concert review: Stanford Philharmonia

I skipped out on the SF Symphony, which was playing pieces by Beethoven and Rachmaninoff that I like but are not among my favorites, and went here instead because they were playing two of my most cherished works of the early 20C: Ernest Bloch's Concerto Grosso No. 1 and Sibelius's Symphony No. 3.

The Bloch was stunningly good. There were a few wobbles in the strings here and elsewhere, but generally the playing was of professional quality. It was crisp, bold, and sharply etched. This is the perfect approach to Bloch's jagged writing, but the same approach sat rather oddly on the atmospheric Sibelius symphony. Frequently, background oscillations in the strings somewhere would be more prominent than the theme. However, the climaxes were gigantically exciting, so there's that. I was pretty satisfied with the Sibelius for adventure, though it was a rather emotionless rendition. Prof. Paul Phillips is the music director and conductor.

A third work on the program I'd known nothing about but it raised my curiosity. It was the Concerto Grosso for Guitar Quartet and Orchestra by Anthony Burgess (1987). Yes, the author of A Clockwork Orange was also a composer, mostly for the drawer - it was a good way to change gears between novels, he said - but occasional performance. This work had only been played once before, ever.

Unfortunately, either as a guitar concerto or a concerto grosso, it didn't quite work. The acoustic guitar is a very quiet instrument, and it's difficult to keep the orchestra from drowning it out. Burgess could have used some tips from Joaquin Rodrigo as to how to do it right. As it was, the guitars - even four of them, played by the Mela Guitar Quartet - could not be heard when the orchestra was also playing. The orchestration had a tendency to blare, which is not something you want to hear in a guitar concerto.

He called it a concerto grosso because there were 4 soloists, about the number for a good concertino group, but he didn't treat them as such. Because they couldn't be heard with the orchestra, instead of blending and counterpointing as in a good concerto grosso, it was alternation between soloists and orchestra, as in a 19C concerto. What's more, he treated the soloists as a single unit, a big 24-string guitar, instead of separating them.

The orchestral writing, besides being blatty, was tonal conservative modernism with no particular outstanding qualities, rather dry and academic to my ear, though some of that could have been the performance.

in quest of trackball

When I first started using a graphic computer interface - about 30 years ago; I was a late adopter - I quickly realized that the interface tool I wanted was not a mouse, and certainly not a touchpad, but a trackball.

A trackball is basically a mouse upside down, with the ball that senses movement exposed at the top. Because the device as a whole does not move, it requires less desktop space than a mouse; and because the ball is moved with the user's fingers, the irritation of the desktop surface not providing enough friction to move the mouse's ball does not arise.

I got myself one of this model:


Or two, actually. I took one to work and plugged it into my computer there, and took it with me whenever I changed jobs, rather than use the mouse that was already there.

I've been through five or six of them over the years - the click buttons eventually wear out - but always the same model.

Until now. I went to order one online and found the price had increased to over five times as much as other models of wired trackballs. (I insist on wired auxiliaries on my computer, because they can't be mislaid.) The same manufacturer seemed to have changed its default model to this:


So I got one. What I hadn't taken into account is that it works differently. Where the old version has the ball between the buttons, so you move the ball with your right forefinger and hit the button with your thumb, the new model is the other way around. The ball is to the left of both buttons, and you move the ball with your right thumb.

Maybe I'd get used to this eventually, but I found it incredibly awkward. I had the deuce of a trouble placing the cursor even within a large box, let alone a small one.

I found an inexpensive trackball from a different manufacturer that doesn't look at all like my old one, but it has the ball in the middle. It looks like this:


So far it works fine. I hope it's sturdy and the buttons don't wear out too fast. It has one other potential problem. The ball doesn't click into place in the housing; it just sits there. That means if a cat knocks the device off the desk - a not unknown event - the ball will come out and roll off into an obscure corner and be hard to find. Well, I'll deal with it.

Michelle Trachtenberg

Oh my lordy, Michelle Trachtenberg died. She was only 39. Apparently some sort of medical issue. One site said it was complications from a liver transplant. That's a hell of an operation to have, especially when you're only 39.

She was an actress, well beloved - and I said beloved - by me from Buffy the Vampire Slayer long ago when she was quite young. Many viewers disliked her character, Dawn Summers, for being a whiny teenager. Well, she was a whiny teenager, but unlike another show's infamous teenager with the initials W.C., she was enjoyable and fun to watch. At least I thought so. "Real Me," the episode that effectively introduced her, is one of my favorites, and not just for Harmony and her minions.

As for Trachtenberg, like just about all the rest of the cast, she was superb in her part, really embodying the character. And, in that scene with the henchmen in "Once More with Feeling," she showed herself quite the dancer.

concert review: Dalby Costanza Yakushev Piano Trio

At the artist q&a after this concert, I asked how these members of the disbanded St. Lawrence String Quartet partnered up with this pianist, who was not one who had collaborated with the Quartet while it was alive. The answer sufficiently clarified the nature of the group that I used it to lead off my review.

My editors tend not to approve of discursive leads, but they passed this one. They also passed my saying that the principal work "took a while to hit its groove" and that it finally "clicked." Not very formal language, but it seemed the best way to say succinctly what I meant.

It was an OK concert with a lot of miscellaneous items, and I was pleased to review it, the more so as we hadn't covered anything else yet from this presenter this season.

filibuster review

Adam Jentleson, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy (Liveright, 2021)

I grabbed this book almost at random off the library shelf, but it turned out to be exactly what I wanted: a history of the Senate filibuster, filling in lots of gaps from what I previously knew of Senate history. I already knew that the filibuster was a bug in the Senate's rule of unlimited debate, being an exploitation of that rule to stop debate, but I hadn't known that, before the further exploitation of the rule in the 1980s, almost the only successful filibusters - that actually stopped bills instead of just delaying them - were applied to civil rights bills. Even racist Southern senators, who would sanctimoniously declare that unlimited debate was the Senate's hallowed tradition - it is, but holding the floor to stop debate isn't - were perfectly happy to vote for cloture, the overriding of a filibuster, when the topic was something else. Like the 3/5ths clause, the filibuster is tainted from its origins.

Jentleson tells clearly the complex story of the revisions of Senate rules that inadvertently led to the situation we have today, where filibusters need not hold the floor but only be signalled by intent and are applied to every bill, so that every one needs a 60%+ majority to pass. It's also clear that the "nuclear option," to require only a 50%+ vote to pass, is not an explosion but a reversion to normal Senate rules. What isn't clear is why, having already applied the "nuclear option" to nominations for lower judges, Harry Reid couldn't change the rule further to apply it to Merrick Garland's nomination.

Though Jentleson earned his knowledge as an aide to Reid, the most interesting part of the book is the discussion of recent Republican obstruction from their point of view, explaining why they do it. McConnell's refusal to allow any Democratic bills or nominations to pass was a desperate attempt to propitiate the radicals in his caucus, who'd depose him as leader if he didn't. And Chuck Grassley? A Republican senator described in Obama's memoirs as having previously supported everything in the Obamacare bill, but who told Obama he wouldn't vote for it even if they gave him everything he wanted, but wouldn't say why? It turns out that it's because McConnell would threaten to deprive him of the Judiciary committee chairmanship, next time the Republicans got the majority, if he broke ranks. But of course he couldn't say that: it'd sound too venal and self-serving.

There's a few small factual quibbles. John Quincy Adams didn't make a deal with Henry Clay to throw him the presidency in 1825 in return for making Clay Secretary of State. That's what Andrew Jackson charged, but Adams was simply too naive to realize his integrity would be questioned. Also, at times I think Jentleson relies too heavily on Robert Caro for the historical material on Lyndon Johnson, but not always.

filmed theater review

National Theatre Live, The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

This is one of those films of a live performance of a British theater production, shown on a screen in a stage theater as if it were an in-person live performance, got it?

It was a pretty good performance, but one thing was clear above all else: that the Musk-Trump administration had nothing to do with sponsoring it, because they would have abominated it.

For one thing, the production had gay overtones (which added nothing except to make Algy falling for Cecily seem incongruous), and drag/mardi-gras framing (prelude and curtain calls), which added nothing whatever.

More significantly, three of the main characters - Algy and his relatives, Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen - were played by Black actors. (The rest were white.) Not only would their presence infuriate the bigots who resent a minority person taking any job a white person could do, but the casting meant that both of the main romantic relationships in the play were interracial. Oh no, they could go on to have mongrel children (like Barack Obama). Sounds fine by me.

The big scene between Gwendolen and Cecily, where they pass from being new acquaintances to friends to bitter rivals to sisters in adversity, was the acting showpiece of the performance, with Ronke Adékoluéjó as Gwendolen and Eliza Scanlen as Cecily.

Next National Theatre Live production, in April, is Dr. Strangelove. That's right, a film of a stage adaptation of a film. With Steve Coogan in the Peter Sellers roles (plus Major Kong, which Sellers was also originally scheduled to play), so ... maybe.

concert review: Redwood Symphony

With some misgivings, I decided to review Redwood Symphony's Mahler Second last weekend; it's just been published.

Redwood does Mahler very well, but though the quality of the performance was good, this was one of their less enticing interpretations. The dramatic first movement, which should thunder from mighty heights in the manner of Bruckner, was instead ominous and brooding. The problem with that is, when the same mood reappears in the finale, there's nothing left for it to do. It got extremely tedious, and I was reminded again that what Mahler needed was a good editor. I would have just thrown out the entire finale before the point where the chorus enters: that, which normally I could do without, was really good.

This was at the San Mateo PAC, which is the auditorium of the city's main high school. High schools are not famed for having large parking lots (normally they play at a junior college, and those do have huge parking lots), and with a large orchestra and larger chorus all wanting to park there too, it was far more jammed than when I've been there before. I wound up out on the street on the other side of the large campus.

Both a symphony board member and one of the instrumentalists caught me before the concert and thanked me for reviewing it: Redwood doesn't get covered too often. I trust they'll be happy with the result. As for me, I'm not used to being accosted this way.

cats in agony

I'm used to taking lots of medicines. The cats aren't.

Tybalt went in to the vet for a teeth cleaning yesterday. He trotted in as usual in the morning to the bathroom where we keep the cat food, thinking he was going to be fed, but he was mistaken. (No food before a cleaning, because it requires anesthesia.) I'm used to the look of dismay and resignation he gives when I shut the bathroom door and then open up the shower stall in which I'd hidden the cat carrier the night before, but the yowls of agony he gave continuously from then on until I dropped him off were heartrending.

Then he came home with a tooth extracted and three medicines we have to squirt in orally twice a day for two weeks: a painkiller, an antibiotic, and a dental rinse. B. holds him and squeezes his mouth open, and I handle the syringes.

Tybalt has been a loving cat. Often he rests over on B's side of the bed, but whenever I lie down for a nap, if I'm lying on my right side so that I'm facing B's side, Tybalt will get up, saunter over, and snuggle down in my arms for a long petting session.

But I don't think that will happen any more, at least for a while. There weren't even any cats meowing for food when I got up this morning, over an hour after their default feeding time (B. was still asleep), and that's unprecedented. The medicine is upsetting Tybalt too much, and as for Maia, anything out of the ordinary freaks her out and she's gone, hiding somewhere.

It pains us to be upsetting our cats so, but what can we do? Besides give up on the medicine, which we probably will do long before the vet's instruction.

was there an election?

DT has claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a "dictator," apparently because Ukraine holds presidential elections every five years but Zelensky is in his sixth year. As this article points out, "Ukraine is currently under martial law because of the full-scale Russian invasion" and the relevant law postpones elections in time of martial law.

Leaving aside the question of whether that makes you a dictator or not - DT said he was going to be a dictator on day 1; now he's even saying he's the king - the article quoted Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) as saying that Zelensky "should hold an election." It then goes on to say, "When reporters noted to Hawley that Ukraine hasn’t been able to hold an election because of the war, Hawley argued that the United States and Britain held elections during World War II."

But here we have British prime minister Keir Starmer saying that it is "perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during war time as the UK did during World War II."

So who's right, Hawley or Starmer? Did Britain hold elections during WW2 or not?

Starmer is right, basically.

The US held elections without interruption during the war, but - the attack on Pearl Harbor aside - the US wasn't in the front lines of the war. Ukraine is being subject to a full-scale invasion. Britain wasn't quite that close to the front lines, but it was under German attack and it did suspend general elections.

A regular election for the House of Commons was due in 1940. The House suspended it by legislation, one year at a time, each year until the European war was over in 1945. Then they held an election.

They'd done something similar during WW1. But those are the only times the British have suspended their then-current law requiring regular elections.

There is a minor exception, though. Special elections to fill vacant seats in the House were held. Those were local and easier to manage. But all the major parties had agreed on an electoral truce. Whichever party had held the seat prior to the vacancy was allowed to nominate a candidate unopposed by the other parties.

However, particularly near the end of the war, voters impatient at not having a choice would sometimes nominate an independent or minor-party candidate in opposition, and sometimes that candidate even won.

But that's the only exception. Britain did not hold a general election during the European conflict in WW2.

presidents' day

As Stephen Colbert pointed out just now, while we used to celebrate Lincoln's Birthday (last Wednesday this year) and Washington's Birthday (next Saturday), now we have Presidents' Day, today, to commemorate all the presidents. And DT is a president, so no thanks.

I actually forgot it was a holiday before I went to the medical center for my regular blood test. Almost everything was deserted, but there was one blood lab open. They said it was really only for emergencies, not routine tests, but they let me get tested anyway. And thus I ignore, if not defy.

Colbert has also found a mapping service still using "Gulf of Mexico," because, as he points out, that's its name. If you search "Gulf of Mexico" on MapQuest, it'll take you to a realty on the Florida Gulf coast, but if you pull back, sure enough it's correctly labeled.