Fantastic last evening performance from Radio 3′s Schubertiad:
On the final evening of The Spirit of Schubert, Tom Service and Sara Mohr-Pietsch present performances of Schubert’s late, great works by some of the world’s fore-most interpreters of Schubert’s music.
In a recording of a recital from the world famous Schubertiad in Schwarzenberg in Austria, pianist Paul Lewis performs three works Schubert wrote in the spring before he died, but left untitled and weren’t published until 40 years after his death. The Three Piano Pieces D946 written in the spring before he died.
Baritone Christian Gerhaher and pianist Gerold Huber recorded at Wigmore Hall in London, perform the collection of songs published just months after his death, and given the title Schwanengesang or Swan Song.
The Takacs Quartet are joined by cellist Jan Vogler in their performance of Schubert’s final chamber work. Composed just two months before Schubert’s death, this performance of his sublime String Quintet in C D956. was recorded at last spring’s Schwetzingen Festival.
Alfred Brendel introduces his performance of Schubert’s final Piano Sonata in B flat D960. Written in the last months of his life, Brendel says of the sonata that this final one could be called the most beautiful and moving, the most resigned and harmoniously balanced.
Schubert: Three Piano Pieces D.946
Paul Lewis (Piano)
Schubert: Schwanengesang – song cycle D.957
Christian Gerhaher (Baritone), Gerold Huber (Piano)
Schubert: Quintet in C major D.956 for 2 violins, viola and 2 cellos
Takacs Quartet, Jan Vogler (cello)
Schubert: Sonata in B flat major D.960 for piano
Alfred Brendel (piano).
Schulz wrote: “Outside it is a cold day, hard and unyielding, full of prose and harshness. But good spirits have gathered around my bed, beside me are two volumes of Rilke that I have borrowed. From time to time I enter his difficult and intense world for a moment, beneath his many-arched skies, and again I come to myself.”
Nicole Krauss reads ‘My Father’s Last Escape’ for The New Yorker
Two elements dominate the Journals: the ongoing grievance of feeling forever left out, and a passion for writing that promises repeatedly to save the diarist from himself. There are, of course, entries here and there about politics, literature, the idea of America, New York intellectuals, women and career, the Brooklyn of his childhood; but for the most part, the book is a remarkably faithful record—kept day after week after month after year—of these emotional preoccupations. The result is a document that gives us a vivid portrait of the man in whom these contradictions live. At times it seems as though his entire life is composed only of the meanest and the most exalted of impulses, competing endlessly for his inner attention.
According to the writer, her husband believes she has treated him ‘monstrously’. We have to take her word for that, because the former Mr Cusk, or whatever he is called, has not committed his feelings to print. Nor, I suspect, will he do so: it is simply not what men do. This may be because they are shallow or emotionally constipated, unable to articulate their feelings properly. Or it may be because in every such case the man is the transgressor and doesn’t have a leg to stand on, so wisely keeps schtum.
Jobs might have made the light of common day shine brighter, and he is due great credit for that, but he didn’t turn our eyes towards another reality or change the way we see the one we know. Thereafter, if those cultists who will queue through the night for whatever Apple produces next persist in their idolatry, we may have to remind them that our sense of desperate alienation when they fail is a degrading consequence of his marvellous inventions, that the being iTuned day and night is a diminution of one’s humanity not an enhancement of it, and that the democratic conversation to which his gadgets grant universal access has turned out to be an opinionated, vitriolic babble compared with which the Tower of Babel was a model of enlightened discourse.
I hope for his sake, personally, that Steve Jobs is in Paradise.
The tricky part for anyone is realizing that it’s just about filtering & channeling whatever interests or talents you may have into something, which allows for that to be fully expressed – and on a repeat basis till you either get good at it or realize you should have done something else.
In the early part of the 20th century, both Duchamp and the composer Erik Satie professed the desire to live without memory. For them it was a way of being present to the wonders of the everyday. Yet, it seems, every book on creative writing insists that “memory is often the primary source of imaginative experience.” The how-to sections of these books strike me as terribly unsophisticated, generally coercing us to prioritize the theatrical over the mundane as the basis of our writings: “Using the first-person point of view, explain how a 55-year-old man feels on his wedding day. It is his first marriage.” I prefer the ideas of Gertrude Stein, who, writing in the third person, tells of her dissatisfaction with such techniques: “She experimented with everything in trying to describe. She tried a bit inventing words but she soon gave that up. The english language was her medium and with the english language the task was to be achieved, the problem solved. The use of fabricated words offended her, it was an escape into imitative emotionalism.”
For the past several years, I’ve taught a class at the University of Pennsylvania called “Uncreative Writing.” In it, students are penalized for showing any shred of originality and creativity. Instead they are rewarded for plagiarism, identity theft, repurposing papers, patchwriting, sampling, plundering, and stealing. Not surprisingly, they thrive. Suddenly what they’ve surreptitiously become expert at is brought out into the open and explored in a safe environment, reframed in terms of responsibility instead of recklessness.
We retype documents and transcribe audio clips. We make small changes to Wikipedia pages (changing an “a” to “an” or inserting an extra space between words). We hold classes in chat rooms, and entire semesters are spent exclusively in Second Life. Each semester, for their final paper, I have them purchase a term paper from an online paper mill and sign their name to it, surely the most forbidden action in all of academia. Students then must get up and present the paper to the class as if they wrote it themselves, defending it from attacks by the other students. What paper did they choose? Is it possible to defend something you didn’t write? Something, perhaps, you don’t agree with? Convince us.
French novelist Patrick Poivre D’Arvor is being sued by his ex-lover, Agathe Borne, for allegedly publishing her love letters in his novel, Fragments of a Lost Woman. D’Arvor is arguing that it is “self-fiction”. Borne, a former model and would-be writer, is suing for breach of privacy and literary theft over the novel, alleged to be a disguised account of their two-year affair.
Borne argues that D’Arvor only published the billets doux out of revenge when she left him to go back to her husband and children. The letters include such sentiments as: “Your skin and your smell obsess me. I would like to feel your body, your sex, your mouth, your hands, to lose awareness of time. To kiss you, to abandon myself to the limit.” And: “My brain is a box of surprises. But my body exalts in love.” On the one hand, this beats: “Don’t forget the milk and can you record Downton Abbey for me?” On the other, très embarrassant, n’est ce pas?
It’s not the sexuality that’s so mortifying – it’s the lousy, try-hard writing. Perchance this is an occupational hazard of falling for an author – this tendency to go overboard in erotic correspondence, trying to impress your heart’s desire with your turn of phrase. The next thing you know, it’s (allegedly) “fictionalised” in a book and everyone is having a good titter at your bons mots.
The verdict will be announced in the autumn, but one can’t help but feel sorry for Borne – she’s gone from being caught up in a grand passion to being unofficially shortlisted for the Bad Sex award. Is it too late for her to change tack and refuse to admit she wrote any of it?
The French way of love has been under the spotlight recently with the DSK scandal and the discussion of what it means to be a ‘homme a femmes’. On reading the piece, I found myself in sympathy with Ellen’s distaste for Borne’s exuberant declarations. The seem willfully immature, but I suppose that it does occur to me that this coolness might have its origins in la froideur brittanique and a lack of exposure to Baudelaire in my adolescent years?
An enjoyable new play by Ryan Craig at the National Theatre.
Our protagonist, David (Henry Goodman), is a kosher caterer from Edgware who has a lot on his plate (food is everywhere in this play!). It’s the day before the funeral of his eldest son, Daniel, who died while fighting with the IDF in Gaza. David’s business is on the verge of collapse and he’s pinning his hopes on doing the catering at the wedding of wealthy, old friend’s daughter. His wife is supportive, but weary; his youngest son seems depressed and lost. His daughter, though outwardly very successful, has outraged more conservative members of the north London jewish community by working for a commission investigating alleged war crimes committed by the IDF. A rich brew that makes for an entertaining exploration of loyalty, guilt and identity.
As has been noted in several reviews, not everything feels entirely new. In particular, the play would appear to borrow liberally from All My Sons by Arthur Miller and more generally Craig, like Miller, is aiming to bring the past into the present. He does pretty well with it and is helped by good direction and fine acting.
More information:
The Holy Rosenbergs (289.48 kB) reviews of the Ryan Craig play produced at the National Theatre, 2011.
Feature article on Ryan Craig and the cast of The Holy Rosenbergs, The Jewish Chronicle
