Tales #18-22

Tuesday

Sorry it's been so long since I updated this blog!
Today was a great day! After theater class in the morning (where we walked around in the cold for 3 hours!), we made burritos, which were probably the best burritos ever made. Seriously.
After that, I went to my audition for the City of London Choir. It only lasted 5 minutes, and was actually not too bad. The sight reading was really hard, because it was a tempo, with words, without time to look over it first! It ended up going fine anyways though, and I made it in!
After the audition, I walked over to the Royal Opera house to see "The Rake's Progress" by Igor Stravinsky. The opera was very good; the singers were definitely very talented (although Tom Rakewell (the main character) had a little bit of an abrasive voice in my opinion) and the venue was absolutely beautiful! It is enormous, and clad throughout in red and gold; it feels like an opera house in Mozart's day might have felt. It was extremely classy, and all around just an amazing place. As for the opera itself, it was very interesting. Both the storyline and the music hearkened back to the Classical and Baroque eras; the plot was a tragic story of the demise of a man who became a popular movie star. The music, on the other hand, felt like Stravinsky had taken a classical opera and moved 1/3 of the notes around, so it didn't comply to common practice rules. It had the typical harpsichord recitatives. The singing (its rhythm and melody both) was the one part that was more typical of Stravinsky than the orchestral music.

Wednesday

This afternoon, we went to Tate Britain for our British Art class.

Our professor took us on a tour of the history of British Art. Although much of the painting was very good, it did seem as though the British were on the later, and watered down (no pun intended) side of nearly every major trend in art. The only major exception to that rule was the gallery that featured art by Joseph Turner. His art was incredibly varied, from detailed and moving scenes of naval battles, to vague, hazy paintings of various buildings and cities. Though much of his art was "difficult" (read: you can't tell what he painted unless you read the blurb), it was clear that he was a very talented artist.
After that, I went out to dinner with Isabel, who is in town visiting for a week or so. We had fish and chips, which were delicious. It was awesome to see a familiar face!

Thursday

Today was a long day of class. British culture was typically interesting and entertaining, and music history was not that bad. After dinner, we went over to Kings Place to see various players from the Aurora Orchestra perform chamber arrangements of pieces with the theme "From Vienna to Weimar". The composers played were Hindemith, Weill, Krenek, and Schoenberg. The 3 besides Weill (who wrote the Threepenny Opera) were very modern pieces, with various levels of atonality. The Hindemith piece and the Schoenberg piece were my two favorites of the night. The Weill was selections from the Threepenny Opera played on violin with piano accompaniment, and several of the pieces were uncomfortably arranged/played. The musicians were all very good though, and they were all extremely young.

Friday

Today, I worked on my internship in the morning, and then went to Music Theory class. In the afternoon, we went around to Southbank and the the Barbican to buy tickets for upcoming performances. In the evening, a group of us met up with Isabel and went to a Japanese restaurant called "Hare and Tortoise" that we had seen walking around the town. It was incredibly good. I got a ramen noodle soup with salmon, crab, shrimp, scallop, and a mussel in it for 6.50 (which is amazing by London standards!). Everyone else also got really good food, and nothing was above 7 pounds.

Saturday

Today I wasn't feeling very well, so I took it (relatively) easy. I slept in for a while since I didn't sleep well the night before, and then got up and went to the Victoria and Albert museum.

It was so huge, and has a bunch of really cool sculptures. There are a lot of rooms that are filled with relics of the British Imperial era, which is a little off putting, but most of the stuff is really cool. I had nowhere near enough time or patience to make it through the whole museum, but I did get to see some really old harpsichords from th 1500's that were very well kept.
After this, I went over to the Barbican for a concert by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. They played Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, which is a dark piece written for a man who came back from World War I with only his left arm. They also did pieces by Webern, Zimmerman, a Burleske by Strauss, and Ravel's La Valse. The last two were particularly good. Strauss's piece played off of the interaction between the piano and the orchestra very well. Ravel's waltz was more an exaggerated expression (almost a parody) of how frustrated he had become with the romantic, cheezy standards that were common in the waltz.