VSO Played Beethoven & Mozart

I’m just back from Orpheum…another fabulous concert of Vancouver Symphony.

It was strange…after forty years of continuous concert going, I was thinking in the interval, how this habit of mine to sit in the first row started when it’s not an interesting location for the overall sound heard, nor the best place for visual purposes…the best can be viewed is the strings section and only the first rows!  Then I went back, with the wings of imagination, to my home town 40 years back, when viewing Henryk Szeryng, for instance, playing Beethoven with the Tehran Symphony Orchestra from the closest distance possible was a once-in-a-life-time chance, especially for a young 14-year boy.

Anyway, Maestro Tovey opened the concert with “Earth Songs” by Professor Stephen Chatman, Head, Composition Division at The University of British Columbia.  This piece was commissioned by the UBC in honour of its centenary four years ago (2007).  Vancouver Bach Choir joined the VSO in performance of this work.  A beautiful work...made me buy the CD at the interval!

The all-classic part of the evening started after that with the beautiful second concerto of Beethoven, totally a Mozartian type.  Opus number 19 shows it all.  The 39-year-old pianist from Vienna, Till Fellner played the solo part...very soft and pretty much beautiful performance.

First movement begins with a long introduction by tutti in the tonic key of B-flat major.  Solo enters after a few chromatic passages and a full classic conversation between the solo and tutti continues the movement. 

Adagio is one of the charming Beethoven’s movements in the subdominant key of E-flat major.

And finally comes the finale, again a totally classic 7-part rondo in a 6/8 rhythm.  A Beethoven typical musical joke can be heard right before the last appearance of the rondo theme when solo moves to a G major key by mistake but tutti guides the solo to the correct tonic key!

After the interval, the glamorous Symphony No. 40 of Mozart was performed.  The amazing sound of the orchestra of our town shows much better in symphonies far from natural mistakes of the soloists that distract the average audience.  And Maestro Tovey, as I told him once in the West Vancouver Library, is as wonderful as his guru, the late Leonard Bernstein I loved.

The first theme is just charming, although a bit dark and sad.  It starts in the tonic key of G major with the accompaniment of the lower strings.  This technique was widely used later by early romantics.  An example is the beginning of Mendelssohn’s first violin concerto.

Slow movement moves to E-flat, the submediant major of the main key.

The minuet is a true Mozartian-classic ¾ dance including a happier trio.  To me, it was performed too fast for an eighteenth century court dance...should be more elegant.  Probably Maestro Tovey wanted to finish the fastest concert (under two hours) even faster and go home!

Finale, allegro assai in the tonic G minor is a very rhythmic live movement, a happy ending for a great symphony.

This time, nothing exciting happened, no baton flew in the air, no D string of the second violins broke…nothing!

Iron Ring

Reference: The Iron Ring Website

The history of the Calling of an Engineer dates back to 1922.  Seven past presidents of the Engineering Institute of Canada (then so called) had a meeting in Montreal with other engineers.  

One of the speakers in the meeting was Professor Haultain of the University of Toronto. He recommended establishing an organization to bind all members of the engineering profession in Canada.  He felt that an obligation or statement of ethics needed be developed to which a young graduate in engineering could subscribe.  The past presidents of the Engineering Institute of Canada were very receptive to this idea.

Haultain wrote to Rudyard Kipling, who had made references to the work of engineers in some of his poems and writings, asking him for his assistance in developing a suitably dignified obligation and ceremony for this purpose.  Kipling was very enthusiastic in his response and shortly produced both an obligation and a ceremony formally entitled "The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer."

The Ritual is now administered by a body called The Corporation of the Seven Wardens Inc.  The seven past presidents of the Engineering Institute of Canada in 1922 were the original seven Wardens.  The Corporation is responsible for administering and maintaining the Ritual and, in order to do so, creates Camps in various locations in Canada.  The Ritual is not connected with any university or engineering organization.  It is an entirely independent body.  The Ritual has been copyrighted in Canada and in the United States.

The Iron Ring has been registered too and may be worn on the little finger of the working hand by any engineer who has been obligated at an authorized ceremony of the Ritual of the Calling of the Engineer.  The ring symbolizes the pride which engineers have in their profession, while simultaneously reminding them of their humility.  The ring serves as a reminder to the engineer and others of the engineer's obligation to live by a high standard of professional conduct.  It is not a symbol of qualification as an engineer which is determined by the provincial and territorial licensing bodies.

Your Hands

I see myself—without you,

All alone, lonely alone,

Wherever I go, anywhere I now step in,

I can but feel you, your image visible to me.

I can clearly remember your eyes,

Filled with pain, full of grief,

The story of your loneliness,

Was long, enough to suit tens of books.

Your memories are with me, anywhere I go,

Softly burning the days of my life…

* * * * *

You were shining like the sun for me,

In the cold, dark world of mine,

Of the always wet cheeks of mine,

Thus your fingers wiped the tears.

Where are those beautiful hands now?

Those good, kind hands of yours,

Why cannot be heard anymore,

The fairy tales from your crimson mouth?

No, I can never believe it ever,

All those lovely memories are gone,

The true lover of the blue of the skies,

Has left my heart behind the window.

The blue of the sky has turned to stone gray,

Dear God might be in deep sleep,

Not looking down from that high above heavens,

Not seeing all tears flooding on my cheeks.

Your memories are with me, anywhere I go,

Softly burning the days of my life…

A quick translation of an old Persian song

Advice From Snopes

By now, most people are familiar with Snopes

and/or TruthorFiction for determining whether information received via an e-mail is true or false. Both are excellent sites. Below is their advice.

1) Any time you see an e-mail that says forward this on to '10' of your friends, sign this petition, or you'll get bad luck, good luck, or whatever, it almost always has an e-mail tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and e-mails of those forwarded addresses. The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of 'active' e-mail addresses to use in spam e-mails or sell to other spammers.

2) Almost all e-mails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all any of this type of e-mail is, is a way to get names and 'cookie' tracking information for telemarketers and spammers--to validate active e-mail accounts for their own profitable purposes.

You can do your friends and family members a great favour by sending this information to them; you will be providing a service to your friends, and will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam e-mails in the future.

If you have been sending out (forwarding) the above kinds of e-mails, now you know why you get so much spam! Do yourself a favour and stop adding your name(s) to those types of listings, regardless of how inviting they might sound. You may think you are supporting a great cause, but you are not. Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later. Plus, we are helping the spammers get rich. Let's not make it easy for them.

Also, e-mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any other organization. To be acceptable, petitions must have a signed signature and full address of the person signing the petition.

Furthermore, please remove all e-mail addresses still attached before you forward a message. It is putting everyone's name out there. Most people use a nickname for their e-mail just so their real name is not out there on the internet. But if you have listed their real name in your contacts, it will also show up next to their email address. Be a friend and delete all the names before forwarding. Even better, send everything by BCC; that's Blind Carbon Copy. That way no names will ever show up on an e-mail.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day... to all lovers around the world!

Christmas Carols

Happy holidays everybody! I have selected the sheet music of the most beautiful carols. Please click on the sheet you wish to enlarge; then you can download and print it. The First Noel

Jingle Bells

Joy to the World

Silent Night, Holy Night

O Christmas Tree

The Twelve Days of Christmas

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

Santa Parade

There was a fascinating Santa Parade last weekend, Vancouver downtown. What I can remember other than my photos is cold and cold and cold, about -10 C windchill! Please watch the pictures on my photoblog.