Academy of St Martin in the Fields

A Little Night Music
Mozart Unwrapped, Kings Place, London
30 November 2011

We drifted towards the end of the year as we began it, namely, entranced by the genius of Mozart.  Having given over our house entirely to BBC Radio 3's exclusive scheduling of all the music Mozart composed over the first twelve days of 2011 ("Every Note He Wrote" - a bold, superb celebration of the life of one of the world's greatest ever composers), we booked into the Mozart Unwrapped series which has been running at Kings Place all year. 

This was a wonderful chamber orchestra performance by St Martin in the Fields, directed conductorless by Isabelle van Keulen from the first violin.  The discipline and sheer joy brought to bear on the music by the performers energised old favourites such as Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (Serenade in G, K525) and Symphony No 40 in G Minor (K550), and charmed us with the lesser known Sinfonia Concertante in E flat (K364), in which the sonorous tones of the solo viola combined beautifully with the lyrical solo violin. 

What was particularly noticeable about the performance was the energy, commitment and absolute enjoyment exhibited by the performers.  Exchanging smiles and glances, and in the absence of a conductor actively needing to stay in visual contact with each other, they communicated their love of this wonderful music easily and infectiously.

SB

Canada Water library, London, SE16

A new library, I thought we only had money for blowing things up these days, perhaps there is such a thing as society after all. A clever, counterintuative, building; it is an inverted pyramid, clad in bronzed aluminium, designed to enable a library to be built on a site too small for it. Therefore the books are upstairs, reached by a big, wooden, spiral staircase with a cafe on the ground floor.

Sunset at Hamstead Heath

Biutiful, dir.Alejandro Gonzslez Inarritu

Biutiful was shown as Leytonstone Pop-Up cinema's December offering. The story of an underworld businessman, Uxbal, played by Javier Bardem, it is unrimittingly bleak throughout. Set in the run down parts of Barcelona, Uxbal moves among corrupt police, Chinese sweatshop owners and illegal African street hawkers. He also copes with his estranged wife's bipolar disorder, cares for his two children and has to deal with the fact that the heaters he procured to provide warmth for the Chinese illegal immigrants who live in an airless basement, were faulty and caused the death of 25. It really couldn't get any worse for poor old Uxbal...and then the doctor gives him the news that he has terminal cancer. Like I said, the film is unrimittingly bleak. Yet it is very enjoyable, full of compassion and human feeling, it grabs your attention and never lets go.

London Songs - Time Out online

Time Out magazine has compiled a list of 'The 100 Best London Songs' at the following link:
http://www.timeout.com/londonsongs.

A list is always good fun and there is some great music on there. It's hard to argue with The Kinks 'Waterloo Sunset' at no.1 but where is 'Down In a Tube Station at Midnight' by The Jam or The Clash's 'White Man in Hammersmith Palais'? ... and Barry Manilow as high as 95 - outrageous!

Joyful Noise, dir.Todd Graff.

We went to a preview screening of Joyful Noise, a film due to be released in early 2012. I found it a bit predictable and not very funny although the music was good. Judging by the reaction of the rest of the audience they found it funnier than I did. I have copied the cast and plot from Wikipedia below.

Cast
Queen Latifah as Vi Rose Hill
Dolly Parton as G.G. Sparrow
Keke Palmer as Olivia Hill, Vi's daughter
Jeremy Jordan as Randy Garrity, Sparrow's grandson
Dexter Darden as Walter Hill
Courtney B. Vance as Pastor Dale
Kris Kristofferson as Bernard Sparrow
Teairra Monroe as Auburn Scott
Jesse L. Martin
Judd Lormand as Officer Darrel Lino
Francis Jue as Ang Hsu

After the untimely death of a small-town choir director (Kris Kristofferson) in Georgia, Vi Rose Hill, a no-nonsense single mother of two teens (Latifah) takes control of the choir, using the traditional Gospel style that their Pastor Dale (Courtney B. Vance) approves of. However, the director's widow, G.G. Sparrow (Parton), believes she should have been given the position. G.G. also happens to be the major donor to their church. Tough times in the town lead to budget problems that threaten to close down the choir.

Vi Rose has a son, Walter (Dexter Darden), who has Asperger's syndrome, and a talented, pretty and anxious-to-date teenage daughter, Olivia (Keke Palmer). G.G. has recently begun caring for her rebellious grandson, Randy (Jeremy Jordan). A romance blossoms between Olivia and Randy, who, like most of the young people in the choir, support G.G.'s push to modernize the choir's style. Each of the young people, however, has a rival suitor. Ultimately, the two women overcome their differences and steer the choir toward a slot in the annual national "Joyful Noise" choir competition.

Books featuring industrial unrest

The large public sector strike in the UK on Wednesday got me thinking of depictions of industrial unrest in literature so here’s my top 5 strike related (fiction) books, to be honest when I say top 5 I couldn’t actually think of too many more although I suspect there must be many:

1. In Dubious Battle – John Steinbeck. Fruit workers strike in California valley and the Communist's attempts to organise and lead it.

2. Germinal - Emile Zola. Coalminers strike in northern France in the 1860’s.

3. GB84 – Dave Pearce – about the year long UK miners strike 1984-85.

4. Last Exit to Brooklyn – Hubert Selby jr. Set in the 1950’s Brooklyn, the book became a cult classic because of its harsh, uncompromising look at lower class Brooklyn life in the 1950s. It is divided into 6 parts one of which is Strike about Harry, a machinist in a factory who becomes an official in the union. A closeted homosexual, he abuses his wife and gets in fights to convince himself that he is a man. He gains a temporary status and importance during the strike, and uses the union's money to entertain the local toughs and buy the company of drag queens.

5. Brideshead Revisited – EM Forster. Charles Ryder returns from France to volunteer his services during (breaking) the 1926 General Strike, delivering milk in London’s East End.