Excellent Artsy Weekend

Last week was a rough one at work. On one of the days, I came in early to get ready for an early meeting, went to that meeting and went back to my office to start to send an e-mail to the team, while I was doing that someone called and I started an e-mail related to the call, while I was doing that someone came into my office and I started yet another e-mail...answered phone calls, went to discuss options with people in my cases. Those three e-mails, all started before 11:00 in the morning, did not get sent until around 1:30, at which time I was able to get lunch. The day was like that. Needless to say, I was SO ready for my weekend, and it did not disappoint.

Saturday, I went to the movie theater with my friend Janet to see the High Def showing of the Met's matinee performance of La Sonambula, a Bellini bel canto opera. I had never seen (or heard) it before, so it was a new experience for me. The music was beautiful, but the story was quite a bit more melodramatic than the usual opera. It did not turn me off, of course. I still enjoyed it immensely. Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Florez played the leading roles, and they are both beautiful people with beautiful voices.

After the opera, Janet and I went to dinner and talked about music, books, poetry, stitching, art, trips to foreign lands, and had a very nice time. The opera started at 1:00 in the afternoon and we were finished with dinner by 6:00, so I got home early enough to tell my favorite husband there was still time to go out and get my copy of the Twilight DVD... hehehehe. Which we did. Good man. And then we settled in to watch it. We each got a beverage of choice -- H had Scotch, of course, and I had something called "blueberry tea" which my friend Mary taught me to make. There is no blueberry in this concoction. There is hot tea (I use chai tea) and a shot of amareto and a shot of Cointreau...and it's very yummy. And air popped popcorn. Lights out. OK, so it's a movie about teenage love, with vampires in it. When it was finished, H says to me: "Well, it was not as stupid as you led me to believe. It was actually rather good." Hah! I led him to believe it was stupid??? I don't THINK so! I don't think I ever said it was stupid. Maybe my elusive offspring told him that. Maybe he got the idea from listening to me and my friends acting sheepish about enjoying the books and the movie, um, multiple times. I mean, I did manage to see it four times in the theater, but that's because different friends needed someone to go with them, and I'm such an amenable friend. OK, so it was a good Saturday night.

Sunday, I had breakfast with my friend Nancy, while H played golf with Steve. Then I went with Janet to hear a wonderful piano recital by Olga Kern. She was amazing! She started the first half with a Haydn sonata and the Brahms variations on a theme from Paganini (lots of composers played with that theme...Rachmaninoff and Liszt included).
After he intermission, she was supposed to start with Chopin, but she said "There will be a slight change in the program. I think that no piano concert can be complete without Rachmaninoff so I will be playing the Second Sonata." Slight change??? Wow! I was so excited. I almost thought she had been listening to me during the intermission when I said to Janet that I was sorry that there was no Rachmaninoff on the agenda (my all time favorite composer, with Beethoven almost neck and neck). I was delighted with the change. Of course, I love Chopin, too, but given the choice, Rachmaninoff would always win for me. The audience did not seem disappointed either. Clearly, she loves Rachmaninoff, too. She played with such passion...I think there was one point where she was almost in tears herself. Cool! Then she ended with Liszt's Rhapsodie Espagnole (which also includes the Paganini theme). She did three encores...first, she played "Sparkle" (I think the composer may be Chen Yi), which I had never heard before. Then she played a Rachmaninoff piano/cello sonata with the president of the Washington Performing Arts Society (he appears to be a cellist, and a rather good one at that), and then she finished with another of my favorites, since I was a kid: the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (another Liszt). That was a real crowd pleaser...of course.

Very powerful and impressive. I'm not trying to be sexist when I say that I rarely hear women play with such strength...although our seats were on the wrong side of the piano and we could not see her hands as she played (and her fingers FLEW), I waited to see her hands. They are not long, elegant fingers. She has muscular hands and fingers and I would liken her hands to those of a farm girl more than a model. Very strong. Very controlled. I am always impressed by someone who can play Liszt...supposedly, each of his hands spanned twelve piano keys! I don't know if that's true, but I can barely get nine. Stupid short fingers. If you look at a photo of Liszt, you can see that he has very long fingers.

Back to Olga Kern. She's not only extremely talented (the first woman to win the Van Cliburn Competition in 30 years), but she is beautiful. She came onto the stage wearing a strapless form-fitting teal gown that flared like a flamenco dress below the knees. What a flat stomach! Arghhh. (OK I'm jealous of a woman who can play the piano like that, and LOOK so damned gorgeous at the same time). After the intermission, she surprised us by coming onto the stage in a golden ensemble, again very form fitting, with bits of ostrich feathers here and there on the long tight skirt. It was beautiful. Granted, I would have been impressed JUST to hear her...but I'm glad I got to see her, too.

OK, so I was obviously more impressed by the piano recital than the opera...but that happens. I have not been able to stop thinking about it.

We went out to dinner after the concert, and I got home somewhere between 8 and 8:30...at which point I immediately went back to reading "The Green Years" (the A.H. Cronin book my friend Tracy recommended). I had a hard time putting it down to go to sleep, and when I woke this morning at 6:00, I decided I just had to finish it before I went to work. Took me about 45 minutes. It was a good book. It put me in mind of Angela's Ashes, but I liked it so much better because the character was not completely down all the time. I don't expect to ever read Angela's Ashes again, but I could see myself reading The Green Years again some day. But first, I have SO many other books on my reading list.

I'm in the mood for Liszt...I think I will play "Totentanz." On the iPod, silly, not on the piano. Sigh...