Gerolsteiner gymnasium … go!

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At last. I’ve been back in Sefton for two whole months (where did they go?) and, today, I finally got my garage-gym into action. It helped that it was a nice day. Warm, sunny and humid. And, that, for once, there was no emergency or tragedy on hand. We’ve had our fill of them these last weeks: Wendy’s black-eyed, cracked-crown encounter with Thomas (the horse), the presumed death of Boofie, the 4WD, just as we set out to the races, pulling Agnes and Mikie. The demise of the outside water pump, followed swiftly by the demise of its switch, and then by the loss of all water to the house. The next thing to go was the telephone …

Well, they’re all fixed (at a cost stressful and financial) now, the horse population has been imperatively decreased, and today I determined to start exercising. First the warm up: while Wendy fast-worked Agnes, I stood guard on Mikie. And, there in the sun, on the barn forecourt, I started marching, followed by all Nik’s various exercises that I could remember, while Mikie gaped at this unaccustomed entertainment. 

To my delight, the horses’ tie-up rail is just the right height for my lunges and press-ups (once one has shovelled away the latest horse-pats). Ooh, those press-ups were tough after two months’ holiday. And I don’t think I did them quite right.

Agnes and Wendy arrived back just as I was finishing my arabesqueical leg-swings…

Un-gear Agnes, then off to the ‘gym’. Dumbells. Only 5k, but they felt at least a kilo heavier. Fifteen repetitions both arms. My plastic kettlebell (I’ve forgotten how many kilos. 12, I think) for 15 of my best squats, then on to the TRX. He doesn’t seem to mind being on a square beam. A selection of Holmes Place routines. I enjoy the TRX. Then on to the floor. It was impossible, in Rangiora, to buy a decent floor mat. But hey! What is this in the barn, covered in hay? A spare floor covering for the horsefloat. A bit grubby, and covered in peacock droppings, but worth a go. I had to get Roger, the blacksmith, to lift it for me, but having been installed, de-peacocked and given a swift brooming, it is perfect!

I must have done my standard 30-40 minutes. Room for improvement. Quality and quantity. And .. urgh! I’m 80k again! After having descended to 75. No nude pix this week!

Oh, hell. A peacock just flew full bore into the window. Not ‘in through’, ‘in to’ … time to go and smell the roses..

Flaming Agnes 2014

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It’s mid-November. I’ve been back at Gerolstein for a month and a bit. And today my racing season began. Wendy and I have got four racehorses this season, Mikie (Fifteen C) who won a race last year, Agnes de Gerolstein (who almost won several times), plus Thomas and Rocky (Rock of Ages) who haven’t yet had a race. The first three are more or less ‘ready’ and Rocky is closing fast. There is one slight problem with having such a big ‘team’: we have a two-horse float. Well, we’ll face that one when we come to it!

It was Agnes who launched our season. She’d missed a needful trial because of the float problem, but there was a nice little race suitable for her (ie standing start, 2000m) at Timaru, so off we set, to predictions of hail and thunder, for 2 1/2 hours drive south. The storm hit us a bit after half way, but Timaru itself was dry if grey

I like Timaru racecourse. It has a happy, countrified feel, and plenty of room for the horses. Agnes, a notable misbehaver pre-race, was as calm and good as the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. But she likes Timaru too. She ran third at her last start there, when I was in Berlin. Following in the footsteps of our Boofie, Cliffie and Wilma who have all won on the track.

Punters don’t back our horses, tipsters don’t tip them. Agnes had had three placings in her last five starts, most of the others sported a lot of zeros. But she was eighth favourite of eleven when they headed for the start. And the rain started (briefly)… and the wind blustered (determinedly) …

She got away from the start pretty well, and was tucked in the one-one until the champion driver, Dexter, decided to take his horse to the front, leaving Agnes in the ‘death seat’ outside the leader. Ouch. What would Chris do? Well, fate and the wind decided for him. As they raced down the straight for the first time, the wind gusted and prematurely took Agnes’s hood and earplugs with it! That, to a horse, means ‘go!’ and she went! For the whole final lap she laid it to Dexter’s horse, which was well and truly cooked by the final turn and disappeared backwards. Agnes led them down the straight, but in the last hundred metres the effort (and the truncated preparation – just two workouts) told, and she got bombed just short of the line. Second! Great delight in the Gerolstein camp. Seconds are good. You don’t go up a grade … But I was just happy that we have a competitive horse, and I’m sure she’ll run some nice races in the coming months.

Home. To find that Richie and Johnnie had unlocked their gate and gone for a nice wee gourmet tour around the track…  horses!

Well, tonight its Mikie’s turn. At Motukarara. Against much better opposition. He usually takes a few starts to ‘warm up’ …  and then Tuesday, Rocky and Thomas to the workouts … its going to be all go. But Agnes has set us off on a positive note …

A musical Frühlings erwachen ... New Zealand style.

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Wedekind’s Frühlings erwachen is a ‘famous’ play.  ‘Famous’ in a Lady Chatterley’s Lover way. There’s nothing like some healthy banning and censoring to help a work to become ‘famous’. Personally, I don’t see anything censor-worthy in it, perhaps because I was borne into this world fifty-five years later than the play, and am of a reasonably unfettered turn of mind, but anyway, the play with its ‘naughty’ ‘forbidden’ subjects and ‘rude’ words made its name and fame at the turn of the century, became a subject for devoted study, and ultimately reached the apotheosis of being several times made into a musical. The most recent, American, version (Sheik/Sater) has done well.

I had never seen it, until today, when I headed to Christchurch’s Court Theatre to see the graduating NASDA students of 2014 play this version, and the wise ones predicted that I might not like it. I wonder why. The only reason that I would ‘dislike’ (or as theatricals say, ‘hate’) a show would be if it were incompetently written, directed, performed … and this was none of those.

So, has Frühlings erwachen made up into a satisfying musical? By and large, yes. I was uneasy through the first part of Act I, which seemed too naïve, too black-and-white … but when the best songs of the night (‘The Word of your body’ and the splendid ‘The Dark I know well’) arrived, one after the other, we moved into a different and much more warmly three-dimensional part of the show, which gave the performers much more into which to get their teeth. The last stages of the show verge on the melodramatic, but that is Wedekind’s fault. 19th century audiences, like today’s TV Midsomer Murders-watchers, were accustomed to piling up the bodies, and death by abortion was not so unusual …

The score, splendidly lavish in its use of ensembles, popped out its couple of stand-outs (writing this, next morning, they are the only two I really remember), and even if the lyrics included American slang which sat as uneasily with the Anglo-German text as the odd mix of male hairdos did with the period costumes, the best bits were grand.

Of course, it helps a text and a score hugely if they are well, aptly and even exceptionally performed. Which they were. In spite of the problems inherent in having a student cast playing mostly 14 year-olds and adults.

The central character of Melchior (age 14), was quite beautifully played by Josh Johnson. His acting was utterly believable and touching, his still developing singing voice brushed the falsetto notes of his last song amazingly sweetly, and he let rip with surprising steadiness and vigour on ‘Totally Fucked’. OK, he didn’t seem quite 14 ... but neither did anyone else. And it didn’t matter. It was just a splendid, heart-warming piece of musical-theatre. A winner.

His sweetheart, Wendla (age 14), was played by Emily Burns. I last saw Miss Burns playing (well) a Caribbean goddess with a belt number in Once on this Island. This was incomparably better. She invested the young girl with an enormous, real naivete and sweetness, without for a moment slipping into the ‘traditional ingenue’ manner, in a performance of truly lovely quality. Of course, a strong, warm and wide-ranging chest voice helps. But it was her drama that got to me: her cry as she was carried off by the abortionist was both horrible and memorable.

As I’ve already said, my favourite number in this show was ‘The Dark I know well’ and it got a magnificent performance from Becky Button (Martha) and Imogen Prossor (Ilse). Miss Button (another ex-Caribbean goddess) acted the role of the father-abused Martha with moving effect, and sang her part of the duet impeccably. And Miss Prossor … yes. A very big ‘yes’. Just occasionally a young performer leaps out to me. I can’t always pick the whole reason why, but anyhow Miss Prossor is one of these. In the old days, I would have taken her on as a client. She has ‘it’. She also has a rich, full mezzo-to-alto voice, which she uses perfectly, and her acting simply exudes the quality of warmth. She had impressed me greatly in the previous show, and I was delighted to see her confirm all the very-good that I had thought of her then. She was perfectly cast as the liberated Ilse.

Amongst the other boys, Adam Spedding played the screwed-up Moritz. I am not sure why he had an Uncle Tom’s Cabin Topsy hair-do; I found it terribly distracting. He looked like a misfit from the start, behaved liked a misfit ... perhaps this is how the role is written? But Moritz doesn’t come over as sympathetic, as the other youngsters do, he just comes over as screwed-up. 

Spedding sang and danced with grand energy, as did the other lads (I was irresistibly reminded of Half a Sixpence and ‘Money to burn!), and Zak Enayat and Olly Humphries had a very special moment in a homosexual reprise of ‘The Word of Your Body’.

Strangely, the young folk who played the adults of the piece somehow got nearer the ‘right’ age than those playing ‘down’. The women were impressively costumed and wigged -- Frau Gabor’s wig was superb, and Wendla’s mother’s abortion-night outfit made a fabulous black-hag picture – and the men? Well, Simon Watson played all eight of them, most efficiently and clearly.

NASDA, as usual, provided all the trappings for their students – 8 piece orchestra, clean unfussy direction and choreography (original or carbon-copied I know not, but it worked), a clever set (ditto) and excellent costumes. But I’m still a bit confused by the boys’ hair.

As I said at the end of the show – and after a night to think on it – 7 out of ten for the show, 9 point something for the performance …  extremely glad to have seen it. And the young performers.

Bassooner or later ... the music has to (temporarily) end ..

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Well, my season’s over. I’ve taken in my last concert for summer 2014. Of course, it was at the Piano Salon, which has now become our favourite concert venue … the routine is well established these days: walk up from Humboldthain to the river Panke, supper at the jolly Uferlos restaurant at 7pm, concert at 8.30 … home in the dark …

Tonight was a rather different concert. Berlin Counterpoint. A wind quintet with piano. Piano, flute, oboe, bassoon, horn and clarinet. I’m not sure that a horn is ‘wind’ but I guess you ‘wind’ it, in classical parlance, so fair enough. All new to me, a voyage of experience: but Poulenc was on the programme …

It was a delightful concert. We started with a sextet by Albert Roussel. How often do you hear Roussel? I can’t say I was excited by the work, but it was certainly pleasant, if a little muddy, and it gave me time to look around and get to know and watch the players.

The second item was much more vigorous and real fun. Arrangements of Romanian Dances, made by flautist Aaron Dan (of last year’s grand Trio Dan) for flute, bassoon, clarinet and piano. The second and third ones were terrific. Vivacious little Mr Dan (flute) dancing along on the top line like a pixilated flea, tall blonde Heidi easing out the most beautiful creamy sounds from her tall brown bassoon, Milos the replacement clarinettist ‘singing’ the tenor part gloriously, and Zeynep, driving the dance rhythms along from the piano with huge flair. Great stuff.

And then came Poulenc. Viola, the young oboeist, and Andrej, the horn joined in, and we had the Sextuor opus 100. I know it now. Splendid! Grand! What a piece. What a performance. I simply wallowed in it. The oboeist had a chance to blossom in this one, and suddenly produced some enormous tones, and I couldn’t see what the horn player was doing because he was hidden from my view by the clarinettist, but some more splendid sounds wound forth … each of the players was a personality, and yet a part of a well-soldered-together group … ideal.

How to follow that! The second half of the concert was devoted to an arrangement of Elgar’s Enigma Variations, made for the group by their regular clarinettist, Sacha Rattle. Well, I’m not a huge fan of the Enigma, even with all its fiddles intact, so, although it was well done and well played, for me it was a wee bit of an anti-climax after the thrills of the French piece, and the fun of the Romanian one.

But then, as an encore, we got Mr Rattle’s lively and colourful arrangement of de Falla’s ‘El Paño Moruno’. There is an art in choosing an encore. Something that summarises the concert and yet will send the audience out in a merry and appreciative mood. This was it! Although I couldn’t help thinking I’d have loved to have had the whole seven songs. And just a small slice of the Elgar. But that’s me.

So, another marvellous evening on the banks of the Panke … thank you Piano Salon, and I’ll be back as soon as I hit town next spring!

PS: Berlin Counterpoint’s new CD sits beside me. I know, I don’t have CDs. But it’s got the Poulenc on it.