© Protected - Selected Classical Music in Poland and the Europe of Chopin - Reviewer's Notebook

I have been postponing writing about this recital in the spirit of the Wordsworth Preface to Lyrical Ballads  concerning the definition of Romantic poetry as being 'emotion recollected in tranquility'. I always anticipate a recital by this master musician for weeks and it always takes me some time to come to terms with his reinvention or rather recreation of everything he touches. Sokolov chose to play the Schubert Vier Impromptus Op. 90 D 899, the rarely performed  Drei Klavierstucke   D 946 and the Beethoven Sonata in B Major op. 106 better known as the Grosse Sonate fur das Hammerklavier. Schubert wrote all of these serious works close to his frightful death from tertiary syphilis in 1828. They were also conceived at much the same time as that great outpouring of profound and hectic sorrow contained in the cycle of Lieder known as Der Winterreise. The connotations of the term ' Impromptu ' indicates...

For anyone interested in my classic car activities I am now Chairman of what we have called the Casual Car Club (CCC) formed recently in Warsaw to take advantage of the splendid motoring Poland has to offer. It was also an attempt to avoid the bureaucracy and political infighting that afflicts too many large car clubs.  We had our first excursion on Saturday April 20th to Nieborow and Arkadia. Nice pictures of the treasures of Poland even if you have no interest in cars!  You may like to read about the excursion on this link:  www.casualcars.blogspot.com

Club Lapel Badge I recently received my membership documents from the GRRC (Goodwood Road Racing Club) and a week or so later the annual luxurious and quite brilliant Goodwood Magazine. Of course it presents a style of life and expenditure that I can only dream of in real terms but this issue was particularly interesting with superbly illustrated articles on the Porsche 911 (50th birthday), William Knight the outstanding Goodwood horse trainer, the racing legend Jimmy Clark, the Boultbee Spitfire Academy where you can train to fly a Spitfire and a celebration of two decades of the Goodwood Festival of Speed. I managed to attend the Goodwood Revival in 2009  in my concours 1949 MG TC (black with Apple-green Collingburn interior)  and am still recovering from the cost from Warsaw of that sublime weekend.     Click on photographs for best results (Leica D-Lux 4) A couple of period punters in...

Just a small sample text from the Edward Cahill biography I am writing  and preoccupied with to the detriment of the rest of my life!  The brilliant, rather dashing, but now forgotten Australian pianist (my great-uncle) was on familiar terms with many of the leading literary, musical and political lights of the day. He performed often for royalty and the aristocracy of the time. There are many postings on this blog concerning him. The whole enterprise is being generously funded in part by a literary grant from the Australia Council, the cultural wing of the Australian Government. His story will be a fine addition to Australian National Biographies. Anthony Andrews as Sir Peter Blakeney, the Scarlet Pimpernel, in the 1982 movie ‘All done in the tying of a cravat’ Sir Percy had declared to his clique of admirers. We seek him here, we seek him there, Those Frenchies seek him everyw...

The noble and fastidious face of  the Polish composer Witold  Lutosławski  25 January 1913 -  7 February 1994  It was during my earliest remarkable encounters with Poland and working in Warsaw in the early 1990s that I first encountered the music of Witold Lutosławski. Already ill with cancer and frail, in his last public performance he conducted his Fourth Symphony at the 1993 Warsaw Autumn Festival. I have never forgotten this profound musical experience.  During this concert I was accelerated back to my rather unusual reverse exposure to classical music. In the 1960s, long before I was at all familiar with the conventional classical repertoire, I had attended concerts, listened to recordings and studied the fascinating 'avant-garde' (so-called at that time) scores of only  living composers such as Pierre Boulez, Henri Pousseur, Iannis Xenakis, Mauricio Kagel, Cornelius Cardew, Krzysztof Penderecki, Luciano B...