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By David, February 7, 2010

I just got back from a screening of a couple of Leonard Bernstein’s films in the Purcell Room. As part of the season-long Bernstein festival (which the CCO is playing in), the Southbank Centre is showing films Bernstein made for the American Omnibus TV series in the 1950s. Apparently this is the first time they have been screened in fifty years.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the first film where Bernstein talks about the role of the conductor.

After explaining how simple the basic physical act of conducting is (the first beat is always down, the last beat is always up) he goes on to show how the conductor must be able to indicate an infinite variety of moods with just his right hand:

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Once the character of beat is decided, the conductor must then choose the tempo:

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The film ends with Bernstein rehearsing the orchestra in the last movement of Brahms’s 4th Symphony:

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What a communicator.

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By David, January 14, 2010

Looks like TalkTalk just declared email bankruptcy:

Dear customer,

Thank you for getting in touch with TalkTalk Customer Relations.

We have received an unprecedented amount of email enquiries and unfortunately are unable to respond to your email.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused and look forward to returning to our normal level of service as soon as possible.

Regards,
TalkTalk Customer Relations.

I’ve had companies completely ignore me in the past but I have never received a reply to an email saying they have received too many emails to reply…

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By David, January 9, 2010

I’m usually a bit sceptical of those people you see taking pictures in art galleries. I mean, what’s the point? A snapshot on your little point-and-shoot is hardly going to do justice to the energy of van Gogh’s Starry Night or the subtle light of Turner’s Norham Castle, Sunrise.

But while I was messing about with MOMA’s really excellent free audio I realised I could use the camera in my iPhone to make some nice wallpapers of modern art.

So here are some iPhone wallpapers from MOMA’s collection. To use them you can download to your PC by right-clicking on the thumbnail and choosing Save Link As and then sync the pictures to your iPhone.

You can also visit this page directly in your iPhone. To download the picture, tap and hold the image thumbnail and open it in a new page, then tap and hold again to save a copy to your iPhone.

 

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By David, January 1, 2010

Well, that’s another one gone. Here’s what 2009 looked like for us:

Happy New Decade!

Previously: 2008 in pictures

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By David, December 31, 2009

This year we spent Christmas in New York and, yeah, it was just like Shane and Kirsty sang:  there were cars big as bars and the day we left the wind really did go right through you (a maximum of 0° and gusts up to 64 km/h), but apart from one day of constant rain the weather was actually pretty good.

Christmas Day was spent ice skating in Central Park before going to Radio City Music Hall to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular starring the Rockettes(!) This was first class Christmas cheese and also completely awesome.

The show is a spectacular 90 minute review with dancing santas, finely choreographed toy soldiers, a nativity scene with live camels and donkeys, a 3D sleigh ride and of course the fantastically long-legged Rockettes. Formed at the Roxy Theatre originally as the Roxyettes, when they moved to Radio City in 1932 they were renamed the Rockettes and have been singing, tapping and high-kicking at Radio City for over seven decades.

I think this quote from an audience member on the website sums it up best:

The show my wife and I sat through was the best show we had ever seen and provided the ultimate Christmas memory, I was loving the show and turned to my wife during the show to ask if she was enjoying it, as I turned, I did not need to ask the question, as the tears of joy welled up in her eyes told me more than words could.

I’m only partly taking the piss; it really was a great thing to do in New York on Christmas day. After the show we had Christmas dinner at a diner near Times Square.

On Boxing Day we kept the Christmas traditions going with George Ballanchine’s The Nutcracker at the New York City Ballet. It was Ballanchine’s production in 1954 (the first show by the NYCB) that started the tradition in Europe and America of performing The Nutcracker at Christmas time.

The show was fantastic; the dancing was stunningly good and and the set was incredible. At one point a 40 foot Christmas tree rises up out of the stage and at another 50 pounds of paper confetti fall from the rafters onto the ballerinas to create a magical snowstorm.

After Saturday’s downpour, Sunday was bright and clear so we took the opportunity to get outside as much as possible with a trip to the South Street Seaport, Brooklyn Bridge and Central Park.

The night before we were due to leave we headed to Broadway to see the first revival of West Side Story in thirty years. By now I’m starting to run out of superlatives but this was a thrilling, jazzy, cool, moving and simply great show. The combination of Bernstein, Sondheim and Robbins adds up to something more than the already astronomical sum of their parts. We had seats in the fourth row and the breathtaking choreography just blew me away.

This revival is new in that all of the Puerto Rican characters are native Spanish speakers and some of the text has been changed from English to Spanish. I think it works well although the changes are less than what was originally planned.

I’m still thinking about it days afterwards and not even the girl spilling her ice over herself next to me or the loud woman who wouldn’t stop talking behind me could spoil it. Quite simply it’s worth a trip to New York just to see it.

On the morning we flew back, we took shelter from the sub-zero temperatures and arctic winds in the Frick Collection. This is a wonderful little gallery of the artwork collected by Henry Clay Frick, a 19th-century steel baron, housed in his mansion on the Upper East Side. Like the Wallace Collection in London every room is stuffed with astoundingly significant works of art. Wherever you turn there are paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Renoir, Turner, Bronzino, El Greco, Gainsborough Holbein, and the list goes on. It is far less crowded than the Met or MOMA (my God that place gets busy!) and the works are hung as if they were in Frick’s private house. Thoroughly recommended.

Unlike London, which turns into a bit of a ghost town at Christmas, New York really is the city that never sleeps and while the crowds of people taking pictures of the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center (?) can be a bit trying New York is still a fantastically cultured, beautiful and exciting city to be in — especially at Christmas time.

Photos in the gallery.

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By David, December 14, 2009

SmugMug is great.

As the marketing material says, SmugMug gives you

• Gorgeous online albums
• Unlimited storage
• Privacy when you need it
• Complete customisation
• No ads or spam
• Stunning HD video

I’ve been using SmugMug for a couple of years now and a quick glance at the stats in my control panel tells me I have uploaded 7,197 photos, totalling 21.58GB. That’s a lot of photos.

But while my photos look about a bajillion times better on SmugMug than they do on Facebook, there are some advantages to having them on Facebook, as well. In the past this meant uploading each photo twice; once into SmugMug and then again into Facebook. That’s a pain, even with a pretty fast connection.

While you can post links to your SmugMug galleries on Facebook I wanted to be able to import them into their own Facebook albums  so I wrote a Facebook application to do it.

SmugImport allows you to import your galleries from SmugMug directly into Facebook.

At the moment it only works with public SmugMug galleries but I plan to add support for private galleries in the near future.

If you don’t have a SmugMug account and would like a 14 day free trial then head over to the signup form. Standard accounts start at $39.95 per year and if you use this coupon you can save $5: nSI666N7VfmEN

smugimport.com

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By David, November 21, 2009

Holy crap. I need a flight to Japan immediately.

This beautiful video was shot by Jon Rawlinson at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium — the second largest aquarium in the world.

According to the Wiki:

The main tank called the ‘Kuroshio Sea’ holds 7,500-cubic meters (1,981,290 gallons) of water and features the world’s second largest acrylic glass panel, measuring 8.2 meters by 22.5 meters with a thickness of 60 centimeters. Whale sharks and manta rays are kept amongst many other fish species in the main tank.

The music is “Please don’t go” by Barcelona.

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By David, November 16, 2009

On Wednesday, the 2009 Red Bull BC One international breakdancing competition will be held at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City.

This is the first time I have heard of this competition but it’s been running since 2004 and apparently tickets for this year’s competition sold out in 30 minutes.

It is a knockout tournament of one-on-one battles and based on the video below, the main event is all kinds of awesome.

As they say, “Sixteen will enter, but there can be only one…”

Kind of like Highlander. But with headspins.

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By David, October 21, 2009

I went to my first football match tonight. Miguel managed to get some tickets to the Champions League match between Chelsea and Club Atlético de Madrid at Stamford Bridge.

It was a lot of fun! Things didn’t go too well for Atletico, though. Despite some determined singing from the Spanish fans Chelsea cruised to a 4 – 0 victory.

After ten years in London and seven years in Chelsea it was good to finally see a real football match. The noise that erupted from 30,000 fans when the Blues scored a goal was amazing.

Thanks, Miguel!

 

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By David, October 13, 2009

Yesterday was our 7th wedding anniversary and to celebrate we went to the Criterion Restaurant for an early dinner before seeing The 39 Steps at the Criterion Theatre.

Opened in 1873, the restaurant is an amazing building. A long shoebox shaped hall that stretches back from Piccadilly Circus. Marble pillars flank huge mirrors that reflect the gold mosaic tiled ceiling. It looks more like some kind of opulent Turkish bath than a restaurant.

It was at the Criterion Long Bar, on January 1 1881, that Dr Watson mentioned to his friend Stamford that he was looking for someone to share lodgings with.

From A Study in Scarlet:

I was standing at the Criterion Bar, when some one tapped me on the shoulder, and turning round I recognized young Stamford, who had been a dresser under me at Barts. The sight of a friendly face in the great wilderness of London is a pleasant thing indeed to a lonely man. In old days Stamford had never been a particular crony of mine, but now I hailed him with enthusiasm, and he, in his turn, appeared to be delighted to see me. In the exuberance of my joy, I asked him to lunch with me at the Holborn, and we started off together in a hansom.

“Whatever have you been doing with yourself, Watson?” he asked in undisguised wonder, as we rattled through the crowded London streets. “You are as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut.”

I gave him a short sketch of my adventures, and had hardly concluded it by the time that we reached our destination.

“Poor devil!” he said, commiseratingly, after he had listened to my misfortunes. “What are you up to now?”

“Looking for lodgings,” I answered. “Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.”

After lunch they walked to St Bartholemew’s Hospital where Stamford introduced Watson to Sherlock Holmes…

We, on the other hand, walked next door to the Criterion Theatre.

The Criterion is a lovely little theatre. Built on the site of an old coaching inn called the White Bear it was originally intended to be a concert hall but after building work had begun it was turned into a theatre instead.

The theatre is unusual in that it is built underground. In 1882 the Metropolitan Board of Works condemned it on the grounds that it was unsafe in the event of a fire and, as it was lit by gas, there was a risk of toxic fumes so a number of alterations were made including installing electric lights and an air conditioning system. In WWII the BBC took over the underground theatre to use for broadcasts.

The 39 Steps was great. The story follows the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock film (with lots of Hitchcock references and, of course, a cameo) but somehow manages to combine the original spy thriller with a comedy. And it works really well. With nothing but a change of coat, hat and accent, the energetic cast of four manage to portray a hilarious array of characters as Richard Hannay is pursued from his flat in Portland Place to the Scottish Highlands and back again for the thrilling climax at the London Palladium.