Thursday 19 April 2007

Listened to Katharine Gowers' new CD (Somm) of 14 salon pieces. She is an extraordinarily accurate violinist, with a nice sense of style. It is difficult, however, to play 14 short pieces and hold attention unless one has a broader sense of colour, articulation, style and characterisation than Miss Gowers possesses. A sameness creeps in. But, taken individually, the pieces are well played and one marvels at the accuracy of the intonation -- particularly during double stopping.

Wednesday 18 April 2007

Downloading broadcasts from the Internet is revolutionising music collection. I now have a pretty considerable body of off-air recordings and, thank goodness; if one waits for most new violinists etc to be recorded "officially" we'd all become quite old. This week I captured the complete Beethoven violin & piano sonatas by Christian Tetzlaff and Alexander Lonquich, followed by a truly excellent recital by Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien (Tzigane, Debussy sonata, and Ravel sonata). I have so far only sampled the Tetzlaff, but it looks good. The Alina recital I listened to yesterday and am full of admiration; she is not only an excellent musician, but also a formidable violinist. This is a nice little CD to add to my collection.

Wednesday 11 April 2007

Alas, a long pause in adding to my diary. Life a bit complicated. However, gastronomically I had one of the 4-5 best meals of my life in Senigallia last Thursday evening: a menu de dégustation of around seven courses at Al Cuoco di Bordo. All fish or shellfish. Truly delicious, with everything local, even the excellent wine.

I then spent yesterday evening quite entranced with two and a half hours of Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno (Handel). My favourite line up of Emmanuelle Haïm, Natalie Dessay, and friends. What music! A new hit every six minutes. Probably one of my top 10 CDs of all time.