Lingering Recommendation from a Stellar Monday Night

Normally, my Monday nights are without particular interest. I've plodded home from the goat rodeo which is my hourly employment (not to be confused with teaching, more on this at some point), slapped an egg on some toast and called it a day. Not this Monday. I mean, yes, the pigmy goats and their three ring exploits were all in full attendance earlier, but my life took a nice little upswing at 3pm today.

Intrigued? You should be.

I told my good friend and Ikebana sensei into going with me (and thus, catching a ride with her car-owning boyfriend) to scope out this flower warehouse I'd heard about only yesterday. This was a spectacularly good move. They've got fabulous glass vases of multitudinous sizes and shapes, fresh stems at really reasonable prices, and a whole warehouse full of silk flowers, notions, floral ribbon, everything you could possible think of with which to construct an arrangement. And it's CHEAP. Very, very impressed. I forgot to ask when they get their flowers delivered, thus to go when they have the greatest selection of stems, but we'll get there.
BoyShoes (the ka-driving boyfriend) gave me a lift back to the Eyrie, where I discovered a mail slip saying I had a box waiting for collection just around the corner with the friendly local post office. Turns out, it was a collection of things I'd left behind from my sojourn with Coco and her peoples-- a cardigan, a skirt, some socks, useful things all. Lovingly enclosed as well was a box of store brand wheat thins and some miracle whip. It was inaccessible food nirvana. It means I can make a tuna salad with carrots and celery and onion and actually ENJOY IT. In short, I have the best friends in the whole. entire. world.
So I whipped up a lovely dinner completely devoid of mayonnaise (a fact for which I can scarcely express my unbound joy) and looked up the times for the Chamber Music Concert tonight at Cowdray Hall. Recently returned skirt straightened and stockings checked, I ambled forth into the night.

... It was wonderful. The Gould Piano Trio were absolutely stellar. They played to perfection three pieces, the first a set of ten variations by Beethoven which I'd never heard before; the Kakadu Variations are really a tour de force on the part of the composer, playing with various moods, trying them on with the main theme like a woman donning scarf after scarf in a shop window. The tone goes from dreamy and languid to skittish, almost shy, playful at points, and the contrapuntal variation was spot on. An appropriate flourish ending brought heartily deserved applause.
Second up was the Dvorak Piano Trio no.1 in B flat op. 21 (catchy, right? rolls right off the tongue) and the common thread became evident. Vacillating back and forth, sometimes wildly, between moments of tremendous lightness and powerful dark, this set had undeniable folk elements, rippling introductions, a dancelike quality and the paired-octave unity and unison for which I love Dvorak so well. Again, the playing was marvellous. I found myself completely absorbed in the curve and pale of the cellist's cheek and the quickness of her fingers-- simply marvellous.
During the interval I popped out to my favourite store in all of Aberdeen: Peckhams. And what did your fair heroine acquire there? Orchard Cola. Fabulously delicious, it's really what cola should be. Wow.
But the best touch of the night came next. The Shostakovich Piano Trio no. 2 in E minor op. 67. Heart-stopping. The whole arrangement of piano/cello/violin naturally lends itself to memorial, and this one is apparently dedicated to the brilliant polymath and musicologist Ivan Sollertinsky (so says the programme note). The real action is in the concealed homage to Shostakovich's pupil, Viniamin Fleischmann (gee, might he be jewish?) who was killed in the Battle of Leningrad. The piece opens with an astronomically high introduction on the cello, which the aforementioned cellist did not disguise or pretty-up in any way. This is not to say that it wasn't artistic and graceful, because it was, but as only a cello can sound when taken out of its normal range, the rasp and scratch of the notes shone through as sunlight and bone shards. Perfection. The creaking and teetering cello was joined eventually by both the piano and violin, outdoing both their registers. The pairings were exactly balanced in fugue. The whole piece sways with foreboding, the piano with one hand high and the other low, enfolding the strings between the hammered octaves. The scherzo was garish, flung quickly into the dances of the dead, dying and forever haunted, like a posey sprint through a crematorium. False gaiety laid aside, the third movement almost sounds like an ancient passacaglia, the same movement of eight scant piano chords repeated six times each, with the strings lamenting in overtones before the nightmarish violence of the work finally realises itself. The twisting danse macabre swirls through motif after motif of jewish dances, forming a grieving dialogue with no discernible answer before evaporating into but a puff of ash and echo.
I was left sitting mute in my folding chair, eyes unwittingly bright with tears I had no power to conjure nor dissipate. That, that, my dear reader, is what chamber music should be.

And how to end such a made-to-order Monday? Flower arranging! I'm hoping to take this little creation with me to sit in front of either the statue of St. Francis or the shrine to Our Lady of Aberdeen tomorrow after morning mass.

Not bad for shoving stems into a bit of water-logged foam.

Now, all that's left for today is a little Coco-cam and a hot cocoa nightcap. I say it, once more and with emphasis: Marvellous.