CONCIERTO EN EL MGB HOY / MGB CONCERT TODAY

2011-12-11

APARECE ABAJO EN ESPAÑOL ...
No profound thoughts here, just sharing my pleasure at the concert I gave today!
With thanks to Kristin Hanson ... "A [wo]man is a success if [s]he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between [s]he does what [s]he wants to do" ~Bob Dylan … Una mujer se puede contar un éxito si se levanta en la mañana y se va a la cama en la noche, y en ese lapso hace lo quiere hacer.

I posted this much-loved quote again in FB a few moments ago because this was indeed a day in which I got up in the morning, and in a while I will go to bed, and in between I did what I wanted to do: I got up and ran with my dogs in the morning and then in the afternoon, I played –with all due modesty- a quite wonderful recital in the Casa-Museo Gene Byron.

A couple of pix (it appears to be impossible to take them of me while I am playing, with any normal camera that is) …


Made a change in the program which was so last-minute that I decided on it in the shower before leaving for the hall. With the addition of Horacio Uribe’s exhilarating heart-throb of a piece –which I couldn’t resist playing— this program was going to be too long and too much to absorb. I changed the order slightly and deleted the Sonata of my beloved Domenico Scarlatti. Not to worry, it will show up in one of the many mixed programs in which I’ll incorporate these splendid Monarca pieces. I’m already thinking of another one, consisting of the Spanish and Mexican composers, with Lirio Garduño reading poems from her amazing Cuaderno de la Monarca (Monarca Notebook) – soon to be published, one by tantalizing one, on the Monarca website (friends and fans, ¡¡¡WATCH THIS SPACE!!).


So the order was:
CPE BACH Sonata
SILVIA BERG El sueño … el vuelo (The Dream … the Flight)
STEPHEN MCNEFF An Evening with doña Eduviges: a Fantasy (Una velada con doña Eduviges: una fantasia)
HORACIO URIBE El viaje nocturno de Quetzalpapálotl (The night voyage of Quetzalpapálotl)
Intermedio
JOELLE WALLACH Lágrimas y Locuras, Mapping the Mind of a Madwoman (cartografiando la mente de una loca): A Fantasy on La Llorona
SCHUBERT-LISZT Gute Nacht
SCHUMANN-LISZT Widmung (Dedicación)
PAUL BARKER La Malinche: Concert Aria
The piano was not in great shape; a good instrument that has, lamentably, not been well maintained (hammers badly need voicing, action needs regulating). I had to work SO hard to get it to speak as I wanted, and by my own standards I wasn’t always completely successful.

So in the end, yes it was wonderful. I suppose that coaxing the piano to sing as I wanted it to added an extra spice for me.

In any case the audience response was PHENOMENAL. I personally have never had a negative audience response to new music. I continue to believe that this is because I pick my repertoire with great care so that I can play it –as CPE said in his great wisdom— “from the heart, and not like a trained bird.”

And what, you may ask, about pieces written for you with which you simply are unable to bond? Ah, that is an important question to be answered at some other writing, which I hope will be soon. For now, I’ll share with you a comment made by my very dear friend M*** (the one with whom I have a special relationship around dance and who has mysterious and awesome instinct about me), who asked me after hearing these particular pieces at a recent house-concert, “Ana, do you think it’s possible that some of the composers who wrote for you in Rumor are now writing for you EVEN BETTER?” You know what? I think she is right.

Nada de pensamientos profundos aquí … ¡sólo quiero compartir mi placer por el recital que di hoy en la tarde!
With thanks to Kristin Hanson ... "A [wo]man is a success if [s]he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between [s]he does what [s]he wants to do" ~Bob Dylan … Una mujer se puede contar un éxito si se levanta en la mañana y se va a la cama en la noche, y en ese lapso hace lo quiere hacer.
Subí esta bienamada cita hace poco en FB porque hoy fue de veraa un día en que me levanté en la mañana, y al ratito iré a la cama, y en ese inter hice lo que yo quise hacer: me levanté y corrí con mis perras y luego en la tarde, interpreté –con toda la debida modestidad—un recital bastante maravilloso en la Casa-Museo Gene Byron.


Hice un cambio en el programa que fue tan del último momento que lo decidí mientras me bañaba antes de salir al foro. Con la adición de la hermosísima pieza de Horacio Uribe –que no pude resistir incluir—este programa iba a ser demasiado largo y demasiado que absorber. Con que cambié tantito el orden y suprimí la Sonata de mi querido Domenico Scarlatti. No os preocupéis, aparecerá en otro de estos programa mixtos en que incorporaré estas espléndidas piezas Monarca. Ya estoy ideando uno, de los compositores españoles y mexicanos, con Lirio Garduño leyendo poemas de su maravilloso Cuaderno de la Monarca – que pronto se editarán (uno por uno para mayor suspenso) en el nuevo portal Monarca. ¡¡¡Amigos y fans, estén al pendiente!!!
Con que el orden fue …
CPE BACH Sonata
SILVIA BERG El sueño … el vuelo (The Dream … the Flight)
STEPHEN MCNEFF An Evening with doña Eduviges: a Fantasy (Una velada con doña Eduviges: una fantasia)
HORACIO URIBE El viaje nocturno de Quetzalpapálotl (The night voyage of Quetzalpapálotl)
Intermedio
JOELLE WALLACH Lágrimas y Locuras, Mapping the Mind of a Madwoman (cartografiando la mente de una loca): A Fantasy on La Llorona
SCHUBERT-LISZT Gute Nacht
SCHUMANN-LISZT Widmung (Dedicación)
PAUL BARKER La Malinche: Concert Aria

El piano no está en maravillosas condiciones: un buen instrumento a que lamentablemente no se ha dado el mantenimiento necesario: martinetes urgidos de entonación, y la pulsación necesita regulación. Me costó MUCHO trabajo hacer que hablara como yo querría, y según mis criterios no siempre lo logré. Ni modo.
Pero total que sí, fue maravilloso. Supongo que el trabajo que costó sonsacar al piano a que cantara como yo querría agregó una pizca extra de sabor para mí.
En todo caso la respuesta del público fue fenomenal. Yo en lo personal nunca he tenido una respuesta negativa a música nueva. Sigo creyendo que esto es porque escojo mi repertorio con sumo cuidado precisamente para que yo pueda tocarlo –como dice CPE Bach en su gran sabiduría—“desde el corazón, y no como un pájaro bien entrenado”.
¿Y qué –bien se puede preguntar—de las obras que se han escrito para ti con que simplemente no te has podido acoplar? Ah, es una pregunta importante a que se responderá en un escrito en un futuro –ojalá—no muy lejano. Por lo pronto, comparto con uds el comentario de mi queridísima amiga M*** (la con quien tengo una relación especial en lo que concierne la danza, dotada de un misterioso y asombroso instinto en torno a mí), quien me preguntó después de un reciente concierto casero, “Ana, crees tú que es posible que algunos de los compositores que escribieron para ti para Rumor ahora están escribiendo para ti AÚN MEJOR?” ¿Saben qué?—creo que tiene toda la razón.

SOBRE DANIEL CATÁN

Tarde-tarde-tarde, para variar, pero aquí 'stá ...


2011-10-29

THOUGHTS … ON Daniel Catán’s El Cartero (Il Postino)

Voz auténtica. Brasil. La pregunta de Rodolfo Coelho. And now it’s come full circle, over the decades.

I’m writing more on what this has to do with my last Brazil trip, a year ago. Meanwhile, Daniel Catán… I went, the penultimate night of the Festival Internacional Cervantino, to hear his opera El Cartero (based on the film Il Postino) in the Teatro Juárez. In effect, Daniel’s last COMPLETE opera, the one in whose WP in the LA Opera Plácido Domingo sang Pablo Neruda. The one which was done to considerable acclaim in Paris a few months ago … after Dani died, quietly in his sleep, last Spring.

En eso estoy, escribiendo más sobre lo que esto tiene que ver con mi último viaje a Brasil hace un año. Mientras tanto, Daniel Catán … Fui, la penúltima noche del Festival Internacional Cervantino, a escuchar su ópera El Cartero (basada en la peli Il Postino) en el Teatro Juárez. En efecto, su última opera completa, la en cuyo estreno absoluto Plácido Domingo cantaba Neruda. La que se montó a considerable elogio en París, hace unos meses … después de que Dani falleció, tranquilamente mientras dormía, la primavera pasada.

Un caudal de memorias, para mí. Dani aún con sus veinte-tantos, pero ya sabiendo muy bien lo que quiso escribir. Cómo batallaba en Princeton, queriendo escribir la música que ya escuchaba en su oído interno, allá en ese mar hirviente de serialismo. Pero sí que logró salir con todo y pergamino del doctorado. Y lo que es más, con la voz intacta.

Claro, después la voz maduró, y considerablemente. Pero aún así la obra de su tesis fue digna de grabarse.

Parece que siempre tuvo que batallar para hacer lo que tenía que hacer.

Tradicional la voz, se puede decir, ¿y qué? A mi ver lo importante es que fue absolutamente suya –y, cabe mencionar, de no poca destreza y elocuencia. Y además, ¿cuántos compositores hay de ópera en español, en este hemisferio? Ibarra, Catán, son contadísimos.

Ay de mí, ¿porqué tantos tienen que morir antes de recibir su justo reconocimiento?

Fuertes ecos de Verdi en el sentido de lo político, a mi ver. Par mí fue muy claro que esta ópera hace su declaración en cuanto a la capacidad de la poesía –y, por extensión, el arte en general—de cambiar la vida individual y así el mundo. Por lento y penoso que sea el camino.

Cuando Dani Catán falleció, escribí, “In the end music enters us first through our pores, through our physical organism, maybe sometime later through intellect and all that. Hearing is the first sense to develop neonatally. In the end if music touches us in that way, if we want to listen to it again and again even if it wrenches our hearts, that is what is important, that's the acid test, it has little to do with good or bad. This is why people still listen to Puccini, why Puccini evokes in many listeners --this one included-- tears of joy and humility and pride to be human. So if Daniel's music sounded to these listeners like Puccini ... so much the better, so much more collective pride for all of us to be human. That we are able to be touched by such beauty is great humility and great pride. Carajo, I am so sad that he is gone.

"A la postre la música nos entra primero a través de nuestros poros, nuestro organismo físico, quizás tiempo después por el intelecto y todo aquello. El sentido auditivo es el primero en desarrollarse en el feto. A la postre si una obra nos toca de esa manera, si la quisiéramos escuchar una y otra vez aún si nos desgarra el corazón, eso es lo importante, eso es la prueba de fuego, que poco tiene que ver con bueno o malo. Por esto la gente todavía escucha a Bach, a Brahms, a Puccini, por esto Puccini evoca en tantos escuchas –incluída ésta—lágrimas de regocijo, de humildad y de orgullo por ser humano. Así que si la música de Daniel, para ciertos escuchas, sonaba a Puccini … pues mejor que mejor, que así sea, más orgullo colectivo para todos nosotros de ser humano. Que podemos ser conmovidos por tamaña hermosura es gran humildad y gran orgullo. Carajo, estoy tan triste que se ha ido.”

HAPPILY RANTING INSPIRED BY EJ DIONNE

2011-11-10 THOUGHTS ON US POLITICS


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-right-wings-shellacking/2011/11/09/gIQADgGq5M_story.html

My wonderful Cousin H**** sends me this really good essay by EJ Dionne in the WashPost (check it out!) and I responded. It turned into a rant so I post it here … with names disguised to protect the innocent of course, as always …

This is a wonderful piece, dear H***, and MANY thanks for sending it on. Jiminy, if these election results don't show it's long past time for politicians to stop running scared from these Tea Party people, I don't know what will. I like the quote from Jerry Lewis in Arizona, that this was a victory for "restoring a civil tone to politics.' One of the many things that's been missing for some decades now, I feel.

"This was a case of old-fashioned conservatism beating the Tea Party variety", says Dionne. I have to say that I’ve felt since the very beginning that the Tea Party has little or nothing to do with real conservatism. The best conservatives were people like Warren Rudman, the Senator from New Hampshire-- who were real strict-constructionists and with whom, I imagine, one could have a real discussion about substantive public-policy issues. Rudman at least, I feel quite sure, would fight to the death for my right to disagree with him, and I, in fact, for his to disagree with me.

The TP folks, on the other hand, out of their own mouths have the utmost contempt for government and for public policy. There are strong grounds to suspect that not one of those people has any idea what public policy even is. And much less about dying for my right to disagree with them, or they with me. For some time I have felt pretty sure that they don't even know --or if they do know, that they care-- about the Bill of Rights.

I feel it's justifiable, in fact, to call them cynical and opportunist. I've said it before and I feel everything that's happened in the last year justifies saying it again: What right do these people have to be in government when they openly profess nothing but complete unbelief in government? They want to take us back to way before the City-State, for heaven's sake. So they have no right to form part of the government, and much less to benefit from that participation. More than anything else, because they have collectively and individually offered not one single constructive proposal about ANY of the things which ail us as a country.

So they are just happily collecting their bennies --unlike the people who are out of work, for whom they have zero compassion!-- and railing on against the very government which has arranged for them to have said bennies. Cynical is a pretty good adjective, I say. And opportunist sticks pretty well too: at least pigs at the trough are just following their natural Pig Instincts.

Anyway, I am enormously happy that The People Have Spoken in these elections, and that they have been Speaking these last few weeks, in the various Occupied Places. Enormously happy that the unions have taken strength from the Occupy folks. I hope people will stop running scared from these Naked Tea-Party Emperors and laugh them out of the house they have have no right to rule. I'll stop ranting now ... ;=))

2011-10-20 THOUGHTS ON DANCE LEMI PONIFASIO “MAU: DANCE WITH SKYMIRRORS”

2011-10-20 THOUGHTS ON DANCE
LEMI PONIFASIO “MAU: DANCE WITH SKYMIRRORS”

Not perfect, this; not refined or well–edited … but no matter, I won’t fall prey, this night, to perfectionism, I want to get this out there.
Have always felt, for years now, that musicians are also dancers, or ought to be; just that the movement is sometimes so inside, so subtle … but as Lettvin said, the grace notes are the flick of the fingers, the subtle movement of the eyes … we are ALL dancers, we humans.

SO HERE IT IS …
How it begins: man rear stage L … or is it a man? I have the impression that he has the head of a beast, a lion or a bear, magnificently hirsute. All we really see is the beautifully-muscled torso, and the hands –which seem immense—placed on the fronts of his thighs. He scarcely moves. Just breathing, in and out.

Then the woman –front stage R—almost entirely naked, very pale body, high-heeled shoes, completely and pitilessly lit, a brusque contrast to the man’s mystery.
Her song, not lamenting or nostalgic or conventionally beautiful: no, it is a war-dance song. At the end --a jump-out-of-your-seat shock to many-- a raucous scream that sounds like the shriek of a bird of prey.

The geometry of the stage. All square but often asymmetrical. Never a circle.

The geometry of the space they define. At a certain point about halfway through I notice that not once have the arms been lifted above shoulder level. No lifting-up of torsos, no reaching to heaven. Someone says afterwards when we are talking about this, “Like birds”. But later still, I realise that’s not true: some birds at least –like raptors—DO lift their wings enormously as they plunge.

Somewhere about halfway through –and I continued to observe this as I assimilated and the piece progressed—I realized that no one ever touches anyone else, there is ZERO physical contact between or among the dancers.

Their own bodies, as the piece progresses, become percussion instruments. This is beautifully set up from the beginning with tiny hints of what is to come …

That rapid gliding through space. Feet so soundlessly GLIDING across the stage. Once you look carefully you realize it is the feet, but even so it looks like something a human could not do.

It all challenged me to think about my ideas of Dance.

At some climactic point about 2/3 of the way through, the image projected on the backlit screen behind the dancers, is of a bird half-drowned in oil, struggling to lift its wings and escape from the filth in which it’s mired. Repeatedly projected. The dance going on in front of this horrific image just goes on.

The music, at this point, intentionally and almost unbearably brutal, repetitive, violent. I say intentionally because it MUST be: the music before is so well done as a backdrop, an accompaniment to the other sound events and to the dance, and sometimes it takes more of a protagonist’s role.

It is after this, I think, that there’s a sequence with the six men, in which they all end up stage front, bent over on their knees (like yoga child’s pose), with arms bound behind them. Well, but they are NOT bound, they are only holding their hands together. But nevertheless they writhe and struggle as tho’ they were bound. Beautiful, beautiful back muscles, deltoids, biceps.

Is part of the idea that we SEE that they’re not really bound, that all they have to do is loose their own hands (bonds) and they will be free? An incredible tension generated by this feeling.

Anyway, they all draw back to the rear, disappearing into the shadows, still struggling on their knees. All except one, who manages to rise to his feet, hands still (self-)bound behind him, and stays stage front for a while, gradually drawing back. Still on his feet, I praying from guts and heart for his liberation, he arches his back –finally we see the torso fully open … but then after a very long time, what seems like an eternity, he too draws back into the shadows, vanquished.

So much. I tried to remember everything, EVERYTHING so as to tell my very dear friend M*** the Dancer, with whom I have a Special Bond About Dance. I’m not telling everything here because it’s late and it would take so much time. Every time I think about it I remember more, altho’ not always in the correct sequence.

I think at first I was dismayed because there seemed to be no opening up of the body, no leaps, that striving toward the heavens that I so love and which seems to me one of the particular gifts to us of dance, it was always the closest we could get to flying. The dream, and the doom, of Icarus: to defy gravity. But now, just as I am writing this, I realize that it’s that GLIDING across the floor that’s the defiance of gravity in this dance.

That rapid fluttering of the fingers, that we see almost from the beginning. I find out in the after-conversation, from Australian friends who know about such things, that this is an element in hakka (sp., correct I think, check it out on Google) a war-dance of the Maori. I knew something about hakka but no details. Fascinating. Is it modelled on birds and their movements, I wonder? Didn’t occur to me to ask them in the moment.

After that climactic and awful half-drowned bird moment (that goes on forever), a bird-man appears on stage, in the same place as the beast-man at the beginning: with the head of (I think) an albatross or frigate-bird. Extensively tattooed all around the waist. We’ve seen him before as one of the six male dancers, I remember the tattoos peeking out from his trousers or whatever. Now he is naked, except for the gigantic bird’s head, and a sort of codpiece affair which is half prick and half tail, because it extends to his knees and curls around looking almost, at that point, like a ram’s horn. Nothing even remotely sensual about it. He looks hieratic, and at the same time oddly innocent. His movements are not hieratic: when he turns slowly this way and that it is only the torso, and not completely somehow; I think that is where the innocence part comes in for me.

When he starts to move directionally, still to the rear and towards stage right, it is with the gait of a bird, or rather with the gait of a man become half-bird, the legs look unnaturally long, the relation of the thorax to the waist which is no longer exactly a waist … eery, terribly sad, because he walks off and we know he is gone forever, like the bird struggling to fly out of the oil. Maybe this is the human memory and incarnation of that bird. How we preserve it, keep it sacred.

So this piece, evoking the relationship of human with animal and bird in its most profound way, that is in how we as humans have sought to put ourselves INTO THEIR BODIES, their fur, their feathers; run with their joyful legs and soar with their tireless wings … says an awful –awe-full— lot about that magical relationship in all its mystery, without in any way trying to explain it, which would of course be fatal.

It was so dense, so complex. The impact took a while to take effect. I just wanted to be quiet and alone afterwards but then there is the talking which is also interesting. It wasn’t until I gave a goodnight hug and kiss to L***’s assistant Juan that I practically collapsed into his arms and burst into tears. Almost.

RANDOM RAMBLINGS: SOCIETY, RAIN, MUSIC & TIME

2011-10-11 RANDOM RAMBLINGS

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2011/10/beijing-chill.html ...

I read this brief piece by Alex Ross, and then the Nick Frisch NYT piece he cites, and am struck by several things:

1. What happened with Ay Wei Wei earlier this year, and the shameful silence about it on the part of a major USian museum, which was also about to embark, if memory serves, on some sort of collaboration with the People’s Republic. And speaking of Ay, the news has been rather silent on that score of late, I think.

2.The not-so-veiled implication in Frisch’s article that institutions (including arts ones) in the US are prepared to forgive China a great deal because they have a great deal of cash. Pretty yucky. Especially now that the Occupy Wall Street people’s movement seems to be catching on. As Paul Krugman and now a bunch of others have pointed out, the mere fact that the OWS folk are attracting the ire of the bankers, and the politicians they bankroll, is enough to tell us that what they’re saying hits home.

Had a lovely coffee today with dear friend T*** who is a very fine writer. We got to talking about something I’ve written about before: how in the US art and society in general have persistently failed to knit themselves together. He told me about some mutual friends, people really committed to the arts, just returned from a 6-month sabbatical based in Barcelona. While working and everything, they still managed to take some trips around Europe –I mean really, who wouldn’t? Both said that what they brought away from this experience was primordially how every European country they visited has incorporated the arts into its life AND its ECONOMY.
To many, this may sound like a “DUH” sort of situation, but I think it’s close to the heart of at least one of the significant fault-lines that I see opening up in the US.

Let historians and economists deal with the minutiae of this question: to me it is clear that to have a more humane country –with a lower infant-mortality rate and a far lower percentage of its people in prison, just to pick two salient examples– you MUST have a country in which people are engaged with dance, with theatre, with music, with poetry.

And not only that -- I mean engaged AS PARTICIPANTS. Why? Because when you are trying to make a poem on something you really care about, suddenly you have something to lose apart from the miserable paycheck you more than earn. If you make an enormous paycheck which you can’t even imagine how to earn, the experience will give you humility. When you yearn to play the fiddle or the guitar like one of your heroes, in order to see if you are progressing you must really listen to yourself. From this you can learn both critical thinking and listening, as well as compassion. And, when you accomplish part or all of what you strove for, you get to experience well-deserved pride.

When all this is part of a group or collective effort, as in chamber music, in a choir, or in something like the Venezuelan “El Sistema” youth orchestras, the critical thinking, the humility, the compassion, and the pride –most of all the love— are multiplied a thousand-fold … and you also learn the epiphany of collective effort. If you don’t know about “El Sistema”, google it. It should be part of everyone’s store of everyday knowledge.

I live in the state of Guanajuato, in México. This is far from being a mushy liberal tree-hugger sort of state. Nevertheless, in practically every town –even the tiniest and most remote— there is a “Casa de la Cultura” -- literally translated, a House of Culture. In FIFTY-FIVE of them there is a PIANO. There are many things that can be improved, but at the end of the day the fact that this exists signifies that there is some sort of awareness here. There is also, just by the way, the Seguro Popular, which is completely gratis and which is basically free health insurance for people who can’t afford anything else. And you know what? I believe you can enroll in it even if you are a foreigner.

***

Enough about society and justice and all, that was my rant for the day. Things that
are really beautiful here the last couple of days:

IT IS RAINING. We have been horribly short of rain this year. This is High Desert, geographically. Normally it rains –if one can talk about “normal” weather anymore, which I guess we can’t—starting in late May or early June. There is a gradual crescendo from a little afternoon shower during the first few weeks to a daily rainstorm in August; always in the afternoon to late evening. Then in September it starts to taper off, and there is a gradual decrescendo to late October. Then it Stops Raining –I mean Completely –until late May or early June of the following year. It’s not unusual that it starts raining late, but it always generates uneasiness.

This year, as in 2009, it started late and never really got into its rhythm. Now, suddenly in late September-early October, it is starting to act almost like August. A couple of sweet slow rains that go on for hours: just what we need to fill the presas, the reservoirs; and our souls.

WHAT TIME DOES TO MUSIC: TO LISZT, TO URIBE, TO CABRERA BERG. Nothing new here, just that every time it happens, it feels like an epiphany, a miracle. I work on these pieces really hard, with the utmost concentration; I perform them, I record them at home, I meditate on them and then play again. And then I let them rest, in this case just for a few days … and ¡¡EPIPHANY!! All that patient incremental work suddenly bears fruit and they take flight. It is indeed a miracle.
When that happens I think, Ay dios, let me just be in my cavern, holed up and listening, listening and playing, listening and meditating, playing and listening.

Why o why is it so hard to Protect my Time? But the truth is that, while I must as always work to protect my own time, I would also feel fundamentally incomplete if I didn’t participate in the artistic community of which I am a part, and even in the community of my barrio, my neighborhood, which had absolutely no idea of what I do, or appreciation of it, however much I said about it … until they saw me on TV a couple of months ago.

This DOES have to do with the voice of the interpreter, and centrally. I must write about this, it’s something about which I’ve thought so much. Rodolfo Coelho’s penetrating question a little over a year ago brought it to the forefront once again. What I wrote then got lost with Laptop Theft Number Four. A large part of the almost unmitigated rage I felt about that was the loss of some writing I’d done which was not recoverable. I guess I’m largely over that now, and so can start to re-stitch that particular lost thread. I’ll do it soon.

I leave you all with this quote from Arrau on the interpretation of Liszt, which Russell Sherman –another hero of mine— quotes in his amazing book “Piano Pieces,” jam-packed with wisdom, passion, and humor:

Claudio Arrau on Liszt: “Declamation. Uninhibited expression. One must not feel ashamed of playing this music. The idea that he can be ‘corrected’ by understatement is utterly wrong.
“Continuing: ‘In general, when actors in this country [speaking of the US] do Shakespeare, they almost always underplay. They act as if they are ashamed of their roles and lives. They think people will laugh at them. If they would go all out, all the way, they would find that people would not laugh but be riveted. They would weep. Certain performances must make you weep, either for the sheer beauty of it of for the depth of feeling.’ [From The Essential Piano Quarterly].”

I will go a step further, and say, One must not feel ashamed of playing ANY music. If you feel ashamed about it, or even NEUTRAL, you shouldn’t be playing it. Find a way to be utterly convinced and passionate about it, or find other repertoire.

CPE Bach: “Play from the heart, not like a well-trained bird.”

THOUGHTS ON DIPLOMACY READING ABOUT THIS VAN BUREN THING ...

2011-10-09 THOUGHTS ON DIPLOMACY ETC

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/world/us-envoy-peter-van-buren-takes-caustic-pen-to-iraq-war.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

I know various people in the diplomatic service who work honourably, giving their imagination and compassion as well as their entire professionalism to the work they do as diplomats. Which at the end of the day, in my eyes, is a very noble work indeed.

The NYT article seems to say that State Dep’t colleagues feel that Van Buren is a sort of traitor for speaking out as openly as he has. Oh hell, I don’t know. This is a true moral dilemma, one of the oldest I suspect. Do you try to work through channels, give the process time to do its glacial work? Or do you finally decide that the more immediate moral imperative is indeed more urgent, and can’t wait for the process to do its work, especially considering that there’s a very real chance it won’t be able to do that? I imagine that the brave person who sneaked those photos in Abu-Ghraib –and then even more bravely decided to make them public (or was that second choice already made in the moment of taking the photos? perhaps … ) was moving towards such a decision and then made it, in the blinding flash of a moment teetering over the abyss. Countless millions of other such choices over the course of history, I am sure.

I feel as tho’ this script is already written, for something like the Iraq version of Robin Williams’ Good Morning Vietnam. (Too bad I’m such a movie illiterate: maybe someone has already MADE this movie.) I mean, nothing I read in this article is in any way surprising. This is my rule for reading stuff in the paper: will it surprise me, will I learn anything from it? If it’s just something I already intuit, or that looks as tho’ it won’t challenge me, I don’t read it: life is too short.

Not quite sure why I read this one: perhaps because a friend sent it, perhaps because one way or another, and over the years, I have come to know people in the diplomatic service. Because of the kind of people they are, as I mention above, I persist in believing that being a diplomat is a noble calling. Also because, at its best, it has to do with communication, and what I do has so fundamentally to do with communication.

The resignation letter –dated 7 Feb 2003, I find when I miraculously locate it in some file rescued after the theft of THREE laptops-- written by John Brady Kiesling, a career diplomat whose last post was, as far as I know, as Political Attaché in Athens, sticks in my mind, in this connection. I re-read that letter and still find it moving and compelling. I am going to try and attach it here, hope this works … OH POOEY, for some reason it doesn't want to accept a PDF. What to do? Oh well, here it is as Raw Text, who uses THAT anymore?
JOHN BRADY KIESLING RESIGNATION LETTER, AS PUBLISHED IN THE NYT (amazing that I found it stashed in my PEACE WORK folder after all these years; SO SAD how it is still so present). The intro is from a former US Ambassador, colleague of a cousin of mine who served long and honorably as a Foreign Service officer.
Subject: Patriotism of the highest caliber
Here's an example of patriotism of the highest quality. It's the letter of resignation by an American diplomat, printed today in the New York Times. His reference to "oderint dum metuant" means "Let them hate so long as they fear." (A favorite saying of Caligula. I didn't know this. I had to look it up).
"February 27, 2003 U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation
The following is the text of John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr. Kiesling is a career diplomat who has served in United States embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan.
Dear Mr. Secretary:
I am writing you to submit my resignation from the Foreign Service of the United States and from my position as Political Counselor in U.S. Embassy Athens, effective March 7.
I do so with a heavy heart. The baggage of my upbringing included a felt obligation to give something back to my country. Service as a U.S. diplomat was a dream job. I was paid to understand foreign languages and cultures, to seek out diplomats, politicians, scholars and journalists, and to persuade them that U.S. interests and theirs fundamentally coincided. My faith in my country and its values was the most powerful weapon in my diplomatic arsenal.
It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world.
I believe it no longer. The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.
The sacrifice of global interests to domestic politics and to bureaucratic self-interest is nothing new, and it is certainly not a uniquely American problem. Still, we have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of American opinion, since the war in Vietnam.
The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to do to ourselves.
Is the Russia of the late Romanovs really our model, a selfish, superstitious empire thrashing toward self-destruction in the name of a doomed status quo? We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners.
Even where our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests.
Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is blind in Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the Occupied Territories, to our own advice, that overwhelming military power is not the answer to terrorism? After the shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny and Ramallah, it will be a brave foreigner who forms ranks with Micronesia to follow where we lead.
We have a coalition still, a good one. The loyalty of many of our friends is impressive, a tribute to American moral capital built up over a century. But our closest allies are persuaded less that war is justified than that it would be perilous to allow the U.S. to drift into complete solipsism. Loyalty should be reciprocal.
Why does our President condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this Administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials? Has "oderint dum metuant" really become our motto?
I urge you to listen to America's friends around the world. Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know that the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and they want a strong international system, with the U.S. and EU in close partnership.
When our friends are afraid of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet?
Mr. Secretary, I have enormous respect for your character and ability. You have preserved more international credibility for us than our policy deserves, and salvaged something positive from the excesses of an ideological and self-serving Administration. But your loyalty to the President goes too far.
We are straining beyond its limits an international system we built with such toil and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and shared values that sets limits on our foes far more effectively than it ever constrained America's ability to defend its interests.
I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share."

I wrote to my cousin, who’d sent this on to me from his friend the retired Ambassador:
This letter gives me great sadness, and also great pride. Sadness, because John Brady Kiesling expresses with great precision and eloquence my own feelings as an American citizen --and former Fulbrighter!-- when he says "my upbringing included a felt obligation to give something back to my country ... My faith in my country and its values was the most powerful weapon in my diplomatic arsenal ... the United States ... as a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet ...". I never have had a diplomatic arsenal, in any narrow sense, but that feeling of the US being a beacon was always, for me, a powerful part of my own personal patriotism. So I am sad because of the great disillusion and pain I read between the lines of Mr. Kiesling's letter; feelings which I share. Here he is, someone for whom being a career Foreign Service officer was a "dream job", giving up the thing that most impassioned him, because the job, under the current administration, no longer permitted him to do what he most values: be a diplomat and proudly represent his country.
I feel pride because Mr Kiesling elected to do what I too feel was the moral choice remaining to him: resign and make public his reasons for doing so. For me this shows that he is truly a diplomat, not only by career but by passion. As I read his letter, he elected to exit from a situation which, if he'd stayed on, would have required him, effectively, to lie about what is central to him, not only as a professional but as a human being.
During my Fulbright year and afterwards, I've had the opportunity to meet and get to know some people in the Foreign Service both of Mexico and of the US. The good ones are people of vision, thoughtfulness and, often, contagious enthusiasm, who really believe in the ability of diplomacy to make a difference in our sorely troubled human affairs. Obviously Mr Kiesling is one of those, and of a very high order. He shows his quality in the choice he made here, which cannot have been an easy one.
I saw an excerpt from Mr Kiesling's letter in a MoveOn.org mailing this evening ... it came as a grateful surprise to receive the full text from you a few minutes later. Thank you so much for sending it on ... and thanks to Don Pelton for the translation of the Latin. I not only wasn't sure of the translation, I didn't know it was uttered by Caligula (which, sadly, ought not by now to surprise us ...)
Love to you from
Ana

¡¡¡LIEDER DE LISZT!!!

Hace un par de semanas escribí que esperaba --estando nosotros en el Año Liszt-- que no sólo pianistas sino también cantantes estuvieran ensayando Liszt. Porque sus lieder son entre las más hermosas canciones de todo el catálogo decimonónico. Comenté, no del todo bromeando, que sería poco probable porque hay quizás cuatro o cinco pianistas sobre la faz de la tierra capaces de hacerle justicia a esa música.

Bueno, exageré, pero no mucho. El hecho es que las partes del piano de esos lieder de Liszt son, según yo, más difíciles de lo que se puede pensar, porque aquí el pianista no puede salirse con la suya, o sea con puro griterío, porque hay que acoplarse con la voz. Así que pese a su densidad, esta escritura tiene que tocarse con la máxima sutileza y control. Lo cual es cierto de TODA la música de Liszt, sólo que algunos pianistas se dejan llevar por la cantidad de notas que escribió el Maestro.

Pues no llores más Cervantes ... porque acabo de regresar a casa de un concierto que interpretaron la soprano Lourdes Ambriz con Alberto Cruzprieto al piano, ambos excelsos intérpretes mexicanos ... de Debussy ¡Y LISZT! Fue extraordinario. Ambos compositores visionarios y para ambos instrumentos. Titularon al programa "C'est l'Extase", y fue un nombre muy adecuado: yo salí flotando sobre una nube en el paraíso, en la écstasis total.

De Debussy, cuatro canciones misceláneas empezando con "Beau Soir" -muy temprana- y terminando con "Noël des enfants qui n'ont plus de maisons" -muy tardía, con un texto del propio Debussy lamentando los niños que quedaron abandonados y sin techo después de la Primera Guerra Mundial: urgente, chocante, terriblemente triste. Falleció poco después, entre otras razones porque no aguantó lo terrible que fue esa guerra. (Sólo hay que escuchar "En Blanc et Noir" para darse cuenta.) Luego "Ariettes Oubliées" sobre esos poemas inolvidables de Verlaine.

La segunda parte fue puro Liszt: constaba de dos lieder "sueltos" y luego los "Tre Sonetti de Petrarca". Aquí sí que entramos en un lugar muy hermoso y especial, como un terreno reservado para los benditos -- así lo sentía yo. Yo conozco estas canciones pero confieso que mejor en las versiones para piano solo que hizo el propio Liszt: he leído las canciones pero nunca las he interpretado. Lourdes me hizo oír lo ITALIANO de sus líneas vocales, emparejándose con la poesía de Petrarca. ¡Cómo serpean esas líneas, cómo vuelan, cómo su figuración hace respuesta a la poesía y la realzan!

Y Alberto al piano, Alberto que sabe como pocos cómo hacerlo ... hace del piano otra voz, un coro, una orquesta, quizás alguna vez un oboe plañidero, un violonchelo ... Lourdes ha de contarse muy afortunada de tener tamaño colaborador. Los dos nos hicieron escuchar lo medular de esta música que es, en algún sentido lo medular de estos dos compositores, una dosis concentrada de su alma musical. ¡¡BRAVI!!