Rach 2

Family Man asked me to post my favorite symphony. Except for the fact that symphonies are too long to fit on a single youtube, it sounded like a good idea. But the problem is that I don’t have a favorite symphony. I like many; I love none.

I do have a favorite piece of classical music. The third movement of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. I love the whole concerto but the third movement is my favorite.

Unfortunately, it is also too long to fit on a single youtube. So you’ll have to click the second youtube as soon as the first is finished. Do it fast, so you don’t have too long a break between notes.

While you are listening, think about this. Before he wrote this, Rachmaninoff was suffering from severe writer’s block. His first symphony had been panned by the critics and that sent him into a deep funk. Clinically depressed, he could write nothing. This concerto is dedicated to Nicholai Dahl, the psychiatrist who used hypnotic suggestion to help him. Rachmaninoff finished the second and this third movement before he began writing the first movement. .

To me, this third movement is a musical picture of what Rachmaninoff went through as he worked through his depression and writers’ block. It opens with an agitated first theme, but that theme suddenly ends and the orchestra introduces a lyrical, melodic second theme that the piano repeats - longingly. But the calm, melodic period doesn’t last and soon the agitation begins again. It again ends suddenly and is followed by the lyrical theme, this time with even more longing. Then the pianist seems adrift for a while until the agitation begins again. But this time the agitation is finally integrated with the lyrical theme and the orchestra and pianist soar together until the final, ecstatic, coda. He is cured.

Close your eyes, listen, and think about that. Enjoy.

Man in Space

A poem by Billy Collins. Performed by Billy Collins. With some help from Hollywood.

The Amber Room

One of my reading groups chose The Amber Room by Steve Berry as this month's book. A thriller set in Germany, the Czech Republic, Russia, Belarus and Atlanta, it involves the typical "ordinary man/woman" who gets caught up in a complicated situation including threats to their lives by professional killers.

I feel that I should review it, but all I can say is that I've read better thrillers. I'm usually able to suspend disbelief while reading these types of novels, but not this time. Maybe because the main characters were a judge and a probate lawyer. I've never liked novels with lawyers as main characters because I always notice the things that would never happen in real life. And if you are already noticing those things it's hard to suspend disbelief in the rest of the story.

But I did like learning about the Amber Room - the object that the characters in the novel are searching for. The Amber Room really existed. It was a room in the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg with walls paneled in carved amber, backed with gold leaf and mirrors. The photo above is one of the few extant photos of the original Amber Room.

The Catherine Palace was looted by the Nazis during World War II and the Amber Room was dismantled and shipped to Germany. Many of the panels had originated in Germany and had decorated the walls of a room in Charlottenburg Palace in Prussia until the early 1700's. Friederich Wilhem I presented the panels to Tsar Peter the Great of Russia, who had admired them. Peter himself did nothing with the panels, but his daughter Elizabeth installed them first at the Winter Palace and then later at the Catherine Palace, where she brought in craftsmen to add to and enlarge them due to the scale of the palace. By the time she finished, the room contained six tons of amber.

The Amber Room survived the Russian revolution and, like other tsarist palaces, the Catherine Palace became a museum. During the German invasion of World War II, the museum curators covered the panels with wallpaper in the hope the Nazis would overlook them. That didn't work.

German soldiers disassembled the entire room and transported it to Konigsberg. At the end of the war Konigsberg was heavily bombed by the allies. Some people believe the Amber Room was destroyed in the bombing. Others believe that the panels were moved, along with many other art treasures, before the bombing began. But whether it was destroyed or hidden, the Amber Room has never been seen again.

Treasure hunters continue to search for the Amber Room. In my googling I found a news story from February 2008 involving a search for the Amber Room.

In the meantime, helped by a large grant from a German company and utilizing the few black and white photos in existence, beginning in 1979 the Russians began to recreate the Amber Room at the Catherine Palace. In 2003 the recreated Amber Room was dedicated by Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder as part of the 300 year anniversary of St. Petersburg .

Here is a portion of the recreated Amber Room:


To get more information you can either read the novel or check out the wikipedia.

(Original photo from alexanderpalace.org. New photo from amberjewelry.com)

One-Buttock Playing

A Spot of Tea

Are the British just better with words? I’ve always tended toward British novels but it is getting a bit ridiculous when I’m enjoying the writing on the website for The London Tea Room, a local tea room run by expatriate Brits. I was looking for their phone number and ended up reading the whole site. First I clicked “About Us”.

Since coming to the States in 1988, we never could find the type of tea room you’d find in London: not prim, not proper, not ultra-Victorian - just good tea in good china in a relaxed but cheery environment and a nice selection of cakes and the like to accommodate that which had been missing from our lives: an afternoon tea in the city, being amongst others out for the same: a rejuvenating break in the day to sit back, have a cuppa and reflect. Reflect upon what, you may ask? Being English of course.

A lovely idea. But it was the bottom of the page that made me realize, I liked these people!

Open Tuesday through Friday from 7:30AM to 5PM.
Saturday and Sunday from 9AM to 5PM.
Please schedule your lives accordingly.

Then I clicked on the tab for “Menu” and, like Alice in Wonderland, I was confronted with two labels: “Drink me” and “Eat me”. Hmmm. I clicked “Eat me” and looked for scones.

Might be called the cornerstone of our culinary array. Fluffier than cornerstone though. Choose from our daily variety. Or don’t choose. Have one or ten of each. We’re not here to judge.

Eventually I found the phone number and passed it along to a friend I was recommending it to. I’ve been to The London Tea Room a few times, the first time with one of my book groups. The staff was wonderful to us. The tea menu is enormous and was really fun to read. For instance Monks Blend: Black tea infused with grenadine & vanilla. First created by monks (like all worthwhile beverages, most notably ale, espresso and the appletini), this one is sweet and toasty. And of course Any tea may be Americanized; that is: “iced.”

We had such a great time drinking tea and discussing books and Beatrix Potter (the theme for the day) that I decided it was going to be a regular place to visit.
See? Love of books can lead you to really nice places.

An "Honest-to-God Literary Salon"

Last week, a friend of mine used a quote in one of her blog posts that contained the phrase: poetry readings, literary salons, theatres.

I commented that I'd always wanted to meet someone who had been to an honest-to-god literary salon. She, with her inimitable wit, shot back, "what would qualify as a "sham" literary salon, I am wondering."

I'm still thinking about that. What qualifies as a literary salon? What is the difference between an author event and a literary salon? What is the difference between a book discussion group and a literary salon? Is it the location? The people who attend? The topics discussed? The general ambience?

And, really, what would qualify as a "sham" literary salon? I am wondering too.

The Fountainhead

This morning I posted my first thoughts on The Fountainhead at my friend Nancy's blog:

I'm reading The Fountainhead ... I just started. And this seems like a group that I could share some first impressions with.

I've never read anything by Ayn Rand and, in fact, don't know anything about her. But I'm about 60 pages into the novel and it feels for all the world like I'm reading the script of a Hollywood Movie circa 1939.

I never picture characters when I read but I hear the sound of their voices. As I read this I'm hearing that almost monotone staccato way they talked in old movies. Think Humphrey Bogart.

It was distracting me so much that I finally googled Ayn Rand and, sure enough, she was a Hollywood screenwriter.

I can't say that I dislike this style but it was not at all what I expected. (Nobody give away the storyline to me. I like to be surprised.)

A blank page

Why start a blog? Especially after I swore that I didn’t blog and I wouldn’t blog? Because … life is an experiment.

One of my co-workers just took a leave of absence to travel around the world with her husband. This is something you have to do either when you are young or when you are old. They are young. I am not. (But I’m not yet old.)

They started a blog so that their friends (and former co-workers) could follow their travels. It seemed sensible. We all agreed it was sensible. It would save them having to write to friends (and former co-workers) individually.

But then we all wanted our own blog. Even my co-workers who didn’t normally read blogs wanted their own blogs. But what, we asked ourselves, could we blog about when we are desk-bound five (sometimes seven) days a week? Traveling around the world seems blog-worthy. Traveling to the copy machine? Not so much.

So, what will I blog about? My travels of the mind: books I’m reading; movies I’m seeing; television I’m (rarely) watching; art I’m thinking about. Maybe even real travels. No politics (well, not much). No work-related topics.

Join me. Either in your own minds or in the comments.