Saturday, March 20, 2004
12 days to NS and counting…
That idiot brother of mine took my swimming goggles by accident one Wednesday for his swimming session (as a CCA), and of all things lost it at the swimming pool. I’m grousing about it because that pair of goggles has degree vision. Now I’ll have to spend money again and buy another pair, and I have to go down to the sports shop and stay there and try on the goggles until I find one that fits my vision.
It happens that my father has a voucher from his signing-up of the Singapore Biathlon (although with the state of his cough I doubt that he will go for the event tomorrow morning), and we decide to head down to the Royal Sporting House outlet at Suntec City to buy the goggles and a pair of swimming trunks for my brother.
Apparently now the goggles don’t come as a pair; the lenses are sold individually with different degrees. For example, if I have a degree of 700, I have to pick the one labelled -7.00. Yet I am told, I should take something at least 0.5 lesser than my current vision. After choosing the lenses that you want, you take the last box which contains the strap, and either you go home and DIY or you ask the store to do it for you. At least now Speedo has the sense to package their goggles with degrees in this way. Each person’s eyesight requires a custom fit.
I can’t wait to go to the Esplanade library again. I’ve finished watching Waldbuhne 1995 with Sir Simon Rattle conducting, and I’ve fallen in love with Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess”. I hope to find the DVD to “Porgy and Bess” conducted by Rattle himself, and probably with the same soloists as well. Damn shit, they don’t have it.
Nevertheless I borrow Waldbuhne 2000 “Rhythm and Dance”. Kent Nagano’s programme is somewhat similar to Rattle’s five years down the road, but somewhat after listening later I find that some of Nagano’s interpretations are not really to my favour. He takes the Overture to “Candide” a bit too slowly, and looses some of the excitement. In my opinion, the best version is still the one played by the New York Philharmonic and conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Lenny can be exciting with his tempos. His conducting of the fourth movement of Shos’ Fifth Symphony is fast and furious – the most exciting version of all. However, I think his and Glenn Gould’s performance of Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 sucks, because the tempo is too slow – and I mean much slower than what Brahms originally wanted.
Anyway back to Nagano… he takes Berliner Luft too slowly. Okay, he didn’t conduct them, but started them off… the tempo he had in mind is a little too slow to bring out the gaiety of the piece. I like Rattle’s and Mehta’s versions – in the words of Goldilocks, they’re “just right”.
Another disc I borrow is Andre Previn’s “A Streetcar Named Desire”. I first got acquainted with it while watching a DVD documentary (also from the same library) about Previn himself, titled “The Kindness of Strangers”. There were footages of the preparations for, and the actual performance of, his first opera, commissioned by the San Francisco Opera. I haven’t really finished watching it, but from the beginning it sounds good. Contemporary music, sometimes almost like an action movie track (thanks to Previn’s days working in Hollywood). It’s still tonal. The atonality doesn’t go overboard. I don’t understand why there are people who criticise Previn over his compositions, stereotyping him because he has once been a film score composer, his music was, well, “cheap” and “cliché”, as what they accuse film music of being. Honestly I think all those film writing effects come to good use in music for the theatre, like this opera.
The last disc I borrow is “Titus”, but I haven’t had time to watch it yet.
* * *
The urge to buy the recording of Korngold’s opera “Die tote Stadt” is overpowering: I don’t care, I’m going down to the HMV at Heeren to buy it. Again, it was the Previn documentary that brought me to “Die tote Stadt”. It was the chapter on Previn’s love life… the music in the background was “Marietta’s Aria”, sung tenderly and touchingly by Kiri Te Kanawa. It was so beautiful that it wanted to make me cry. Last Thursday (18/3/2004) when I was at HMV, I chanced upon a Naxos recording of the opera, but I didn’t consider buying it then because I had my sights on Shos 10. Today, I’m going back to get it, by hook or by crook.
To hell that the CD case was cracked… when I opened it up in the bus on the way home there was a horrible noise, and a plastic piece flew up and nearly went into my eye. It was a double-disc recording; the second flap dislodged and refused to go back into its hinges again. I made a note to transfer the discs and the programme notes into my portable CD carrier case.
Anyway I buy CDs for the music, who cares about what happens to the cover?
* * *
I can’t believe I simply stayed at the fountain at the Heeren and stared at it transfixed for a full fifteen minutes.
Perhaps it was the lights (blue, red, orange, white, which flashed in permutations and combinations and in various sequences). Perhaps it was sound of the water jets, and the programme they follow as to when to spout water and when to stop. Perhaps it was the excitement of waiting for all the white lights inside the fountain to glow and suddenly, WHOOSH, the centre spout shoots a spray of water five-storeys high.
Of course the last feature captivated a lot of people in the shopping mall. ¶ 3/20/2004 11:47:00 am
That idiot brother of mine took my swimming goggles by accident one Wednesday for his swimming session (as a CCA), and of all things lost it at the swimming pool. I’m grousing about it because that pair of goggles has degree vision. Now I’ll have to spend money again and buy another pair, and I have to go down to the sports shop and stay there and try on the goggles until I find one that fits my vision.
It happens that my father has a voucher from his signing-up of the Singapore Biathlon (although with the state of his cough I doubt that he will go for the event tomorrow morning), and we decide to head down to the Royal Sporting House outlet at Suntec City to buy the goggles and a pair of swimming trunks for my brother.
Apparently now the goggles don’t come as a pair; the lenses are sold individually with different degrees. For example, if I have a degree of 700, I have to pick the one labelled -7.00. Yet I am told, I should take something at least 0.5 lesser than my current vision. After choosing the lenses that you want, you take the last box which contains the strap, and either you go home and DIY or you ask the store to do it for you. At least now Speedo has the sense to package their goggles with degrees in this way. Each person’s eyesight requires a custom fit.
I can’t wait to go to the Esplanade library again. I’ve finished watching Waldbuhne 1995 with Sir Simon Rattle conducting, and I’ve fallen in love with Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess”. I hope to find the DVD to “Porgy and Bess” conducted by Rattle himself, and probably with the same soloists as well. Damn shit, they don’t have it.
Nevertheless I borrow Waldbuhne 2000 “Rhythm and Dance”. Kent Nagano’s programme is somewhat similar to Rattle’s five years down the road, but somewhat after listening later I find that some of Nagano’s interpretations are not really to my favour. He takes the Overture to “Candide” a bit too slowly, and looses some of the excitement. In my opinion, the best version is still the one played by the New York Philharmonic and conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Lenny can be exciting with his tempos. His conducting of the fourth movement of Shos’ Fifth Symphony is fast and furious – the most exciting version of all. However, I think his and Glenn Gould’s performance of Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 sucks, because the tempo is too slow – and I mean much slower than what Brahms originally wanted.
Anyway back to Nagano… he takes Berliner Luft too slowly. Okay, he didn’t conduct them, but started them off… the tempo he had in mind is a little too slow to bring out the gaiety of the piece. I like Rattle’s and Mehta’s versions – in the words of Goldilocks, they’re “just right”.
Another disc I borrow is Andre Previn’s “A Streetcar Named Desire”. I first got acquainted with it while watching a DVD documentary (also from the same library) about Previn himself, titled “The Kindness of Strangers”. There were footages of the preparations for, and the actual performance of, his first opera, commissioned by the San Francisco Opera. I haven’t really finished watching it, but from the beginning it sounds good. Contemporary music, sometimes almost like an action movie track (thanks to Previn’s days working in Hollywood). It’s still tonal. The atonality doesn’t go overboard. I don’t understand why there are people who criticise Previn over his compositions, stereotyping him because he has once been a film score composer, his music was, well, “cheap” and “cliché”, as what they accuse film music of being. Honestly I think all those film writing effects come to good use in music for the theatre, like this opera.
The last disc I borrow is “Titus”, but I haven’t had time to watch it yet.
* * *
The urge to buy the recording of Korngold’s opera “Die tote Stadt” is overpowering: I don’t care, I’m going down to the HMV at Heeren to buy it. Again, it was the Previn documentary that brought me to “Die tote Stadt”. It was the chapter on Previn’s love life… the music in the background was “Marietta’s Aria”, sung tenderly and touchingly by Kiri Te Kanawa. It was so beautiful that it wanted to make me cry. Last Thursday (18/3/2004) when I was at HMV, I chanced upon a Naxos recording of the opera, but I didn’t consider buying it then because I had my sights on Shos 10. Today, I’m going back to get it, by hook or by crook.
To hell that the CD case was cracked… when I opened it up in the bus on the way home there was a horrible noise, and a plastic piece flew up and nearly went into my eye. It was a double-disc recording; the second flap dislodged and refused to go back into its hinges again. I made a note to transfer the discs and the programme notes into my portable CD carrier case.
Anyway I buy CDs for the music, who cares about what happens to the cover?
* * *
I can’t believe I simply stayed at the fountain at the Heeren and stared at it transfixed for a full fifteen minutes.
Perhaps it was the lights (blue, red, orange, white, which flashed in permutations and combinations and in various sequences). Perhaps it was sound of the water jets, and the programme they follow as to when to spout water and when to stop. Perhaps it was the excitement of waiting for all the white lights inside the fountain to glow and suddenly, WHOOSH, the centre spout shoots a spray of water five-storeys high.
Of course the last feature captivated a lot of people in the shopping mall. ¶ 3/20/2004 11:47:00 am
