Gracey with friend

recently ~~ the new Penguin Guide ~~ Shostakovich's quartets

I'm still here and will check in from time to time to send a little postcard to the blogosphere. As recently posted, I'm unable to post from my main computer due to Blogger's latest upgrade. Meanwhile, the blog continues to serve as a portal to music and arts resources local and beyond. I was delighted to find the reincarnation of the old Penguin Guide to Classical Music Recordings -- the new Penguin Guide to the 1000 Finest Classical Recordings (or something like that). I had been buying the annual guide since the editors were covering vinyl LP's and tape cassettes, and I prefer the layout of the book to the Gramophone's own rather dense and busy although very comprehensive annual volume. The new Penguin has been tailored to a slimmer volume covering what the editors consider the very best recordings. Both artists and composers are alphabetized in the same section. Introductory material includes overviews of phases in the history of recording technology and history of opera by country and period. Perhaps the Penguin will guide me to the best set of recordings of Shostakovich's string quartets. It was not lost on me that the Pacifica Quartet played something other than the composer's 8th Quartet at a recent Candlelight Concerts performance here in Columbia, Maryland. They played the 9th instead. I think we almost always, if not always, get the 8th whenever Shostakovich is represented in a string quartet recital, and his entire cycle in this genre numbers 15 quartets. Writers on music hold that these quartets are the greatest since Beethoven's and the greatest of string quartets composed in the 20th century.

technical difficulties

Gracey explores a larger-than-life replica of her intestinal tract. (She has settled in her new home fabulously.) Blogger has upgraded, and I have not. I can't post unless I'm at my other computer now, so posts might be more infrequent for the time being. The blog is as much a website with links to lots of things, so I'll leave it alone and make use of it that way at least. See you in the opera house, concert hall or cat's intestine soon!

a new cat in the house

Yes, this happened sooner than expected, but I'd been visiting the Petsmart and other adoption centers over the past couple of weeks -- "It's OK to do this for practice," I said to myself. This little 2-year-old female had been at the Arundel Mills Petsmart, where I adopted Ollie in the fall of 2002, and I had a few opportunities to interact with her. Today, I took the plunge and brought her home.

She seems dazed by her new castle, but she's not skittish and has been staying close to me most of the time. She came with the name, Grace. I could change that, but calling her Gracey also appeals to me.

Late February Evening

Women singing male roles ~ Faust in Tucson and Baltimore

Casting female singers in male roles is rather common in opera, and it's done for good reason. I came across this concise and well-thought explanation by mezzo-soprano Katharine Goeldner, who was Arizona Opera's Orfeo in the company's latest production: trouser roles.

Lyric Opera Baltimore's staging of Gounod's "Faust", coming up on April 20 and 22, is a co-production with Arizona Opera, which staged the opera back in November. It's another updated staging, but images from the Arizona performance that I've been seeing in my searches look promising. "Faust" was my introduction to the old Baltimore Opera Company around 1989/1990 (with the great Jerome Hines as Mephistopheles), so maybe I can make it my introduction to LOB.

And there's a trouser role in "Faust", too. Siebel, a student of Faust who also has a crush on Faust's object of desire, Marguerite, is a young man usually sung by a soprano rather than mezzo. Now and then, you'll find this role taken by a tenor, but, as Goeldner explains, a female voice makes sense in a portrayal of a young man or adolescent boy. (Actual boys singing these roles usually doesn't work, because they don't have the volume and stamina to perform an extended role in the opera house.)

Faust at LOB

Candlelight Concerts' last concert of the season tonight

This is late notice, but Candlelight's home page says tickets are still available for tonight's concert of Beethoven, Shostakovich and Schumann by the Pacifica Quartet and pianist Christopher Shih. That's here in Columbia at Howard Community College.

Addendum

I had another wonderful evening at Candlelight Concerts. Here is the excellent Pacifica and Shih's program for the record:

Beethoven's Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 18, No. 6, "La Malinconia"
Shostakovich's Quartet No. 9, Op. 117
Schumann's Quintet for piano and strings in E-flat Major, Op. 44

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