New Year's Day
Much of the morning was spent watching the BBC's broadcast of the Vienna New Year's Day Concert (I was going to link to the Vienna Philharmonic website, but it's unavailable at the moment). I actually thought the eighty-five year-old Georges Prêtre was a delight to see, and I do not think the moniker of 'a conducting corpse on LSD' is at all deserved or kind (who was it who came up with such a thing?). I laughed when he turned around during the Radetzky March and conducted the audience with their timed clapping. I enjoyed the short ballet sequences which were simultaneously broadcast from the Kunsthistoriches Museum to accompany some of the pieces, too.
In the afternoon, I visited the newly reopened Medieval & Renaissance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum; and realised I'd neglected to take my camera when I wanted to take a picture of an entire three-storey Medieval staircase and an almost whole facade. But I fully intend going back soon.
I'm afraid I did rather spend money like water in the V&A bookshop. I wish I could buy its entirety. I gasped inwardly at every shelf. Everything was a treasure and would also be utterly invaluable reference material for work.
Stopped for a few minutes to watch the skaters at the Natural History Museum's ice rink. I cannot skate and have only tried once. With no success. I have this enchanting image of Tatyana from Pushkin's Eugene Onegin gliding with subdued and effortless grace across the ice*. That is precisely how I should like to be able to do it. Perhaps one day. A long, long way away.
The quote of the day had to be: NME: the music world's answer to The Sun**. Pronounced 'Enemy'. Found on a novelty mug of musical terms in the Crypt gift shop of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, where I dropped by on my way home.
Music
Speaking of which, I fell instantly in love with a new piece of music upon first hearing it during the small hours of New Year's Day: The Melancholic Waltz (Marvel Pieces for violin and piano), by Imants Zemzaris.
Letter
I wrote to my friend (and former tutor) and his wife. I hadn't written them in such an unconscionably long time, and thought to make something of a novelty out of the letter by means of recompense.
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The letter is a little booklet (fits in the palm).
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(I'm hoping the writing is small enough here to curtail the potential indelicacy of its being fully readable via the screen... But at any rate, the news in these visible pages is nothing private and has already been mentioned in this journal)
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The 'pocket'/'casing' unfolds to further continue the letter.
I can't claim full credit for its invention. The folding technique for the casing was from a book.
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* Admittedly, this image has more to do with the 1999 film adaptation, which, by the by, I can thoroughly recommend.
** The Sun, for my non-UK friends, is a British tabloid newspaper of particularly scurrilous character.
Much of the morning was spent watching the BBC's broadcast of the Vienna New Year's Day Concert (I was going to link to the Vienna Philharmonic website, but it's unavailable at the moment). I actually thought the eighty-five year-old Georges Prêtre was a delight to see, and I do not think the moniker of 'a conducting corpse on LSD' is at all deserved or kind (who was it who came up with such a thing?). I laughed when he turned around during the Radetzky March and conducted the audience with their timed clapping. I enjoyed the short ballet sequences which were simultaneously broadcast from the Kunsthistoriches Museum to accompany some of the pieces, too.
In the afternoon, I visited the newly reopened Medieval & Renaissance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum; and realised I'd neglected to take my camera when I wanted to take a picture of an entire three-storey Medieval staircase and an almost whole facade. But I fully intend going back soon.
I'm afraid I did rather spend money like water in the V&A bookshop. I wish I could buy its entirety. I gasped inwardly at every shelf. Everything was a treasure and would also be utterly invaluable reference material for work.
Stopped for a few minutes to watch the skaters at the Natural History Museum's ice rink. I cannot skate and have only tried once. With no success. I have this enchanting image of Tatyana from Pushkin's Eugene Onegin gliding with subdued and effortless grace across the ice*. That is precisely how I should like to be able to do it. Perhaps one day. A long, long way away.
The quote of the day had to be: NME: the music world's answer to The Sun**. Pronounced 'Enemy'. Found on a novelty mug of musical terms in the Crypt gift shop of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, where I dropped by on my way home.
Music
Speaking of which, I fell instantly in love with a new piece of music upon first hearing it during the small hours of New Year's Day: The Melancholic Waltz (Marvel Pieces for violin and piano), by Imants Zemzaris.
Letter
I wrote to my friend (and former tutor) and his wife. I hadn't written them in such an unconscionably long time, and thought to make something of a novelty out of the letter by means of recompense.
The letter is a little booklet (fits in the palm).
(I'm hoping the writing is small enough here to curtail the potential indelicacy of its being fully readable via the screen... But at any rate, the news in these visible pages is nothing private and has already been mentioned in this journal)
The 'pocket'/'casing' unfolds to further continue the letter.
I can't claim full credit for its invention. The folding technique for the casing was from a book.
-----------------------------------
* Admittedly, this image has more to do with the 1999 film adaptation, which, by the by, I can thoroughly recommend.
** The Sun, for my non-UK friends, is a British tabloid newspaper of particularly scurrilous character.