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 #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.

Tale #15

Saturday

Well, today was another amazing day in London! The day began with going to the Hampton Court Palace, where King Henry VIII (of 6 wives and anglican church fame) lived part of the year and housed his noble guests (sometimes 600 at a time!). The palace was, of course, beautiful and huge (see picture).

Among the things we got to see were a cool tour of the kitchens where we saw what types of food people would eat in the 16th century and how they were cooked, and a funny/interesting series of skits where men in women in full costume acted out the events preceding King Henry's final marriage.
The highlight, however, of the palace, were the beautiful gardens! The hedges were trimmed beautifully all over the place, there were many beautiful fountains, and what I'm sure were beautiful statues, but were covered with trash bags for the winter.

The Main Garden


A courtyard

After a 1.5 hour tube ride to the Barbican theatre, Jon and I went to a pre-concert talk for the BBC Symphony Orchestra concert we were seeing this evening. The talk was less enlightening than I had hoped, as it turned out to be more of a skit than a lecture...
The concert itself, however, was awesome. They played 4 pieces, including my favorite piece from the 20th century (Le tombeau de Couperin by Ravel). The pianist on the Ravel, Angela Hewitt, was very good. The other pieces that were played were a piece by Dutilleux, Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. They were all very beautifully played, and shared a 20th century/impressionist style that was wonderful.