Gerbera

#yellowestyellow

Ceramic dancers

Dancers: framed ceramic

The honey-glaze on the ceramic dancers is an old recipe. It runs off a piece if not contained (which is why the figures were created as depressions) and it is too toxic to use on anything you want to eat off (which is why this is not a plate).

The piece was made in New Zealand with clay that fires to a light honey-colour. I didn't realise what a nice clay it is until I started making ceramics in Sydney where the art-school clay fires to a dull concrete-like gray.

Cockatoos

Cockatoos on the roof. They want to be included in my series of  'fabulous ceilings'.
'

Sulphur crested cockatoos on the garage roof

Textile art: knitting a fox cub in winter (2)

When the eight year old (previous post) announced she wanted a fox cub and her mother on the front of the partly knitted jumper I was making, I searched for some quad ruled paper to draw the foxes on and bought skeins of dark blue and dark green wool since the foxes had to be 'just like in the book' .

The picture of fax and cub chosen as motive

Mother fox on Quad ruled paper

Today I sewed the finished jumper together.

Front

Back

As the foxes emerged I showed them to the eight year old - she thinks they are wonderful. Phew...

Textile art: Knitting a fox-cub in winter

I am knitting a jumper for an eight year old with colours she said she liked ... mainly blues and pinks.  

I get a bit bored with plain knitting (thus the ad-lib colours) so when I was a good way up the back, I asked her if she would like an animal picture on the front, perhaps a dinosaur?

She thought a while then said 'I know!' and hurried off to find the book with the picture she was thinking of.  It took a while to find, but she knew exactly what she was looking for and eventually emerged triumphant from her overloaded bookshelves.

'There!' she announced showing the picture. 'I'd like the mother and the cub please. And the snowflakes!'

'Hmmm,' I said, thinking of the half-completed back. 'Can I change the colours a bit?'

'No,' she said, 'it should be exactly these colours!'

Picture from Cub's First Winter by Rebecca Elliott

Children are as absorbent as sponges and very impressionable. I thought it fascinating that this picture book has had such an influence on a child (who is now reading the hobbit) that she wants the mother and cub motive on her jumper.

To be continued ....

Emmanuel Pahud and the ACO

The hall was dimmed ... just a pinkish light at the back - and then a flutist started playing CPE Bach's Flute Sonata in A minor. It was a lovely way to start a concert.

What was even better was the next piece,  JS Bachs Ricercar a 6 from The Musical Offering played by flute and orchestra.

I have just looked up ricercar:

ricercar

ˌriːtʃəˈkɑː,ˈriːtʃəˌkɑː/

noun

Music

noun: ricercar; plural noun: ricercars; noun: ricercare; plural noun: ricercari

1. an elaborate contrapuntal instrumental composition in fugal or canonic style, typically of the 16th to 18th centuries.

It was a fun and fabulous piece of music and hearing it for the first time I wondered why it is not played more often. Bravo Richard Tognetti for putting it in the program and to the ACO playing it with such verve.  Yes, it was an ACO concert and the flutist was the brilliant Emmanuel Pahud.

Songs for Refugees at the Sydney Opera House

Such a moving concert last night at the Utzon Room in the Sydney Opera House.  Three wonderful musicians with passion and insight led us through an emotional repertoire in response to the plight of refugees, particularly those still incarcerated by the Australian Government on Manus and Nauru.

Soprano Ayse Goknur Shanal led the trio with her extraordinary lush and expressive voice, accompanied by cellist Kenichi Mizushima and pianist Harry Collins. The three of them together were riveting and the instrumentalists together (two numbers) equally so.

Cellist Kenichi Mizushima

Hearing artists perform with such passion is an unforgettable experience and these three received a well deserved standing ovation at the end of this generously long concert.

Furruccio Furlanetto sings Schubert in Sydney

Ferruccio Furlanetto sings

Schubert's Winterreise sung by a bass?  Usually this moving song cycle is sung by tenor or baritone and the only bass version I had previously heard had not appealed to me. This evening I heard Furruccio Furlanetto sing Winterreise and realised that it is not the voice type but the ability of the singer to transmit its message to the audience that matters.

Furlanetto is a wonderful sniger and I was captivated by his rendition of this lovely work. It was so expressive and heartfelt while not being forced or over acted. 

Just a delightful concert.

A very late train home

I heard a delightful concert last night, but  my trip home was not so delightful.  The electronic train signage said the train went north but instead it went west and I landed in Blacktown. It didn't help that I was playing patience on my phone and missed announcements for the first few stations.

By the time I realised what had happened it was almost too late ... luckily I registered the Blacktown announcement or I would have landed in Penrith and it would have been too late to get home.

I had a long wait until I could get a train back to Strathfield to catch the train I needed, but oh well, at least I did get home eventually - if very late. This happened to me once before several years ago at Strathfield, but that time a lot of other people were with me. Perhaps last night other misled passengers got off earlier, while I was immersed in my card game.

Fabulous ceilings #2

Paris Opera singers would have known these ceilings well in the twentieth century when the Palais Garnier was the home of the Paris Opera.  The building excels in fabulous everything. I posted photos from a mobile phone in June - these are a little better.

Fabulous ceiling #2 : Ceiling by Chagall in the concert hall of the Palais Garnier

Fabulous Ceiling #3:Golden ceiling with lizards: Palais Garnier reception hall.

Fabulous ceiling #4: Horses nymphs and furious activity: Palais Garnier Hall

Fabulous ceilings#1

Louvre: fabulous ceiling #1

Is it possible to trump this wonderful ceiling in the Louvre?  I wonder how often the inhabitants looked upwards when it was once a royal palace.

My ceiling is not so fabulous, but just in case you do look upwards you'll find some painted wooden birds floating above you. They were bought in Indonesia many years ago, from children selling them on the roadside.

Wooden birds suspended from the ceiling

Kraggerud and the ACO

Kraggerud in Sydney

There is just something about seeing a musician playing music written by a composer from his/her own country and this week I saw/heard a Norwegian violinist, Henning Kraggerud, playing Grieg with the ACO. It was a fine concert and it made me wonder why nationality makes a difference. A complex question that probably has several answers.

Kraggerud took the opportunity to explain exactly what he and the orchestra were playing to the audience. He got a good reception.

Their last piece, Grieg's String Quartet No 1 in G Major is a piece I know well as I made a movie called Dancing Violins featuring this piece in 2010 at the National Art School in Sydney. When you make an animated movie like this you start from the soundtrack and listen to it, or bits of it, over and over and over again - much as  musician does when practicing a piece.

I used the soundtrack from the Engegård Quartet, a Norwegian Quartet I had just heard at the Maribor Music Festival and who graciously consented to me using their soundtrack.

Dancing Violins

Kraggerud and the ACO played Grieg much as the Engegård Quartet played Grieg, with that indefinable touch that makes you feel as if this is really how the composer heard this music in his own head. 

Winter (etching)

It doesn't pay to put your woollies away too early. We are back to winter this week. It was 9C this morning but felt like 0C because of the wind chill factor.

This is an etching I did in Dunedin where the bath was my refuge in winter. I added the colouring more recently.

Winter

Imogen Cooper - a win win situation

Imogen Cooper plays

You have to be careful what sort of concert you hear after a five star Parsifal but I think I chose just the thing. I heard pianist Imogen Cooper playing Beethoven and Hayden at the Sydney City Recital Hall.

Cooper is as expert in her field as the Parsifal singers were in theirs and the program she chose was clever as well. Light-hearted Beethoven Bagatelles leading into a serious Hayden then a fun Beethoven Variations (yes, Beethoven can be surprisingly witty) before a sombre-piquant piece by Adès leading into Beethoven's Sonata 31, the final piece.

Cooper played the Bagatelles with impish charm. Actually charm sums up a lot of Cooper. She is humorous and enthusiastic and it shows in her music making. After the concert someone near me complemented her playing and she replied “ Well I enjoy playing for you so it's a win win situation."

After the fun pieces she jumped up off the piano stool to bow with a grin but the final Beethoven sonata was different. Captive to the music, she came back to us with much more difficulty. I find those exposed intimate moments so telling. The feeling was mirrored in her.listeners who clapped her back onto stage again and again - not so common in Sydney audiences.

Music played with aplomb and depth of feeling. Cooper and Parsifal have lots in common.

Two times Parsifal

If you look at blogs about recordings of Wagner's music you find connoisseurs discussing which singer is best on which recording. Each recording has one or two blemishes together with outstanding performers.  It is rather a pity that the Sydney Parsifal was not recorded (at least not to my knowledge) as there were no blemishes at all.

Music is so therapeutic. I was still energy-less after a nasty travel gastro when I booked the Tuesday performance (I had already booked Saturday). I thought the music would help recovery and I was right. The Adelaide Ring Cycle had helped me in similar circumstances, resulting in a book.

Parsifal in Sydney

I was reading Wagner's letters to Mathilda Wesendonk (original version, online for free) on the way to Sydney to see Wagner's opera Parsifal and came across a letter (July 1859) telling Mathilda about Wolfram's book Parsifal. 'There are so many gaps in the story,' writes Wagner, 'if you wrote an opera you'd have to explain too much. It won't be me who writes it! Let someone else do it and Liszt can write the music!” 

He also recommends Mathilde read a book on Buddhism that he had recently discovered. At the time Wagner was immersed in Tristan and Isolde, but his letters show the beginnings of Parsifal even at this early stage.
 
I thought about Wagner's letter as I listened to bass Kwangchul Youn sing the role of Gurnemanz, the character who does most of the 'explaining' in this over five hour opera. Youl sang his very long part part with firmness and vocal ease setting the stage for a wonderful cast of characters of carry on the story. The wonderful reviews this performance is receiving are well deserved (five and a half stars out of five). 
 

Purple carpet in the Sydney Opera House

Dinner on the purple steps.

Parsifal is seldom performed in Australia so it was no surprise to find that Wagner fans had flown in from all over the country to hear this concert performance. I overheard guests remarking on the large number of people from Melbourne in the audience and I bumped into a friend from New Zealand who booked tickets to two of the three performances. His mate was going to all three. Well, it's Parsifal, so why wouldn't you if you could? Particularly with the singers Opera Australia lined up for the performance which include star German tenor Jonas Kaufmann, American mezzo soprano Michelle DeYoung and Australian baritone Warwick Fyfe. Not many singers can sing these demanding roles but this cast was, without exception, excellent, even faced with the very ordinary concert hall acoustics.

The sooner Sydney gets an acoustically wonderful opera house the better but how could an opera house anywhere else compete with these views?

View from the Sydney Opera House

Sewing Sunday

Last time I made covers for the cushions of my old (1970s) cane chairs, I pinned the gaps instead of sewing them closed, something I realised only this weekend, when when I replaced them.  The pins were rusty and difficult to remove. Perhaps I never finished them because I was unconvinced about the cover material, or was it lack of time or just laziness?

Whatever the cause, those covers have now been discarded and replaced by a new set - this time with the back gap sewn shut.

Perhaps these ones are permanent.

Odd how much more prominent
the pattern looks in a photo. 

Hard landing

I have been back in Australia for two weeks, but it has been a hard landing. Jetlag always seems to be harder on the way back to Australia but I was just about in my right time zone and almost had the stomach bug defeated when I had to have a tooth extracted, a cracked tooth I had been trying to save but which had become re-infected. My choice was to have it extracted 'now' or wait a month and I chose 'now'.  The decision saved me from a month of dire imaginings, but it was a difficult extraction.

The upside of the story is that while I hibernated and recovered from all my woes I developed a strong urge to de-clutter and took the opportunity to act on the urge. Out went clothes, books, CDs and unused household items. Only art materials were spared and they are my main space invader, but you've gotta have what you've gotta have.

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Coffee in Oz

First coffee back in Australia after nearly two months.

I heard in London that there are several new cafés being started by Australians. I can see why they would be successful. The coffee shops I visited in London all felt a bit like conveyer belt establishments. Slick, perhaps, but lacking that personal touch.

A movie marathon

I made it home safe and sound and the flight back did not seem as long as usual.

Partly that must be due to the three excellent German movies I watched:  Mr & Mrs Adelman, My blind date with life (Meine blinde Date mit dem Leben) and SMS for you (SMS für Dich). I recommend them all - charming, witty and insightful. 

Singapore Airlines knows how to pick them.  I watched Barbara on the way over and it was also excellent (about the difficult choices people had to make about living in East or West during the DDR days).

I listened to Jonas Kaufmann sing his way through Mahler's Lied von der Erde, a new recording from Vienna with Kaufmann singing both tenor and baritone parts. I enjoyed it so much (with noise cancelling headphones - best travel investment ever) I listened to the whole thing twice.  I think I'll have to buy the CD. There were still some hours until landing so I watched a New York production of Romeo and Juliet with Orlando Blum playing Romeo.

No wonder the flights seemed shorter - and in fact they are, an hour and a half shorter than the other direction and you notice the difference.

Now I'm back in NSW. It must be winter as lots of people on the train had colds although the temperature is about the same as Hamburg in early June. The difference is that houses here are chronically underinsulated and underheated so it seems much much colder.