Yesterday I published a new video of pianist Valentina Lisitsa, containing footage of not formerly published segments of an interview with her about – primarily – Rachmaninoff. I revisited and reconsidered some of my unpublished footage and photos, resulting in this new video, I thought it would be worthwhile to share it with the YouTube audience.
Still from my video (at 12’54”) and from another era it seems… Valentina as a youngster playing chess.
Vrijdag 20 juli 2012 was m’n laatste kantoorwerkdag op de Infotheek bij de Wereldomroep. Ik was daar zo’n 17 jaar fulltime in dienst.
Filmpje: op m’n voorlaatste kantoorwerkdag bij de Wereldomroep kwam NTR-collega Ben Kolster even langs 🙂
Door een gigantische aanslag op het budget – 70% eraf! – moet de Wereldomroep drastisch de koers verleggen en reorganiseren. Daardoor is driewart van de medewerkers – ruim 250 mensen, waaronder ikzelf – boventallig verklaard en noodgedwongen ontslagen.
M’n laatste warme maaltijd bij de Wereldomroep, mmm… rijst met kip-kerrie.
Donderdag 19 juli 2012, gedeelte van het dan nog raadpleegbare knipselarchief.
Ik was geschokt. Hoe kan je dit mooi opgebouwde papieren archief, het resultaat van tientallen jaren monnikenwerk, weggooien?! Had ik een enorm huis en veel geld, dan had ik dit bijzondere archiefje graag overgenomen, maar de realiteit is helaas weer eens weerbarstig.
Vrijdagmiddag 20 juli 2012: het roemloze eindstation van het knipselarchief… de afvalcontainer.
Eros Piano, a work by John Adams, is such a delightful piece. If I were a concert pianist it would be part of my repertory for sure! 🙂 YouTube offers only one performance of Eros Piano, the one here above, played by pianist Jay Gottlieb with L’Ensemble Orchestral de Paris conducted by John Nelson.
Composer John Adams wrote the work – almost a small piano concerto in one movement – in memory of two of his composer heroes, Morton Feldman and Toru Takemitsu. About the music Adams wrote that it’s “a quiet, dreamy soliloquy for piano, played against a soft, lush fabric of orchestral screens and clusters. It was a direct response on my part to a piece by Toru Takemitsu, riverrun, that I had heard in a performance by the English pianist Paul Crossley. (..) I wrote Eros Piano as a tribute to Takemitsu, to Bill Evans, and also to Paul Crossley, whose exquisitly balanced sense of color and attack in music by Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen and Takemitsu reminded me so strongly of that of Bill Evans.”
Pianist Jay Gottlieb with L’Ensemble Orchestral de Paris conducted by John Nelson deliver an enjoyable and admirable performance, but is that enough? Do they reveal the work’s sophisticated soul? I think I’ve heard better in another performance, a well known one, played by pianist Paul Crossley with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s/The London Sinfonietta, conducted by composer John Adams himself and available on the album American Elegies (1991). In my opinion Crossley, Adams and the London Sinfonietta are more convincing in revealing the work’s pleasurable sensuousness and this comes across in many wonderful tonal colours and in their highly sophisticated outline of the work’s dynamics.
From Sunday June 3rd until Friday June 8th, YouTube’s most popular classical pianist, Valentina Lisitsa, is once more streaming her rehearsals LIVE via her Ustream-channel. To watch click here.
Valentina Lisitsa’s rehearsing is a not-to-be missed event for anyone with a serious interest in classical piano playing. From her home in North Carolina Valentina is rehearsing the scheduled programme of her upcoming Royal Albert Hall concert. She’s done this before and up till now she’s the only classical musician that I know of who’s sharing this preparation process in a live event for a worldwide audience. This is really fascinating and a unique opportunity to witness Valentina Lisitsa getting prepared for this major event on June 19th in London.
promotiefilmpje voor het Royal Albert Hall-concert op 19 juni 2012
Vanaf het moment dat ik enkele jaren geleden met Valentina kennismaakte – zie mijn bijdragen op YouTube en op mijn weblog – heb ik geen moment getwijfeld dat haar ster naar de hoogste platforms zou reiken. Het wonderlijke is wel, voor ieder die haar muzikale verrichtingen goed heeft gevolgd, dat de gang naar het grote succes nog zo lang op zich liet wachten, maar ach, over een paar jaar heeft niemand het daar nog over. 🙂
een door mij gemaakte Valentina Lisitsa promo-video van voorjaar 2010
On Saturday May 12th 2012 Concertzender’s broadcast ‘World Minerals’/’Wereldmineralen’, produced by me, was dedicated to recent releases featuring gamelan music. The programme features three albums: [1] ‘Bali – Terompong Beruk’ (2011), played by musicians from the Balinese village Bangle, [2] ‘Java’ by the Sundanese group Sambasunda (2011) and [3] ‘Gamelan of Java – Volume Four: Puspa Warna’ (2010), played by musicians of The Institute of the Arts in Surakarta, Java. On this page you can play the programme ‘on demand’ (by clicking on the speaker icon) and you’ll find more information (in dutch) with a detailed playlist of the programme.
The album ‘Bali – Terompong Beruk’ also includes an interesting documentary, some of which can be seen in the video below.
It turns out I love reading books on a bookreader, more in particular, on the Kobo Touch e-reader. Beautiful simple design, very easy to use and it offers a great reading experience.
I bought the Kobo Touch a couple of days ago and I’m totally hooked. Book reading has never been so comfortable. It’s a revelation! 🙂
In 2007 the closing scene of Steven Spielberg’s A.I., filmed in bad quality from a computer screen, was uploaded on YouTube, this video…
By April 2012 the video had almost 200.000 views and many hundreds of likes and comments. Impressive figures, but what really makes the video interesting and very intriguing to me is that most viewer comments relate to a tearshedding experience when watching this scene. To highlight this ‘sobbing effect’ I decided to do something crazy. I went through the comments, picked the sniffy ones out and then put all the stuff together, separating evry remark only by this ‘|’ mark. In this way the response might work as a ‘special effect’ and also maybe as a sort of tribute to the A.I.-scene that pokes in the gut of soo many people. At least half of the incoming response on the clip is ‘crying’-related. No matter how one looks at this scene – as a tearjerker, a masterfully crafted sensitive masterpiece or something in between – anyone can grasp that this kind of watery response in huge numbers on a video is unusual. You’ll find the response below. I’ve abbreviated many of the comments, but of course I didn’t correct their spelling errors.
OK, here we go… “I cried buckets of tears while a pang gripped my throat|I cried so hard while watching this video|I am a really big guy, bit this makes me cry like a five year old boy!|watched this again to see if it is as sad as i remembered…. and it is *in tears*|It’s so sad…but it’s also so beautiful. It touches something deep inside of you. Tanks Mr. spielberg for these tears|I stopped at 2:33 because I knew waterworks were coming|I tried to use this movie as an example in an essay. I cried like a baby instead|Nothing like having your heart ripped out your chest!back then i cried like a fucking bitch and right now, i’m crying like a whore!| Continue reading →
