Owning the day

Published by peter on 2023-12-28 in Consumer Behaviour and Transitions. Closed

Australian chef and restaurateur Bill Granger (1969-2023) died on Christmas Day of cancer. Although he did not invent avocado on toast, he certainly popularized the breakfast dish through his restaurants in Sydney, London and elsewhere. In an interview with the AFR earlier this year, he is reported to have said:

I grew up in Melbourne, and when I moved to Sydney, I was shocked by its morning life. People were on the beach, walking through the park, owning the day. It felt very Australian, very optimistic. I think avocado on toast is optimistic.”

Transcendent music

Published by peter on 2023-12-11 in Concert Concats, Concerts, Jazz, Minimalism and Music. Closed

Some years ago, I compiled a list of purposes that may motivate composers, performers or listeners of music, under the heading What is music for?

An objective that may motivate many performers is that of reaching a transcendent state, as the Russian-Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg, describes here. His blog post was written after he had performed all five Beethoven Piano Concertos with the Brussels Philharmonic (under Thierry Fischer) across three evenings, in February 2020 (blog entry of 18 February 2020):

The high point for me was No. 4, during which I experienced something which until now I’ve only felt while playing Russian music: a kind of floating, when your brain disengages or splits in two. One (small) part is alert and following the performance, and perhaps directs the musical flow a little bit, the other (much larger) part is completely sunk into the music, experiencing it in a kind of visceral, instinctive way which precludes logical thinking and seems wired directly to your deepest feelings, without any buffers or defenses. After that concerto I was drained, bewildered, exhilarated – a complete mess. But what an unforgettable night.”

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Concert Concat 2

Published by peter on 2023-11-16 in Concats, Concert Concats, Concerts and Music. Closed

This post is one in a sequence which lists live music I have heard, as best my memory allows, from the Pandemic onwards. I will update this as time permits. In some cases, I am also motivated to write about what I heard.

Other posts in this collection can be found here.

  • Ariel Lanyi – piano recital at the Wigmore Hall, London, 27 December 2023. The program was:
    • Beethoven: Sonata #2 in A, Op 2 No 2 (1794-5)
    • Franck: Prelude, Aria et Final (1887)
    • R. Schumann: Etudes Symphoniques Op 13 (with posthumous etudes) (1834-7)

    A very refined performance to a house about 3/4 full. Many people seemed to know each other. I was not able to stay for the Schumann.

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Acknowledgments of Country

Published by peter on 2023-10-04 in Anthropology, Culture, Globalization, Places and Rhetoric. Closed

It has become commonplace in the last two decades for public meetings or gatherings in Australia or of Australians elsewhere in the world to open with an Acknowledgment of Country statement. This is a statement thanking the traditional indigenous community who inhabited the land on which the meeting is being held, and (usually) expressing respect to the traditional elders, past, present and emerging, of that community. Last night, for instance, a panel discussion held at King’s College London on the topic of the upcoming Voice Referendum began with such statements from several of the invited speakers acknowledging traditional custodians of parts of Australia where where they had grown up or studied. I have also witnessed such statements at private meetings and internal organizational meetings in Australia, even when these events were held online.
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The personality of Robert Mugabe

Published by peter on 2023-07-20 in History, Oratory, Politics and Rhetoric. Closed

I have remarked before that Robert Mugabe was one of the best orators I have ever heard. I am not alone in having been impressed. Below is an assessment of Mugabe’s oratory and personality, by Zimbabwean journalist Jan Raath, published in The Times (London), 12 November 2017, under the headline, “Forty years ago, I too was beguiled by Robert Mugabe, the young guerrilla leader”.

I will treasure the events of yesterday afternoon for the rest of my life. I had driven to the Harare international conference centre to hear a rather dry debate on the impeachment of Robert Mugabe, the man I have been covering for this newspaper since 1975.
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Recent Reading 20

Published by peter on 2023-07-15 in Books, Concats and Recent Reading. Closed

The latest in a sequence of lists of recently-read books, listed in reverse chronological order.

  • Susan Tomes [2014]: Women and the Piano: A History in 50 Lives. Yale University Press. A fascinating series of accounts of women pianists, mostly classical musicians. Of course, there are hundreds or even thousands of others, too many to include in a single book, for example, Australian swing-band leader of the 1930s and 1940s, Miss Dot Crowe.
  • Patricia Boccadoro [2023]: Rudolf Nureyev: As I remember him. The Book Guild.
  • Gershom Scholem [2012]: Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship. New York Review Books Classics. Lee Sigel (Introduction) and Harry Zohn (Translator). This is a fascinating account of the profound friendship Scholem had with Walter Benjamin, when both were in the teens/twenties. The account is detailed but mainly about the content of their reading and discussions, only rarely touching on personal topics. I am not sure if this omission is due to them not ever talking very much about personal matters at the time or the author’s later reticence when writing the book. What comes across very strongly is how exciting it was to be a young Jewish adult interested in ideas in Germany between 1900 and 1930.

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Mountains of memory

Published by peter on 2022-05-30 in Africa and Places. 0 Comments

Posting some time ago from Tyalgum, in the shade of Mount Warning, led me to think of the mountains that figured in my life. Herewith a list:

  • Ashby Hill
  • Black Mountain/Galambary
  • Mount Barney
  • Clarence Peak
  • Mount Coot-tha
  • Mount Diablo
  • Glass House Mountains
  • Montjuïc
  • The Kopje
  • Mount Kosciuszko
  • Mount Lindesay
  • Mount Nardi
  • Mount Nyangani
  • Montparnasse
  • Mount Rainier
  • Soracte
  • Khan Tengri
  • Mount Tibrogargan
  • Mont Valerian
  • Mount Warning

Concert Halls

Published by peter on 2022-04-16 in Concats, Concerts and Music. Closed

Herewith a list of concert halls and music performance venues in which I have been fortunate to experience musical performances (excluding working Churches).

  • The Barbican Concert Hall, London
  • Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
  • Brisbane City Hall, Brisbane
  • Cadogan Hall, London
  • Casino Civic Hall, Casino, NSW
  • City Recital Hall, Sydney
  • Performance Space, College Building, City University of London, UK
  • Sir John Clancy Auditorium, University of New South Wales, Sydney
  • Ballroom, Corinthia Hotel, London
  • Salle de Flagey, Brussels
  • Salle Gaveau, Paris
  • Hamburgische Staatsoper, Hamburg
  • Hamer Concert Hall, Melbourne
  • Ipswich Civic Hall, Ipswich, Queensland
  • King’s Place, London
  • Leggate Theatre, University of Liverpool, Liverpool
  • Leighton House, Holland Park, London
  • City Hall, Lismore, NSW
  • Llewellyn Hall, Canberra School of Music, Canberra, ACT
  • LSO St Luke’s, London
  • Auditorium, Maison de la Radio et de la Musique, Paris
  • Matthäuskirche, Munich, Germany
  • Melba Hall, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, Melbourne
  • Milton Court Concert Hall, Guildhall School of Music, London
  • Old Museum Concert Hall, Brisbane
  • Auditorium, St Joseph’s Nudgee College, Nudgee, Brisbane
  • Pamoja Concert Hall, Sevenoaks School, Sevenoaks, Kent UK
  • Purcell Room, South Bank Centre, London
  • Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank Centre, London
  • Regent Hall (Salvation Army Centre), Oxford Street, London
  • Duke’s Hall, Royal Academy of Music, London
  • Royal Albert Hall, London
  • Elgar Room, Royal Albert Hall, London
  • Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall, Royal College of Music, London
  • Performance Hall, Royal College of Music, London
  • Royal Festival Hall, South Bank Centre, London
  • Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool
  • Concert Hall, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester
  • Golden Concert Room, St George’s Hall, Liverpool
  • Recital Hall, Seoul Arts Centre, Seoul
  • Seymour Centre, University of Sydney, Sydney
  • State Theatre, Sydney
  • Steinway Hall, London
  • Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
  • Opera Theatre, Sydney Opera House
  • Sydney Town Hall, Sydney
  • Tanglewood, MA
  • Theatre des Champs Elysees, Paris
  • Tyalgum Literary Institute Hall, Tyalgum, NSW
  • Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Sydney
  • West Road Concert Hall, Department of Music, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
  • Wigmore Hall, London

Ambulant cemeteries

Published by peter on 2022-04-02 in Communism, Heroes, History and Obituaries. Closed

They are the ambulant cemeteries of their murdered friends; they carry their shrouds as their banner.”

Words of Manes Sperber from Et le Buisson devint Cendre (Paris, 1949), cited by Arthur Koestler in his essay in The God That Failed (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1950), page 64.