a crisp green salad.
Mozart would be chocolate, not just a single kind of chocolate but all the finest chocolates: a light fluffy chocolate mousse, a warm comforting cup of creamy hot chocolate, a dish of rocky road ice cream, dark semi-sweet chocolate with its bitter edge, a rich devil's food cake, a box of the world's most expensive chocolate candies, sweet as the tenderest love, a sensual experience exquisite beyond words.
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This feels like a challenge. Each reader should add at least one name and one definition. Here are mine:
Telemann would be a seven-course meal: Polish soup, Italian pasta, French quail au gratin, filet-mignon en croute avec du ris sauvage, German cabbage, Hungarian Dobos Torta, English teas and butter cookies, Turkish coffee. Each dish masterfully prepared and elegantly arranged on the finest china.
Schoenberg would be okra.
The great Sergio Roberto de Oliveira would be umas estupidamente geladas with a picanha na pedra, shared with good friends at midnight at a table with a view of Christ with welcoming arms over the bay of Guanabara.
AN OUTING
Today we decided to entertain Mom a bit - her foot is broken and she has a cast up to her knee. So we washed the car (it was filthy) and rode all the way to distant Barra. There we went to the fish market - it is nice to see the stalls full of fresh shrimp and fish... We decided to eat at "La Plancha" a restaurant right in the middle of the market. And we asked for the monster plate of grilled seafood - yummy! Manoela loved the lobster, I gobbled on the shrimp, Hermano ate most of the octopus. Before we left, the sky suddenly turned black and rain started to pour - but of course, we had just washed the car so carefully! It is Murphy's law.
Next to the fish stalls there was a big fruit place - there I bought some exotic fruit for everyone, including a strange looking black fruit, the size of a small pear, the shape of an avocado, very rough textured skin. And it said in the poster that it "fights cholesterol". Does anyone know what it is?
segunda-feira, agosto 26
domingo, agosto 25
THE GIFTS I GOT
Tom gave me a beautiful pair of earrings, with small disks of mother-of-pearl. Very chic, and discreet, too. I love it!
Mom gave me... a fridge! And as if that were not enough, she also gave me a little ice-crusher machine! Cool! Manoela loved it especially!
Irene gave me a wonderful fresh fragrance: Giovanna baby, pink.
Many necklaces: a simple one, with little golden nuggets, with matching earrings, from Bruno and Natalie; a long, beaded one from India - from Elizete and Pedro; a small one, in gold with little blue stones, from Sérgio. A necklace/earring set shaped as an F-clef, from Ana Paula.
A big pink stone, with a miniature string bass stuck to it - Larissa, of course!
Rodrigo gave me a funny crazy candle holder; Lilian gave me a wooden back-massager.
Kim brought me his CD (fancy!).
Amador and Antonia both gave me flowers....
Leandro made a cookie-jar for me. Very nice!
A super-elaborate, flowered porcelain cake spatula ... from D'Artagnan, of course!
sábado, agosto 24
A BIG SURPRISE
Yesterday was my birthday. I knew I should have planned a party, but life has been hectic, I was tired.... so there it was, Friday approaching and no party organized. And Tom is leaving tomorrow! So this would break a long-honored tradition: every time Tom is here we have a big bash.
I thought we would have lunch at home. But by lunch time Antonia was going crazy, unable to clean the house with so many people around (Jú, Ma, Nonna, Bruno and Natalie, Hermano, Tom and I) and she kicked us out. I didn’t even have time to change, so we chose Ekko’s, a small place very close by, and I figured that I could go as I was...
But from there Tom and Nonna decided to kidnap me to the shopping mall (“just for a bit,” said Tom “so that I can buy you a gift”). And indeed he did – he bought me the nicest earrings! We went to Praia-Shopping (just around the corner) and suddenly I felt that Tom wanted to buy the whole place – very strange and out of character! I called Ma to say that she shouldn’t worry, we would be home soon. She answered “Why? Just stay there...”. And I thought that was weird, but I didn’t catch on to what was going on.
From the shopping mall my Mom suggested that I should go to her place, so that I could indulge in a massage bath (she has one of those fancy massage-bathtubs!). What a fine idea! I was dead, I needed the pampering! So there I went...
By nine, Hermano and Jú called me, to say they were picking me up, so we could go eat dinner at the Korean place. They arrived without Ma, and Jú explained that, as always, Ma was still undecided about what to wear, and that we should stop a minute by our apartment so that I could scream some sense into her head and make her come dressed as she was.... Nothing suspicious about that, since Ma frequently drives us all insane by changing her clothes 3 or 4 times before being satisfied with the way she looks (and she ALWAYS looks great!)
So we went home to grab Ma by force. But as I stepped out of the car with Hermano I was greeted by a true mob! Many, many friends, gathered there for a big surprise party, entirely planned and organized by Manoela!
She called everyone, decorated the garden with balloons, made brigadeiros, asked all women to bring food, all men to bring drinks, all musicians to bring instruments.
As I walked in, I saw: Serginho (our favorite composer!), Tom, Rodrigo and Lilian (my oldest friend, and Jú’s all-time favorite), Elizete and Pedro (my “afilhados"from Atempo), Zico and Luciana (Elizete’s brother+ girlfriend), D’Artagnan (from Abraçando o Jacaré, and our companion in “farras”) and Caio (our cellist friend), Rodrigo (Villa-Lobinhos), Bia (my niece, of course!), Bruno and Natalie (my favorite harpsichordist and wife!), Larissa (a student of UNIRIO, she is a talented bass-player and makes fabulous origami!), Ana Paula (my assistant) and Leandro (her boyfriend!). And Laura (André’s sister, my favorite in-law!) and Cláudio (her boyfriend), who I hadn’t seen for ages! Then further into the garden and Party room, and as the night went on, Chico (my friend the saxofonist), Kim (a flutist who had played in Youth Orchestras with me decades ago, and whom I had not seen since!) with his teenage daughter Ana Paula, Salomé (a basque recorder-player, and friend of Hermano’s), Renato (a guitar and mandolin player, friend of D’Artagnan’s), Marlon (ditto), Luís (Leite, best young guitarrist in the world!) and his Luciana, Cora, Ana and Jayme (my dear, dear friends), Amador (Perez, you already know his work from some past posts...), the little French guitarrist who was destroying all male hearts...
Manoela was upset because a few people could not show up:Cláudio Frydman (he was in Madrid!), Nando, Andréia, Naílson and Cláudia (they have a new baby, so no wonder they didn't show up!), Caio Senna, Ícaro, Maria Angela (she had a cold), Carol (she left a message in the answering machine), Irene (who couldn’t come, but sent a lovely gift!), Sonia and Zé with Marcel, Maki and Ronildo, Veruschka and Alcimar, the 2 Suelys, Alexandre Teixeira, Larissa the flutist, the 2 Guilhermes....
And speaking of Guilherme, Guilherme (Jú’s boyfriend) couldn’t come. But this morning I received a huge bouquet of lilies with the cutest card from him. I loved it! He must have read that classic: “How to get your mother-in-law to be always on your side”.
Ah, what a great party! The music started late, as everybody was busy eating and drinking... and ended only at 4 in the morning....
Thanks kids, from the heart!
Later I will tell you about all the wonderful presents that I got!
domingo, agosto 18
SAD, sad, sad!
Hey guys, I mean it. If you don't post something - ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!!- we are going to quit! we know you are out there: when we look at our stats we see we have an average of 17 visits a day. Oh yeah? So why don't you say hello? We feel lonely, abandoned. Sniff!!!!!
sexta-feira, agosto 16
Last week was Father's Day. This could be considered a belated hommage to mine. Except that it was translated and posted by Tom!
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How I Learned Portuguese
by Paulo Rónai
Sometimes I am asked how I learned Portuguese. I generally answer that I didn’t learn it and probably never will. But the answer evokes for me my first encounter with the language in which, through circumstances which were completely unforeseeable, I came to express myself with ease and even to think.
At that time I was teaching Latin and Italian in a high school in Budapest. Once a week I would go to a café where my linguist friends met. One of them was studying Sogdian, another was preparing an essay on pronouns in Vogish, a third had just published two thick volumes of stories in Tcheremissian. They were only interested in exoitc languages, had a true passion for difficult tongues, and despised my modest excursions in the Neo-Latin domain.
“But do you actually know Spanish?” I asked one of them, who was an expert in Finno-Ugric linguistics, one day.
“Come on!” he answered.
“But do you?” I insisted.
“I haven’t tried it yet”, he answered haughtily, as if it were something like bicycling or horse-back riding.
I fell silent, humiliated. Really, Spanish could not compare with any of those fabulous dialects. And what was worse, it was spoken by an excessive number of people, and my friends only appreciated dead languages, or if not dead, spoken by a half dozen illiterate fishermen.
And so I couldn’t find it in myself to tell them that I had begun to learn Portuguese – the more so as Portuguese seemed to me, as a beginner, too easy: like the beginning of a romance where everything is going smoothly, and nothing points toward subsequent problems.
Do you want to read the rest? Click here.
DA SÉRIE: POR QUE ME UFANO DO MEU PAÍS
CAMARGO GUARNIERI
Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3; Abertura Concertante
São Paulo Symphony Orchestra
Conductor:John Neschling
BIS- 1220(CD)
No Reference Recording
This disc must be counted among the most interesting and important releases of the year. Brazilian composer Camargo Guarnieri (his real first name was Mozart, and he had three brothers: Bellini, Rossini, and Verdi) appears from time to time on pops programs, represented by some cute little Brazilian dance miniature, but he was in truth a major composer, and a symphonist of extraordinary mastery and confidence. While remaining true to his nationalist roots, his style owes nothing to that of Villa-Lobos, being far more disciplined and neo-classical in outlook. He shares something of the motoric drive and enthusiasm for counterpoint of Honegger, the folk-inspired melodic character of Bartók, and the plain-spoken directness of Copland. The result sounds like no one else and makes for some very satisfying listening.
All of the works here date from the period 1945-52 and show the composer working at a high level of inspiration. The Second Symphony shares its title, Uirapuru [a Brazilian bird] with the Villa-Lobos tone poem of the same name, and like the Third Symphony features rhythmically violent and virtuosic outer movements surrounding a longer central slow movement. In the Third Symphony the middle movement has a breezy scherzo at its center. These structural concerns greatly enhance the clarity of thought that characterizes all of this music. Listen, for instance, to how marvelously apt the first movement of the Third Symphony's slow introduction sounds when it reappears as the same movement's coda. Guarnieri clearly knows exactly where his music is going and delights in taking the listener along with him.
For all that, this isn't "easy" music. There's a nicely abrasive level of dissonance that when combined with highly contrasted melodic shapes and textures keeps each work's thematic invention from sounding facile or cheap. The rhythmic intricacies of the symphonies' outer movements make great demands on the orchestra, and in this respect the work of the São Paulo orchestra under conductor John Neschling is beyond praise. They attack these pieces with incredible energy and unbridled ferocity, to the extent that their playing in and of itself becomes a joy to hear. The orchestra also sports some excellent wind players, particularly flutes, oboes, and English horn, who distinguish themselves in the slow movements of both symphonies. BIS captures the whole affair in stunning recorded sound, completing a totally self-recommending package. If this disc isn't the first in a complete Guarnieri orchestral music series, it will be a tragedy. What a brilliant, unexpected pleasure!
--David Hurwitz
sexta-feira, agosto 9
MEETING OUR FAIRY
Do you remember when you were a child, and read about Fairy Godmothers? Those amazing creatures that knew when anything - good or bad - happened, and came to your side, offering solace when your heart was sunken? Those wonderful phantastic beings that apperead out of the blue when you needed a new dress, or a new point-of-view on life?
I remember well. I also remember that moment of disappointment when I finally realized that they did not exist, that I would never have my own guardian angel, or my own Fairy Godmother.
But then, just last year, much to my surprise, I found out they did exist! Our own Fairy Godmother appeared out of the shadows to give our blog a new dress; she called me just when I needed a friendly word of advice; she knew (magically!!!) everything that was going on with my family. A true miracle...
She was always there, and yet I had never seen her face. But this changed on Wednesday: our Fairy Godmother invited us to have dinner with her! Ah, I won't tell you in detail about all the fabulous food that her valiant co-Angel Selma prepared for us, because it would be torture for you to know about the delicious chicken, the yummy ribs, the tantallizing ice-cream desert. And I will not make you envious by telling you how we departed from there carrying bags of gifts (ah, the cupuaçu chocolates.....the beautiful CDs... And we had good company! Cora, my super sister. And a nice extra: the reporter Mosca, with his princess Luiza. By the way, ladies: he is much younger than you think. And as my own children would say, a true cat (for that, sorry, but you have to know Portuguese)
