#447 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Saturday September 3)
Good morning,
MUSIC
If you love the violin (and even if you don’t), try playing one or both of the following violin concerti, even only as background music.
TCHAIKOVSKY
The first is the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. Tchaikovsky wrote it while recovering from depression on Lake Geneva. For those who attended the Bowl’s Fireworks Spectacular last month, Daniel Bell is the soloist, one of the finest of our time:
MENDELSOHN
This next one is the Mendelsohn Violin Concerto. Most violin concerti are a back-and-forth between the violin and the orchestra, sometimes playing in unison and other times at counterpoint. The Mendelsohn is the only one (of which I’m aware) that doesn’t let the soloist settle in before playing. The violin enters in the second bar. This is the great Itzhak Perlman:
POETRY
This week’s poem comes from Patricia Lambert:
Family
By Grace Paley
My father was brilliant embarrassed funny handsome
my mother was plain serious principled kind
my grandmother was intelligent lonesome for her
other life her dead children silent
my aunt was beautiful bitter angry loving
I fell among these adjectives in earliest childhood
and was nearly buried with opportunity
some of them stuck to me others
finding me American and smooth slipped away
Happy weekend!
Glenn
From the archives: