Tales from London # 43-50

This is going to be my longest post ever! Hooray!

Saturday

We had to wake up at 6:00 in the morning today to catch a 7:30 train to St. Ives. The train ride was really long (6 hours), but when we got there, it was definitely worth it.

St. Ives

St. Ives is a small, seaside town, traditionally known as an artists' colony. The air was so clean, the sky was a gorgeous, deep shade of blue, and the weather was beautiful. It was so nice to be by the ocean for the weekend, though it was certainly too cold to go swimming!
We went to the art gallery (Tate St Ives) in the afternoon, which was pretty interesting, although it was small. After that, we went out to dinner at a pub on the waterfront, which was really delicious.



Sunday

Today, we woke up, went out to a local bakery, and got some scones. We went over to the waterfront and ate them with local jam and Cornish clotted cream. Cornish clotted cream is incredible. It must be terribly unhealthy, but it tastes so good!
After that, we walked around for a little bit, and hiked up into the hills. The entire place is so green and beautiful. It was sad to leave after such a short time, but we had to go.
We hopped back on the train, but then got off in Exeter to walk around and explore a little. We walked through the cathedral, which was very pretty, and then walked along the wall, which was very old and medieval.
Then, we went back to London.

Monday

Today was a fairly uninteresting day. I went and took care of a few errands during the day, including going to the library.
In the evening, I had a choir rehearsal, the second to last before the big concert. My voice was very tired after the rehearsal; it's a very difficult piece of music.

Tuesday

Today, we had Theatre class in the morning, during which time we acted out some scenes from a melodrama from the 1800's for the rest of the class, which was very dramatic and entertaining. After that, we went to the Handel Foundling Museum.
The Museum was on the location of where a house for babies and children who were found abandoned by their parents would be taken. There was a lot of art work in the museum, which was kind of strange, and only one room had anything to do with Handel. It was interesting to hear what life was like for these children, though.
After that, we went to a preconcert talk about Handel's Belshazzar, which is an oratorio. After a couple of hours, we went to the concert at St. James Hanover Square, by the London Handel Festival. It was an extremely long oratorio, with a choir and 5 or so soloists. 2 of the soloists were male altos, which was very interesting. Although the concert was very long, it was also very beautiful (if repetitive).

Wednesday

Today, we went down to the Apollo Theatre at 8:30 to queue for 10 pound front row tickets to Jerusalem, which we succeeded in getting. After that, we went to our final class for Fine Arts in London, where we all had to give presentations on various art related topics. My project was on Damien Hirst, a very controversial British artist who likes to display dead animals. He is also the richest artist in the world, which is cool I guess.
Anyhow, after that, we went to Jerusalem, a long play on the West End. It is about a Gypsy who lives in a trailer home in the woods in rural England, in a place where his family has lived for decades. The plot of the play circles around his impending eviction, and (without giving away the details too much) explores many difficult questions about how he is leading his life. Mark Rylance, who played the main character, was absolutely awesome in this role. It was a very intense, emotional performance, particularly in the final 20 minutes. Although I feel as though I should see it again to try to understand exactly what happened, I definitely think it is the best theatrical performance I have ever seen.

Thursday

Today, we had class all day, none of which is particularly worth noting.
In the evening, I went to a pre-concert rehearsal for the concert on Sunday. We were in a big church, and I could barely hear anything the conductor said.

Friday

Today, I went to work for my internship all day. I worked on getting things like the seating plan and budget for the concert ready, which was very hands on and useful. There were a lot of final details to take care of, and it took the whole day. In the evening, I had dinner, went out for gelato with Jon, Will, and Jackie, and then went to see "The Last Station", a film about Leo Tolstoy (supposedly). It was really more about Tolstoy's secretary and his wife, and about Tolstoy dying. It was entertaining, but not really what I was expecting going in.

Saturday

Today was the day of the big Barbican concert! I had to go in at 1:30 to start setting up for the concert, getting flowers and refreshments ready, and carrying things all around the building. We had a long rehearsal at about 4:00, and then I had a quick dinner I had packed earlier in the day, and then the concert started!
It was extremely hot on stage, with the lights on and a basically sold out crowd of almost 2000! We performed Beethoven's "Choral Fantasie" and "Der Glorreiche Augenblick", the latter of which hadn't been performed in London in over fifty years! The concert went really well, and it was an absolutely amazing experience. I performed on the same stage that Yo-Yo Ma had played only 3 nights before!


Sunday

Today, I was going to go out to Dim Sum with some friends, but after we got separated, my phone died, and I never was able to find them! I went out to a cheap Chinese buffet by myself instead, which was tasty, and I ate the most meat I had eaten in a long time, since it's so expensive at the supermarket. After that, I went to see the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Southbank Centre. They performed Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto and "Symphonic Dances". They were very impressive, but didn't really blow me away.
After that, I went to the Barbican Centre for the day's second concert, this one by the London Symphony Orchestra. The piece was James MacMillan's (a contemporary Scottish composer) St. Matthew's Passion. I went to an unenlightening preperformance interview with him, but the performance itself was absolutely awesome. It was conducted by Sir Colin Davis, and the piece was reminiscent of "Carmina Burana" There were many beautiful choral parts, as well as epic and emotional instrumental parts. It was very interesting, and I thought it was a unique adaptation of the story.

Tales #31-34

Monday
Today, I worked for my internship all day, typing up memos, contacting soloists, and other professional sorts of things. It was surprisingly tiring...I think I am getting too used to going to concerts and the like!
After that, I got some Japanese fast food (Onigiri and edamame, so not unhealthy like Amurrican fast food), and went to choir rehearsal. The Beethoven piece we are doing is really dramatic and fun to sing, although it is still killing my voice while I haven't quite recovered from my illness...

Tuesday
Today, I went to class all day, in a weird schedule switch up so that tomorrow we could go to Cirque du Soleil! We learned about Cosi fan Tutte, the Mozart opera that we are going to next week, and I am really excited for. After that, we made homemade fried chicken and mashed potatoes with sauteed mushrooms in them, which was amazing.
In the evening, we made some tortellini, and then went to the Oscar Wilde play "Lord Arthur Saville's Crime" at the Richmond Theatre. The play was funny (it is Oscar Wilde), but definitely not his or the actors' best work... There was really strange (read:out of key) musical accompaniment, which made the play unnecessarily cheesy. The set was pretty cool, and overall I was certainly entertained by the play, but not blown away.

Wednesday

Today, we woke up late, and went off to the Royal Opera House for our Back Stage Tour!!! We got to see the main hall while they were setting up for one of the ballets, as well as a practice room for ballet, the prop loft, the back stage area (which is measured in acres), and bunches of other really cool places around the building. It was very exciting.
Next, we went off to Cirque du Soleil: Varekai at the Royal Albert Hall. It was incredible, and nerve racking, to watch. Many of the artists were doing incredibly dangerous stunts, which was scary. They basically flew around the room, unsupported by harness or other safety equipment, doing acrobatic stunts all along. The story was not comprehensible at all (apparently due to changes in the act), but the incredibleness of the stunts made up for the lack of a plot.
After that, I went to a performance by the London Philharmonic Orchestra of French Impressionist music by Ravel, Poulenc, and Debussy. Although it was a little bit difficult to get into the music near the end due to the splendor of the day so far, I was still very impressed by the orchestra and conductor, and loved hearing more Ravel. Debussy's "La Mer" was also a very beautiful piece.

Thursday

Today, we held a huge debate on the abolition of the monarchy in British society, in which the people in favor of maintaining the monarchy (including me) surprisingly, though narrowly, won the vote of conscience at the end of the class.
For dinner, we went to an Italian restaurant for cheap pizza. Little did we know, however, the cheap pizza came at the price of having to listen to Celine Dion, Shakira, and an Italian cover of "House of the Rising Sun" throughout dinner! It was a little scary, but we made it out alive.
After that, we split ways, and I went to the Southbank Centre to see the Philharmonia Orchestra do Mahler's 2nd symphony. It was absolute enormous, with a 170 member choir on top of the already sizable orchestra (which had a separate brass and percussion section playing entirely off stage, out of sight). This piece, like the other I saw at the beginning of the trip, was a hugely emotional piece, with many ups and downs, and interesting movements. I have come to the conclusion that I have really underestimated Mahler to this point in my life, and will have to continue to remedy my lack of exposure to his music.
Cheers

Tales #23-25

Sunday

I had a slow morning today, because it was Sunday, and I had a concert to go to at 3:00. I made myself a really good egg and cheese sandwich for breakfast, and then headed off to the Southbank Centre to see the Philharmonia Orchestra perform Edward Elgar's first symphony and Cockaigne Overture and Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. The Elgar overture was very, very English, which was exciting and cool. The violin concerto was boring, basically like a really poor copy of a classical piece in my opinion, despite the valiant attempts of the soloist and orchestra. The Elgar symphony was pretty, though certainly not life changing in any way... It was, if nothing else, a very welcome change from all of the atonal and modern music we've been attending of late.

Monday

Today, I also woke up a little late (still trying to recover from my cold), and then went over to the Barbican to go to the library and try to work something out with the record shop for the choir concert that we are putting on there. Oh, but before that, we made burritos that were, once again, absolutely amazing! This time, with guacamole!
Afterwards, I went to choir rehearsal, which completely exhausted my voice (Singing Beethoven is not easy!)

Tuesday

We had class pretty early this morning, due to some schedule swapping for later in the week. We talked about some very old theatrical traditions in our theatre class, which were quite surprising in how old and steady they were. One we learned about that was particularly interesting was: In one town in Scotland, a man has to cover himself from head to toe in burrs (he is called "Burry Man") once a year, and walk around for 9 hours, going around to pubs and factories, and he is only allowed to eat or drink whisky (which he must do through a straw)! http://193.62.154.38/celtica/Burryb.htm
After that, we had a guest lecture about composition by a British composer. He talked about composing for movies, which was interesting (though the music was unbearably cheesy, since it was from a movie!)
After this, we made some tortellini for dinner, and then went off to the Soho Theatre for a play called Midsummer. The play was very, very funny, with some very unique stylistic devices in how they told the story. It had a bit of a hollywood tinge to it (despite their best effort to claim otherwise!), but it was undoubtedly the most entertaining show I've seen so far.

Cheers,
Ethan

Tales #12-14

Wednesday
Today was the least exciting day in London yet, which is saying something! We had a couple of classes today, in which I made a presentation on pianos in Mozart's lifetime and learned the condensed history of British architecture (like all of it) in 3 hours. This was all very fun, although I was tired from waking up at 7:30! In the evening, we went to an Foundation for International Education welcome party, which had "nibbles" which means 10 varieties of fried food and nothing else apparently. It was good though, despite the party's inherent awkwardness due to the fact that despite all being Americans, us liberal and performing arts kids are pretty different from most of the people from other schools. It was still fun to meet people and socialize though.

Thursday
Today, I saw the best concert I have ever seen! But hold your horses, I'll get there in a second. Before that, I had an interesting British culture and politics class where we discussed stereotypes that we have of British people, and vice versa, which was very revealing. Among the most prominent stereotypes of Americans according to my professor: we are puritanical, insular, gun-toting, badly dressed, hospitable (wait, what?) energetic, enthusiastic(loud) idiots. Well, he didn't actually SAY the last one, but... For dinner, we made some penne pasta, which was gloriously good, and we shared with some of our neighbors. Then, we went to the concert, at the Royal Festival Hall (see picture (oh, and I got my camera!))

Well, now to the concert. It was amazing. The program was Mozart's 20th Piano Concerto, with a solo by the "Saucy Frenchman" David Fray, and Mahler's 5th symphony. The piano player was really surprisingly good, with flamboyant and expressive styling and dynamics that were perfect for the piece. (see picture)

The Mahler symphony, however, really stole the show. The orchestra was gigantic (as in they had 2 harpists. that big), and they were absolutely together through the entire 68 minutes. That is just the basics, though. They played absolutely brilliantly throughout the entire thing, capturing the individual melodies that constantly play with each other, and creating a glorious story. The 4th movement in particular, had a huge impact on me. It was all strings, and it was the most intensely beautiful performance and composition that I have ever heard. The conductor, Leif Segerstam, was a giant man who is apparently legendary in Finland where he is from. He conducted extremely well (if you can't tell by the last 3 paragraphs!) (see picture- it was very difficult to choose a picture of him, but this will have to do!)

Friday
Since we didn't have class today, I started working on a few assignments for my internship, which is shaping up to give me a lot of practical experience, and exposure to how choirs work. I am really excited for it so far! I also went down and bought tickets for 3 more concerts at the Royal Festival Hall because of how excited I was about the concert last night. This puts my Ravel quota (the number of times I am seeing his orchestral pieces in the next month from tomorrow) at 4. So excited! I also went to the National Art Gallery today (see picture), which was so enormous I probably only got to 1/15th of it in the 2 hours I was there.

I will have to go back, but I saw some beautiful Impressionist artwork by Monet that particularly struck me. One of the portraits from when he was in London, of the Westminster Palace with the Thames in the foreground, was especially neat.
This evening, we cooked some burritos (they do have Mexican food here!), and Will and I went to a concert at St. Martin in the Fields church. A great chamber orchestra played several violin concertos and other pieces, including Vivaldi's Four Seasons. The Four Seasons was especially great; the piece is incredibly innovative, combining baroque style with programmatic composing that is strikingly chromatic, making for a really interesting combination. I heartily enjoyed the entire performance.

Cheers,
Ethan