Montmartre
5 November 2013
We are in London. It is wonderful. But there was more to tell about Paris. Here it is...
We were at the Salle Pleyel on two evenings for concerts. It is a large venue. Two thousand four hundred seats. We selected our seat locations so as to be near the stage where what we might lose in optimal balance is made up for by the visceral thrill of seeing the musicians's faces up close and feeling the strong vibrations of the powerful sound rattle our bones.
For the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra we were in the second row. Riccardo Chailly, from Milan, conducted a symphony and a concerto by Johannes Brahms. Chailly, in his youth, was a jazz drummer. His rhythm was to me like the course a river runs from it's source to the sea. Think of the Continental Divide where rivers originate. Their ultimate destination is determined. During the journey they are at times more wide or more slender. They twist and turn or they straighten out. Their velocity races or slows, but they never stop. Relentlessly in motion, their destination is inevitable.
For the Budapest Festival Orchestra, we were seated above and behind the orchestra,
facing it's conductor, Ivan Fischer. Recently, he made headlines. He composed an opera on the subject of eliminating anti-semitism in the current Hungarian government. His concert began with an Homage to Bela Bartok—somber, reflective, mildly folk tune laden. Continued with Beethoven's fourth piano concerto. And concluded with Dvorak's eighth symphony. We once visited Dvorak's Prague, particularly the house that he was born in. It is in a verdant hilly countryside. Our guide said, "Dvorak did not have to search for inspiration, he simply opened his window and wrote what was outside." Budapest is similarly beautiful. The orchestra has those images in their blood. Their Dvorak was ravishing and in it's ending where the music sounds like laughter the players gave an audible in unison hearty "ha-ha-ha" before the ecstatic joyous circus finale. Then came the encores. First, a gentle, tonal, old fashioned waltz by, surprisingly, Toru Takemitsu, a challenging modern composer. Next up was a Brahms Hungarian Dance. It was no-holds-barred, all heck turned loose. Mayhem. Danger. Fischer's body went low on the podium, a whirling dervish, his baton a lion tamers whip that he lashed at the players, he began shouting things to them, Hungarian vulgarities, I imagined. They became gypsies with their caravan wagons in a circle, campfire blazing under the midnight moon, slashing at fiddles, slapping on basses, they were possessed. I've never heard anything like it.
After ten days in the Marais apartment we moved uphill to Montmartre. From the second floor we had a view. (Napoleon is under the dome, right of center)
The neighborhood made me swoon. So much history concentrated in so few blocks. On our immediate corner, nineteen year old Picasso invented cubism and Van Gogh lived still with two ears. Five or six blocks away Bizet wrote Carmen then died at thirty-six,
and Renoir painted canvases of colorful dances beneath the moulins (windmills) and of little girls, rosy-cheeked, swinging under trees in a garden. The Moulin Rouge inspired Toulouse Lautrec to drink, carouse, fall in love with music, faces, capes, red scarves, can can girls and everything he put into his huge colorful posters. Berlioz lived in a little cottage around the bend and wrote Harold In Italy so Paganini could show off his Stradivari viola and he was visited by his friend, "chopinetto mio"—Frederic Chopin. Closer to our time, violinist, Stephane Grappelli played jazz with Django Reinhardt's guitar at Le Roulotte, which means gypsy wooden caravan wagon.
Henri Murger, a writer, in the Latin Quarter perfectly spot on captured it all in his short stories in eighteen-forty-two He created Marcel and Schaunard and Colline, starving artists—painter, composer, writer. Fifty years later, Giacomo Puccini made himself and the "bohemians" famous when he turned Murger's short stories into an opera, La Boheme.
Montmartre is steep and hilly with twisting narrow cobble stone lanes that glisten in the rain. During our stay it was overcast, drizzly and rainy. Which heightened the "bohemian" ambiance. Much has changed. Much remains the same. There are artist studios aplenty, garrets with banks of extra tall windows. There are lots of tiny apartments for creatives to settle into, to struggle and work hard in. Hungry for food, shelter and for the day the public will discover their genius.
Next stop London.
Marlow and Wes
Montmartre
5 November 2013
5 November 2013
We are in London. It is wonderful. But there was more to tell about Paris. Here it is...
We were at the Salle Pleyel on two evenings for concerts. It is a large venue. Two thousand four hundred seats. We selected our seat locations so as to be near the stage where what we might lose in optimal balance is made up for by the visceral thrill of seeing the musicians's faces up close and feeling the strong vibrations of the powerful sound rattle our bones.
For the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra we were in the second row. Riccardo Chailly, from Milan, conducted a symphony and a concerto by Johannes Brahms. Chailly, in his youth, was a jazz drummer. His rhythm was to me like the course a river runs from it's source to the sea. Think of the Continental Divide where rivers originate. Their ultimate destination is determined. During the journey they are at times more wide or more slender. They twist and turn or they straighten out. Their velocity races or slows, but they never stop. Relentlessly in motion, their destination is inevitable.
For the Budapest Festival Orchestra, we were seated above and behind the orchestra,
facing it's conductor, Ivan Fischer. Recently, he made headlines. He composed an opera on the subject of eliminating anti-semitism in the current Hungarian government. His concert began with an Homage to Bela Bartok—somber, reflective, mildly folk tune laden. Continued with Beethoven's fourth piano concerto. And concluded with Dvorak's eighth symphony. We once visited Dvorak's Prague, particularly the house that he was born in. It is in a verdant hilly countryside. Our guide said, "Dvorak did not have to search for inspiration, he simply opened his window and wrote what was outside." Budapest is similarly beautiful. The orchestra has those images in their blood. Their Dvorak was ravishing and in it's ending where the music sounds like laughter the players gave an audible in unison hearty "ha-ha-ha" before the ecstatic joyous circus finale. Then came the encores. First, a gentle, tonal, old fashioned waltz by, surprisingly, Toru Takemitsu, a challenging modern composer. Next up was a Brahms Hungarian Dance. It was no-holds-barred, all heck turned loose. Mayhem. Danger. Fischer's body went low on the podium, a whirling dervish, his baton a lion tamers whip that he lashed at the players, he began shouting things to them, Hungarian vulgarities, I imagined. They became gypsies with their caravan wagons in a circle, campfire blazing under the midnight moon, slashing at fiddles, slapping on basses, they were possessed. I've never heard anything like it. After ten days in the Marais apartment we moved uphill to Montmartre. From the second floor we had a view. (Napoleon is under the dome, right of center)
The neighborhood made me swoon. So much history concentrated in so few blocks. On our immediate corner, nineteen year old Picasso invented cubism and Van Gogh lived still with two ears. Five or six blocks away Bizet wrote Carmen then died at thirty-six,
Henri Murger, a writer, in the Latin Quarter perfectly spot on captured it all in his short stories in eighteen-forty-two He created Marcel and Schaunard and Colline, starving artists—painter, composer, writer. Fifty years later, Giacomo Puccini made himself and the "bohemians" famous when he turned Murger's short stories into an opera, La Boheme.
Montmartre is steep and hilly with twisting narrow cobble stone lanes that glisten in the rain. During our stay it was overcast, drizzly and rainy. Which heightened the "bohemian" ambiance. Much has changed. Much remains the same. There are artist studios aplenty, garrets with banks of extra tall windows. There are lots of tiny apartments for creatives to settle into, to struggle and work hard in. Hungry for food, shelter and for the day the public will discover their genius.
Next stop London.
Marlow and Wes
Montmartre
5 November 2013
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