ahem

"FEMA told not to use the word 'ice' in storm mesaging to avoid confusion and online mockery" - CNN.

Yeah, because then this will happen:

concert review: Symphony San Jose

I don't often get to SSJ, despite its geographic convenience, but I wanted this one because they were playing Schumann's Fourth Symphony. Besides being my favorite Schumann, it's been cursed for the SSJ. George Cleve was going to lead it in 2015, but he canceled due to what proved to be his final illness, and his replacement substituted another Schumann symphony. Then in 2020 they scheduled it for a concert which disappeared into the pandemic.

But today it finally got played, under the baton of François López-Ferrer. And it was worth the trouble to come: a firm, energetic, and zippy performance, especially notable for not letting the slow interlude sections get drippy. Concertmaster Sam Weiser was especially good in the soft middle section of the Romanze movement.

This symphony exists in two forms; Schumann originally wrote it just after his light First "Spring" Symphony, and that version bears the same air, but he set it aside and reworked it ten years later. Though the second version is more often played, it's gotten a lot of criticism for being clotted and murky, but López-Ferrer likes it better this way (as do I), calling it heavier and deeper. It's in D Minor, and ought to sound that way; it's also built on the same template as Beethoven's Fifth, and it ought to sound that way too.

Similarly, or maybe not so similarly, there are two entirely different works known as Schubert's Rosamunde Overture, both of them repurposed from other operas, both of which Schubert may have used for different performances of Rosamunde. Or maybe not; it isn't clear. Anyway, López-Ferrer wasn't sure which one SSJ had until he got here. We heard the better-known one, the one from Die Zauberharfe, and maybe it ought to be called that. It was a crisp but rather blatty rendition.

Sibelius's Violin Concerto also comes in two versions, but the revised one is always the one that's played. Despite gorgeous tone from soloist Geneva Lewis, matching her gossamer sky-blue dress, it was a dull and flaccid performance under the baton, even the finale which is supposed to be jaunty. This is what we had to sit through to get to the Schumann.

two and a half concerts

San Francisco Symphony, Thursday
What do you do if you're conducting Beethoven's Fifth, the best-known symphony ever written? John Storgårds' answer is, lead it as if it's never been played before. The crispness, the intensity, and the variations in tempo and flow made this an exciting, even riveting, performance of the old masterworks. It helps to remember that, familiar as it now is, it's the most startling and revolutionary symphony ever written, which is what made it so iconic in the first place.
Seong-Jin Cho was probably badly cast as soloist in Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1. He's good with lyrical music, but this is a clangy and rigid concerto. Cho vamped ineffectively all over the keyboard while the string orchestra got to do the lyrical part. In the back, standing up whenever he was playing, was SFS principal trumpet Mark Inouye in the second soloist part. He was billed as a soloist and got to share an encore with Cho, but he came out with the orchestra as well as was seated with them.
And the US premiere of The Rapids of Life by 40-year-old Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen. This is perhaps the first piece of music ever written depicting the experience of giving birth: cascading down rapids is what the composer describes her rather quick labor as resembling. The comparison was not obvious from the music, which was ten minutes of fast-moving soundscape.

Sarah Cahill, Friday
Brief (one set, 70 minutes) piano recital featuring elegies and homages. Designed by the performer to bring us together in a time of loss and oppression. (The news out of the occupied territory that was formerly the state of Minnesota keeps getting worse.) I didn't attend this concert up in the City in person, but bought a livestream ticket; Old First's technicians have improved greatly since I last tried this during the pandemic. Cahill specializes in newer music, and there were pieces by the likes of Maggi Payne (written mostly for the foot pedals) and Sam Adams; also a Fugue to David Tudor by Lou Harrison that was twelve-tone (why, Lou, why?). But the bulk of the program, with each movement outweighing any other piece on the program, was Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin, which besides evoking Couperin's baroque elegance is in memory of a series of Ravel's friends who were killed in WW1.

California Symphony, Saturday
This concert was about the winds. Began with excerpts from Mozart's Don Giovanni arranged for the standard wind ensemble of the time (2 each of oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn), which is what they did in those days instead of playing it on the radio. Concluded with Schubert's Great C Major Symphony. Conductor Donato Cabrera pointed out that, unusually for the time, nearly all the themes are introduced by the winds, so he had the woodwind section seated in front around him (though the horns, which are just as important, stayed in back with the brass). This both magnified the sound of the winds and emphasized the parts where only the strings were playing. Pretty lively but not revelatory performance.
And the Cello Concerto by Friedrich Gulda, best-known as a pianist (he was Martha Argerich's teacher), with Nathan Chan as soloist, written in 1980 and one of the strangest and goofiest pieces of music I've ever heard. The orchestra was winds and a few brass, plus a drum kit, a bass player, and a guitarist who was mostly on acoustic but switched to an electric guitar for one section where those three played jazz/rock to alternate with the more sedate winds while the solo cello tried to keep up. Other sections included a stately minuet where the drummer switched to tambourine, and a raucous marching-band finale. Amused the audience no end.

world according to cat on top

Tybalt has different habits for the two of us. For one thing, he doesn't bug me when I'm sleeping, but he does bug B. As a result, we lock him out of the bedroom at night. This means that if I'm up and about, he pays me even more attention than he would otherwise.

He likes to climb up onto my shoulders and perch around the back of my neck for a while. (Usually he puts his front paws up on my chest, and I lift him up.) That way he can lick my hair. But he does this only when I'm standing; if I sit down he jumps off. When I'm working at the computer, he likes to prowl around my desk and knock things off. Like the trackball. If he's too annoying, I pick him up. Usually he climbs off me onto the table behind, then jumps down to the floor and back up on the desk again.

But sometimes when I pick him up, he will settle down and cuddle on my chest. He was doing that last night while I was registering for a ticket, and it wanted to send a confirmation code to my cell phone. Blast; the phone was in another room. So I got up, still holding Tybalt to my chest. He was quite startled at this, and climbed up onto his usual position on my shoulders. Then he jumped down when I sat down at the computer again.

fighting minor frustrations

1. Our tv set has been misbehaving. It was refusing to connect to the wifi on which we get streaming channels like Netflix, although our wifi is otherwise working fine. B., who has 95% of the tv set usage in the household, thinks it may be a lemon. Nevertheless I contacted AT&T, our ISP and cable provider (some people will say AT&T doesn't provide tv service, but it does) to fix it. And eventually a technician came by who fixed the problem. (Mostly: another streaming channel we just subscribed to isn't working right.) "What did you do?" I asked. He didn't really know. "Magic hands," he suggested, holding them up, and indeed he even looked rather like Ben Carson.
An earlier interaction on the phone had produced a suggestion that our router (modem) and receiver (the box that attaches to the tv) needed to be replaced. I doubted this would fix the problem, but I said OK and they shipped the boxes. I was immediately stuck when the instructions for the router showed you where to plug in the coaxial cable, but the actual router contained no such plug. So forget that. I asked Mr Magic Hands what to do with them, since we'd received conflicting instructions on whether to return or discard the old ones. He said return them, which meant take them in to a UPS store, which would ship them without charge to me.
So I took them in. They took one of the two boxes but refused to accept the other one, for reasons unclear. I refused to take it back. I said my job was to take them in to a UPS store; shipping was their responsibility. So I just left it there and walked out.
Then I called AT&T and reported this, and they promised not to charge me for failure to return equipment.

2. For a long time, one of my regular lunches has been a can of menudo soup supplemented with albóndigas, Mexican meatballs, which are lighter and tastier than Anglo meatballs. (They contain rice as binder.) I would defrost a handful from a bag of frozen albóndigas that I'd buy at Smart & Final.
But alas, it seems that Smart & Final no longer carries these. I've checked quite a few large Mexican groceries - a species quite common in this area - and none of them carry albóndigas in any form other than canned albóndiga soup, which is not what I want.
So I found a recipe online and made my own. They're not a match for the ones I used to buy, but good enough.

Oscar the grouch

Good lord, the only Oscar-nominated film of this year that I've seen so far is K-pop Demon Hunters, which was on some streaming service that I get, and since I'd read some buzz about it, I decided to watch it. I thought it not a bad film, certainly watchable. It reminded me of the movie of Josie and the Pussycats - incoherent premise (do they fight the demons with their voices, or not? Seems to have it both ways), enjoyable camaraderie among the band (which is also what I liked about the all-female Ghostbusters), not-intolerable music. In fact the songs here were much more agreeable than anything I've previously been handed with the label "K-pop" on it, though I don't plan on running out and listening to any more of it.

But looking at the films nominated for major awards, nothing grabs my interest. I don't want to see horror movies, which leaves out Sinners and Weapons, I don't want to see movies about torturing people or people in great suffering, which leaves out Bugonia and It Was Just an Accident and If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, I don't want to see movies about sports, which leaves out Marty Supreme and F1, I don't want to see a faithful adaptation of a novel I found terminally boring, which leaves out Frankenstein. I like Shakespeare so I ought to be interested in Hamnet, but the reviews make it sound dire; I like musical theater and its history so I ought to be interested in Blue Moon but the trailer made it sound whiny. If I were to see any of these, it'd probably be One Battle After Another, but the new films I've noted as possible watches haven't gotten Oscar nominations. I'm curious about The Choral, but it got bad reviews.

news comment

1. Some gadfly is objecting to a congressman running for governor on the grounds that he isn't a California resident. That strikes me as unfair. A member of Congress is functionally the local area's ambassador to the federal government. That person has to have their usual residence near the federal government, since that's where their job is. On the other hand, the whole point of their being there is that they're a citizen of their district. The congressman maintains a California address and uses it as his voting address. He's legitimate, and so are many other members of Congress who've run for governor of various states before now (e.g. our Pete Wilson was a senator when he was elected governor in 1990).

2. An apartment building a few blocks away from us - about 1/4 mile - had a major fire yesterday. News report: "A two-alarm fire ripped through a Sunnyvale apartment complex Tuesday morning, displacing two-dozen residents, authorities said. ... “Preliminary information indicates that three of the eight units sustained significant fire and smoke damage,” authorities said, “and the building as a whole was damaged.” No injuries were reported. The American Red Cross is providing assistance to the displaced residents." And it's not the only recent local one.
And I wonder if the displaced residents will be allowed access to their belongings, or if the building will be torn down and hauled away along with everything in it. I'm not impressed with the 'be grateful you're alive' argument. That has nothing to do with it. If your belongings were burned in the fire, that's fate. But if the authorities can't find a way for you to retrieve your belongings, the authorities are to blame.

3. So let's say the US does something that causes NATO to "collapse." What's left? Well, the EU plus the UK and Norway are already acting together for defense of NATO territory, so that's basically the European side of NATO. If Canada joins in, that means NATO hasn't collapsed, just that the US has flounced out of it.

son of Smith post

So I wrote about the conference on Clark Ashton Smith that I attended. I've now had the chance to follow a link that I took note of during the panels. It's a (virtually?) complete file of Smith's writings online. If you've never tried his writings, here's your chance. One story of his that I found searingly memorable will make a bracing introduction to whether Smith is an author for you. Unusually for Smith, the main character of this one is the hero, not the villain, but nothing goes well for anybody in this story. I'm reminded as much of Tiptree's "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" as of anything else by this story.

concert review: Saratoga Symphony

Once the bargain basement of local community orchestras, the Saratoga Symphony has improved tremendously in recent years. They did a pretty good job with the obscure but enormous Busoni Piano Concerto a couple years ago, and brought back the same pianist, local star Tamami Honma, in the very famous and also very large Rachmaninoff Second Concerto for a concert in a nearby church which, contrary to Saratoga's tradition of wreathing their programs in complete obscurity, they advertised heavily.

Honma played in a clotted but compelling manner, and the orchestra surged effectively. Music director Jason Klein craftily put the concerto after intermission, so as to force the audience that had come for it to also hear the other major piece, Sibelius's Fourth Symphony. This is by all odds the most inscrutable of all Sibelius symphonies, and a real challenge for the orchestra: not that it's particularly hard to play, but that it's very hard to interpret coherently. But this worked pretty well, especially keeping the drive up in the finale, and technically it did quite well for the community orchestra level.

concert review: San Francisco Symphony

My first concert of the calendar year, and almost a month since the last one.

The first time I heard Edward Gardner guest conduct SFS, I thought he led hot and sizzling performances. Half of that Edward Gardner showed up this time.

The half that didn't led the Bruch G-minor Violin Concerto. Soloist Randall Goosby had a remarkably light and smooth tone, and drove his part forward pretty well, but as an orchestral piece this was bland and dull. I wasn't too excited by the rendition of Vaughan Williams's Overture to The Wasps either, though the sound of the orchestra was unusually broad and shiny, especially in the winds.

This sound quality reappeared in places like the flute choir passages of Holst's "Saturn," and yes, The Planets was the good half of the concert. Hot and sizzling it was when the score called for it, but the most remarkable movement was the quietest, "Neptune," a most crisp and clear but delicate performance of an often-fuzzy piece. I left stripped of the forebodings I'd felt during intermission.