I am my mother’s son…it seems…

It has kicked in late I admit, but the Handbag Gene has kicked in.  Last week I finally became depressed by the sight of my current bag.  See, below.

 

It is functional I agree, but it doesn’t go with anything, is ENORMOUS and therefore impossible to find anything in when you really need it.  That and lately I never take my lap-top anywhere (for which the bag was designed) and having a few small items jangling around inside a huge bag has lost its novel appeal.  

I went hunting for a new one.  And had no luck.  I wanted something large enough to carry documents but small enough to be able to hold on my lap without obscuring my vision.  

Enter, Visconti Leather.  On Amazon I found several I liked but couldn’t decide.  I suddenly remembered my mother’s obsession with the perfect hand bag.  I remember her once saying that finding the right handbag is the equivalent of six months of really good therapy.  I always thought she was off the planet until I realised I was thinking about a bag in the same way.  I NEVER cared about my bag before this, what has changed?  Eventually I went with the Visconti Leather Messenger Bag 18548, in black (pictured above).  I ordered it online Sunday evening (62 quid, reduced from…something more expensive) and it arrived today at work, much to the surprise of my co-workers, expecting anything BUT a man-bag to show up express post on my desk at eleven.  It is, of course, divine and I have already fallen in love.  I have also put off calling Doctor Kaminsky for another six months… 

apologies to brahms…

In an earlier post I referred to myself as One of Those People who Doesn’t Like Brahms.  I was asked by someone (OK it was my Father) to expound on this a little and why certain composers (or performers for that matter) appeal and some don’t.  Had I known how handsome Brahms was before I saw the concert, who knows how I would have felt.  Should I be judging dead composers by their looks I wonder…

I wish to correct myself somewhat, Brahms deserves an apology.  He could write remarkable music.  His setting of the Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse  poem ‘Sonntag’  is a song of such unabashed beauty and affection (as opposed to affectation, hello Schumann, we’ll get to you in a minute) that you can’t help but wish he had written more Lieder and less orchestral and chamber music.  I think my issue with SO much orchestral and instrumental music is ‘what’ the music is about.  The concert last week was the Brahms followed by the Schostakovich. About the latter, one can have no doubt what the composer is trying to get at.  If you know even a little about the history of Russia at the time and what Schostakovich was going through, it becomes clear what the piece is about.  After the piece finished, you KNOW.  

After the Brahms, I felt like saying;

‘What’s your point?’

Perhaps this is why the Lieder appeal to me, the poem’s words tell you (more or less) WHAT the music is about, and therefore, gives the audience a much needed piece of information.  Certain  composers  (Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Strauss, Zemlinsky, Berg, Schoenberg…) write in a way that one knows IMMEDIATELY  what is being said, even if there are no words to tell us what to expect, although a well thought of Symphony title doesn’t go astray (The Titan, Pathetique, Pastorale) and can provide one with a clue.

And in the Brahms Piano Concerto no. 1, I had NO idea what the piece was about. To me, it was nondescript and therefore, impossible for me to latch onto in anything other than a positive appraisal of the skill of the players.  I literally missed the point.  And with a conductor as clear and obvious as Dudamel (this is not a man who could be accused of drawing out nuance from a piece, not yet anyway), if HE can’t get the point across to me, then no one can.  Given the fact that Brahms never seemed to get around to HAVING a personal life OR experiencing any real drama in his life, I’m not surprised the art he produced occasionally lacks…body.  His ‘Deutsches Requiem’,  his most epic (and operatic) piece is not (as I had thought) an epic outpouring of national and religious fervour.  It was inspired by the death of his mother.  This is a man with not enough happening in his life!  

Is it simply that the experience of an artist’s life determines on what scale he or she’s art should be produced.  Brahms had a pretty boring life so is THAT why his songs (small scale and intimate) are wonderful and his Orchestral works are merely acceptable? Reynaldo Hahn had a relatively blessed upper middle class Parisian life (along with scoring Marcel Proust as his longtime lover) and proceeds to write some of the best chansonne ever put on paper.  His large scale work has the shelf life of Yoghurt.  Wagner, on the other hand, takes part in the Dresden revolution, spends his life running from creditors, has affair after affair, artistically seduces the King of Bavaria and proceeds to write ENORMOUS scale music, BRILLIANTLY (if a little too lengthy at times). HIS small scale music…don’t bother.    

So I will amend my former title from One of Those People who Doesn’t Like Brahms (OOTPWDLB) to One of Those People who Doesn’t Like Brahms Piano Concerto no. 1 (OOTPWDLBPCN1) until such time as someone is able to tell me what I missed, at which time I shall be all ears.  There is nothing I like better than re-hearing a piece and discovering something miraculous.

Oh I never got around to Schumann…later perhaps…