Festival of The Voice - Tuesday 2 to Thursday 4 November 2021 - all at 7.30 p.m.

Cambridge's Festival of The Voice - Tuesday 2 to Thursday 4 November - all at 7.30 p.m.

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

31 October (updated 3 November)

Festival of The Voice at Cambridge Early Music -

Tuesday 2 to Thursday 4 November - all at 7.30 p.m.

Three Concerts at Downing Place United Reformed Church, Downing Street

Formerly St Columba's (entrance now on the side, hence Downing Place = CB2 3EL)

Having heard The Marian Consort before, though not in their programme The Constant Heart, this is my personal choice of concert to attend – it would be a shame to miss them, so, although travelling NW the following day, I'm risking a night out (and maybe giving ad hoc help, if my CEM friends need it (I may also be around to help, before the gig, on Tuesday)) :

The Marian Consort explores loss and lament in sacred music by Tudor composers and presents new works by Ben Rowarth and Donna McKevitt in that context


Link to the gig-page here

£25.00 (no booking-fee, but donations are welcome)


There is also a combined ticket for all three concerts (Tuesday 2 to Thursday 4 November), subject to availability - £70.00 (or £65.00 to Friends of Cambridge Early Music)



Fayrfax Quincentenary – Ensemble Pro Victoria

On the day before, Tuesday 2 November, there is a programme called Fayrfax Quincentenary, given by Ensemble Pro Victoria, since...

This year is 500 years since the death of Robert Fayrfax (probably the most important composer of the Tudor era ?).

Can confirm adrenaline levels rise when flailing next to delicate glass lamps! 🙈🤦🏼‍♂️
We return to Cambridge tomorrow for the first time since we left as students… do pay us a visit for some very special music! https://t.co/OP79nuBUp1

— Toby Ward (@tobychward) November 1, 2021

It has been a pleasure to open our #CambridgeFestivalOftheVoice tonight with @EnsembleEPV, congratulations for such an enchanting performance! #fayrfax500 pic.twitter.com/1o4HHnmhXN

— CambridgeEarlyMusic (@CambsEarlyMusic) November 2, 2021

Including this one, to open this year's Festival of The Voice at Cambridge Early Music, Ensemble Pro Victoria is celebrating Fayrfax’s canon with a series of concerts, plus, as well as videos and podcasts, a new recording of selected sacred and secular works.


The aim of this concert in Cambridge will be to offer not only a taste of all genres and styles in which Fayrfax was prolific, but also the chance to hear world-premiere reconstructions and some rarely-performed works.


http://www.cambridgeearlymusic.org/booking/?event=Fayrfax%20Quincentenary

£25.00 (as above)



Echo (conductor by Sarah Latto)

On Thursday 4 November, the final concert in this year's Festival has Gorczycki’s Missa Paschalis as its centrepiece, but will interlace it with the work of composers who lived and worked in Warsaw and Krakow in the 16th and 17th centuries :


* Missa Paschalis – Kyrie – Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki (1665 – 1734)

* Iniquos odio habui – Luca Marenzio (1553 – 1599)

* Missa Paschalis – Gloria

* Gaudent in caelis – Asprillo Pacelli (1570 – 1623)

* Missa Paschalis – Sanctus

* Ego flos campi – Vincenzo Bertolusi (c. 1550 – 1608)

* Missa Paschalis – Benedictus

* Laetentur caeli – Mikołaj Zielenski (1560 – 1620)

* Missa Paschalis – Agnus Dei


http://www.cambridgeearlymusic.org/booking/?event=The%20Polish%20Court

£25.00 ea.


As mentioned above, there is also a combined ticket for all three concerts (Tuesday 2 to Thursday 4 November), subject to availability - £70.00 (or £65.00 to Friends of Cambridge Early Music)...



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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Top Tips for Cambridge Drawing Society's Autumn Show, which finishes on Saturday 30 October 2021

The Agent's Top Tips for Cambridge Drawing Society's Autumn Show (on till Saturday 30 October)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

29 October

The Agent's Top Tips for Cambridge Drawing Society's Autumn Show, currently on at The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, but finishing at 4.00 p.m. on Saturday 30 October 2021

In what follows, a figure in bold face denotes the numbered screen on which each work is hanging (unless preceded by a 'W', for 'Wall' - in the main exhibition space) ; the standard of work is generally very high, but the factor on which an item appears here is based, trying to look at every work on show, on listing those that ought to stand the test of time, by being looked at anew each time in The Agent's eyes, rather than delivering one, however impressive, bundle of impressions on first being viewed.


Highly commended, including Best in show (as voted by #UCFF), in alphabetical order (of title) :

• 22 : A Breath of Fresh Air ~ Sue Walker

• 30 : A New Day ~ Ann Massing

• 86 : Autumn Trees ~ Cathy Parker

• 86 : Birch Woods ~ Cathy Parker

• 66 (?) : Blue Composition (?) ~ Christine Lockwood

• 60 : Byron's Pool ~ Katy Bailey

• 33 : Cherries ~ Rachel Haynes

• 55 : Chicken ~ Svetlana Baibekova

• 4 : Dandelions in a Jam Jar ~ Carol Whitehouse

• 20 : Ethel ~ Sara Woodall

• 39 : Green Cavern ~ Maggie Ecclestone

• 84 : Harbour Lights Honfleur ~ Vivienne Machell

• 39 : Joseph's Rock ~ Maggie Ecclestone

• W2 : Landscape No. 1 : Complications ~ Christine Lafon

• 59 : Mow Fen XVIII ~ Iona Howard

• 91 : Myrtle ~ Yvonne Jerrold

• 72 : On The Level ~ Janet Gammans

• 25 : The Pond ~ Mary Seymour

• 72 : Silent Fen ~ Janet Gammans

• 3 : Snow Berries and Rosehips ~ Carol Whitehouse

• 36 : Stare ~ Rob Jones

• 8 : Strawberries ~ Lydumila Sikhosana

• 28 : Tied Up ~ Alan Noyes

• 2 : Trinity Lane, Cambridge ~ Yang Yuxin

• 10 : Winter Hillside, Islay ~ Jill Ogilvy




Also mentioned in dispatches (likewise in alphabetical order (of title)) :

• 39 : Arthur's Cave~ Maggie Ecclestone

• 91 : Big Little Owl ~ Yvonne Jerrold

• W3 : Blizzard ~ Ann Gascoine

• 60 : Brancaster Staithe ~ Dan Walmsley

• 71 : Channel Island Porcelain ~ Bill Everett

• W3 : Fleam Dyke, Springtime ~ Hatty Richmond

• 31 : Frozen in Time I ~ Liz Hales

• 15 : King's Cross ~ Willy (Willie ?) Wilson

• 49 : Long Shadows ~ Caroline Furlong

• 60 : Looming ~ Katy Bailey

• 10 : Mountain Stream ~ Jill Ogilvy

• W3 : Dr. Pat Owens ~ John Glover

• 32 : Rosy Glow ~ Chris Lockwood

• 6 : Shoreline ~ Elaine Purcell

• 30 : Silver Sunset ~ Ann Massing

• 50 : The Staithe ~ Alan Noyes

• 55 : Vietnam ~ Svetlana Baibekova




Also ran :

• 86 : Paul Edwards appears to like Bridget Riley's Hesitate (19??) [and, perhaps, her Fall (1963)] enough to meld his style with hers by way of pastiche

• 80 – 81 : In his turn, Geoff Goddard looks to like Gerhard Richter's photo-realism and also the style of his model – 4 x variants



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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Poem by Tweet : What did FK mean by FB ?

Poem by Tweet : What did FK mean by FB ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

28 October

Poem by Tweet : What did FK mean by FB ?

To fb :

Please
Don't fb
Or try changing
To try to please me

x

PS Even down to the usual utter schlock of 'I am proud to announce', if or when a change has actually been forced on someone... pic.twitter.com/PkT2uECgQk

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 28, 2021

They had some thoughts, too :https://t.co/o2CmIwz5e9 https://t.co/07bSAWMG9m pic.twitter.com/5ilheC5Qyp

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 29, 2021

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

The Naked Truth ? : Naked Wines

The Naked Truth ? : Naked Wines

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

27 October

The Naked Truth ? : Naked Wines

One might be :

Don't join what's actually a variety of club without being very sure that it will respect all of your attempts to resolve any misordered delivery, your distance-selling cancellation-rights, and you, when you say 'Let me go !'... ?#HardSellDoesNotLookLikeHardSell https://t.co/z4nhG15pwu

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 19, 2021

WHY ? ? ?

Your clueless customer service is almost second to none - *if* this isn't a hard sell, which pretends to ask how I am, but argues the toss endlessly by e-mail.

Well, you got yourself some Free Publicity right here - no such thing, they say, as Bad Publicity ! ;)

x

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 27, 2021

No

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 28, 2021

There is no order, because the order - as everyone agrees - was meant to be cancelled.

The correspondence so far has destroyed any trust, e.g. We arrange collection and 3-5 working days later, if you believe us, this time...

I shouldn't have to wait for a refund for your error.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 28, 2021

It's worse than watching Caine / Urfe in The Magus (1968) :

'C'mon, answer some practicalities once in a while - and stop playing games !

'Games, where I'm gently, but very firmly, strong-armed into letting you retain, say, £x / 2 [redacted] for the privilege of my keeping some drain-cleaner ?'

What a business / what a business !

2 / 2

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 1, 2021

One might be :

Don't join what's actually a variety of club without being very sure that it will respect all of your attempts to resolve any misordered delivery, your distance-selling cancellation-rights, and you, when you say 'Let me go !'... ?#HardSellDoesNotLookLikeHardSell https://t.co/z4nhG15pwu

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 19, 2021

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Poem by Tweet : 'Juno and Co.'

A Nupe Ohm : Juno and Co.

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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24 October

A Nupe Ohm : Juno and Co.

In the play -
And pull -
Of the world,
'Twas ever
(And is ever)
Juno and Jupiter,
Hera and Zeus,
Bitching, bewitching,
Deceiving -
An we let them -
We mortals
With stuff of
Some vacant cave
On Crete

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 24, 2021

PS If one's on Crete, with the use of a hire-car, etc., maybe resist going to see Zeus' Cave, as - unless it's en route - one's time is better employed travelling elsewhere, whether it's Heraklion, Spinalonga, or even The Amari Valley.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Fenland, Google and driving on The Isle of Jura [and / or The Isle of Islay]

Fenland, Google and driving on The Isle of Jura [and / or The Isle of Islay]

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

23 October

Fenland, Google and driving on The Isle of Jura [and / or The Isle of Islay]

Even having seen photos, a first visit to Islay makes one doubt whether, as one travels from Port Ellen past the airport and out to Bridgend (A846), one can be on a main road (let alone the other route (B8016)), or going towards the tip of Jura from Craighouse (also A846), but...

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 24, 2021

The simple search-string "craighouse to barnhill" suffices for one purpose, but not the other, so one amends it to read "craighouse to barnhill jura"...

Still not good enough, because it remains intent on not *starting* on Jura, but from Edinburgh ! pic.twitter.com/Fx7Jrax88z

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 24, 2021

Apparently, it needed "craighouse jura to barnhill jura" to bring up the right route ! ;)

Yes, it's almost certainly right, as I recall, with that 95 mins for a distance of 23.7 miles...

*Except that*, with no key to unlock the chain, the last four miles must be on foot ! ! pic.twitter.com/mzf6M607BF

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 24, 2021

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Nerina Pallot [and Roxanne de Bastion] at Wavendon, The Stables, Milton Keynes, by Tweet (response in progress)

Nerina Pallot [and Roxanne de Bastion] at Wavendon, The Stables, Milton Keynes, by Tweet (response in progress)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

25 October

Nerina Pallot [and Roxanne de Bastion] at Wavendon, The Stables, Milton Keynes, by Tweet ~

Monday 25 October 2021 from 8.00 p.m. (response in progress)

But there's no bad seat in The Jim Marshall Auditorium, and the side stalls are just fine, too !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 24, 2021

Merch, with Roxanne de Bastion, at The Stables : Resorting to cash when the wireless tech disappoints

An evening of lovely strangeness - a whirl of Baby Driver (2017), Solaris (1972) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999) for dream-like wish-fulfilment ! :

* Requests aren't usual - but mine (without calling out)

* Next https://t.co/k5bxox0Ihv, mentioned when driving over (re The Graduate)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 26, 2021

To-night's excellent gig touched on, as it were, a knob-shaped rocket... ;)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 26, 2021

Rather late to have the CD on aptly high, but the power, conviction, and sheer honesty and integrity of these songs is right back there, when toured and played, and the CD sleeve signed, six years ago :

In quite a different place and mood from Monday night's long set's choices ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 26, 2021

[...]


more to come


[...]

Identifying with many of the lyrix of The Graduate (2009), to which I've treated myself ahead of Monday's gig at @StablesMK :https://t.co/Q40i0odCQ1

Especially, in an odd way, with 'When Did i Become Such a Bitch'... pic.twitter.com/vGwZCzbSHg

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 22, 2021

Somehow, though, it seems that I've never seen this video for a gorgeous song (which of Nerina P.'s isn't ? !) ! :https://t.co/3KSzd2FksQ https://t.co/QENMKIOlYU

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 24, 2021

[...]


more to come


[...]





























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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Bach connections : Mahan Esfahani at Cambridge Music Festival (work in progress)

Bach connections : Mahan Esfahani at Cambridge Music Festival (work in progress)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

20 October

Bach connections : Mahan Esfahani at Cambridge Music Festival (work in progress),

Wednesday 20 October 2021 at 7.30 p.m. at Downing Place United Reformed Church

To-night was hpschd at @Downing_Place for @cammusicfest :

Is John Cage - though not on the programme - still re-Tweeting ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 20, 2021

The Sonata in G Minor (Wq65/17) by C. P. E. Bach – a somewhat fractured and fissile work ? – was played with due theatricality and considerable poise for, apart from the so-called London Bach, he was the son of Johann Sebastian's who had most caught the imagination of generations after his father's, with a compositional style that was quite other than that of the master of the complexities of counterpoint and of how to craft and interweave fugal-subjects :

Mahan Esfahani gave an unfamiliar work, whose movements appeared to end with the same somewhat casual gesture (as if endings were so 1750 ?), pacing and plenty of space in which to talk, before J. S. Bach's Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue (BWV 903), where there was more scope, and therefore more need, not to adopt some 'accepted' approach to performance, which can lead to oxidization and rust.

The Fantasia and Fugue had been known, first, to #UCFF from inclusion in Blandine Verlet's intense 2-LP set of Sämtliche Toccaten (The Complete Toccatas) from 1978, listened to, o'er and o'er (though latterly by making a recording on a C120 audio-cassette, rather than playing and turning and playing the vinyl) : such things, and the means that were then relatively limited for knowing more about the performer / music (beyond the immediate sleeve-notes), inevitably colour one's relations, for good or ill, to a repertoire or a piece.

Or thus hear him play on this Jukka Ollikka instrument, with a carbon-fibre sound-board*, which - depending on where one might have been listening in the performance-space - probably sounded as if the sound had been amplified, or otherwise 'processed'.

* https://t.co/D8LgwyznX8

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 20, 2021

Esfahani could initially be heard, slowing down the musical flow of the Fantasia in favour of its rotational or pausal elements – which was, perhaps, done in a nod both back to the affect of Emmanuel Bach², whose work he had just played, as well as forward, to that of Johann Kuhnau's Sonata, as it was to be presented to us (as one has to doubt how many there already knew or had specifically come to hear it ?).

Towards its end, Esfahani adopted a very lively, non-U manner to Bach in the energetic and vigorous delivery of notes (which some might typically call 'pounding' on the instrument's manual ?) – its vivid impressions of drama, and in no conceivable way to be mistaken (in its euphemistic sense) for authentic performance, with someone who plays so-called early music, but does not see himself as an early-music performer.


In the opening of the fugue, Esfahani was playing at a fairly modest tempo, and then, in the course of the work, started introducing special emphases, and what seemed to be² deliberate hesitations or changes of direction. At later points, he was playing very densely, such that we were presented 'a wash' of echoic sound :

To the extent that one might not have envisaged outside a piano forte and employing the sustain-pedal, or otherwise possible without the sound's being amplified or modified, and with a very pronounced bass register. (All of this began to set one wondering whether a sound-desk and speakers were in operation in the venue.)

The conclusion of the work was met with a roar of enthusiasm – though it was unclear whether for a rendition of a familiar work, from the novelty brought to it, or both. However, to judge from which Esfahani certainly seemed not to have been exaggerating, in telling Katie Derham² that there was something different about music in this city from its university rival that consisted in how audiences listen.






















End-notes :

¹ When he spoke to the audience, after the BWV 903 and pacingly inhabiting the front of the performance-space, there was, as well as a suavely provocative or subversive content, a pedagogic tone to how he addressed us :

Mahan Esfahani knew, because he not only underlined the point, but also drew attention to it, that we assuredly did not know whether, in addition to having been a lawyer, etc., Kuhnau had, in fact, written a novel about a harpsichordist who was or may have been, as he put it, 'a quack' - in that there was not only a twinkle in saying that, but a sort of off-hand and slightly sotto voce 'Make of that what you will...' afterwards.


² Then again, appearing in conversation with Katie Derham by telephone on Monday's Radio 3 In Tune (on air between 5.00 and 7.00 p.m. BST), Esfahani had not left for the UK, but, as he told us, had finished packing to travel for the recitals in Cambridge (on Wednesday), and then at Wigmore Hall (Thursday ?). [Regrettably, for some reason doubtless to due with construing the pandemic-related risk, the former was confined to one bill of fare, i.e. with no interval, despite four works on the bill (as one had heard had been the case at other CMF concerts).]

With a pair of tickets booked for the @cammusicfest gig on Wednesday evening, good to hear @MahanEsfahani in a brief chat with @thekatiederham on @BBCInTune ! :https://t.co/9fG1aB6L4A https://t.co/9FcOzaDTfn

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 18, 2021

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Sophie Taeuber-Arp at Tate : Imagine if Paul Klee had been so relativ unsung...

Sophie Taeuber-Arp at Tate : Imagine if Paul Klee had been so relativ unsung...

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

15 October

Sophie Taeuber-Arp at Tate : Imagine if Paul Klee had been so relativ unsung...

¹ Also slightly younger, Täuber-Arp had a shorter career, since she died [from CO poisoning] on 13 January 1943 (days before her 54th birthday²), but she had achieved so much more - in whatever medium, work that lasts and has far more to say !

² Arp died 23 years later, at 79.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 28, 2021

Friday 15 October

Composition of Quadrangular, Polychrome, Dense Strokes (1921)

Gouache and graphite on paper

Luxuriating in 4-5h, back at @Tate Modern again, in a show, one inevitably doesn't simply want to take photos that won't be as good as in the exhibition postcards or books - but, with an artist as aware of movement as #SophieTaeuberArp, it's fun showing the latent force at work ! pic.twitter.com/xAD3gQBIdq

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 15, 2021

At @Tate Modern, unexpectedly meeting - via the personage of The Smeraldina - the early work and life of Beckettt (More Pricks than Kicks)#SophieTaeuberArp#KingStagsGetEverywhere ! pic.twitter.com/h4HxLN8OG0

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 15, 2021

Where one might have missed it, on the landing of Level 2 of The Blavatnik building, was a video of figures put in motion, but did no one have the means (or forethought) to film at the time ?

2 / 2

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 22, 2021

Sunday 17 October

Or bas-relief (when rotated through 180°) ?

Or is it as when Gary Brooker wrote ? :

'It's a trick of the night
Everything is all right
Caught me while I was dreaming of you
It's a trick of the night
Everything is alright
Caught me while I was sleeping'https://t.co/BNbejfuCPG pic.twitter.com/2eNPlJ1gAR

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 17, 2021

This and more now being compiled on #UCFF at :https://t.co/yXLSXw9X79 https://t.co/TzyEqofUiy pic.twitter.com/IAGiTjVcsu

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 17, 2021

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Films that make you wish that you were watching some other work - In the Mood for Love (Fa yeung nin wah) (2000)

Films that make you wish that you were watching some other work - In the Mood for Love (2000)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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11 October

Films that make you wish that you were watching some other work - In the Mood for Love (Fa yeung nin wah) (2000) [seen at Saffron Screen]

Films that make you wish that you were watching some other work - In the Mood for Love (Fa yeung nin wah) (2000) :

* Nathalie (2003)

* Michael Frayn's Copenhagen [2002 t.v. film]

* Samuel Beckettt's Play [Beckettt on Film dir. Anthony Minghella]

* The Deep Blue Sea (2011) pic.twitter.com/DYmPzdVyV8

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 11, 2021

I was glad to have had a chance to see it, having missed it elsewhere recently, but the fact that it was a Franco-HK co-production made sense of a lot of its curiously dry affect, and made me think of films that I like instead, e.g. Nathalie (2003). pic.twitter.com/h50oqSl1B7

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 12, 2021

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Saturday 2 October]

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Saturday 2 October]

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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2 October

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Saturday 2 October]

* As David at @camjazz had ruefully commented beforehand to Th'Agent...

(See also https://t.co/nRWcx4XduE and (for the original line-up) https://t.co/DeyG3GIIwT.)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 3, 2021

[...]

Inept cinematography, but keen applause for The Julian Bliss Quintet at @Hatfield_House, last Saturday evening, during @HHChamberMusicF ! pic.twitter.com/SMX9m47Oh5

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 10, 2021

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Thursday 30 September]

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Thursday 30 September]

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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30 September

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Thursday 30 September]

With a complete change of programme*, to-day doesn't feel at all unseasonal for @BarronFleur to join @jpianomiddleton at @Hatfield_House for Schubert's great Liederkreis, so movingly setting Wilhelm Müller wanderer's texts, D. 911...

* As, sadly, @SampsonCarolyn is poorly. pic.twitter.com/9nL3me9Suv

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 30, 2021

As one might expect, Barron's dramatic work or for the stage informed her approach this evening (at 5.00 p.m.), but not perhaps, given that she is mentored by Barbara Hannigan and working with Ian Bostridge, any more than befitted the audience or occasion.

In such a lovely, but relatively small, performance-space [The Marble Hall at Hatfield House], one simply could not give a performance that was audaciously writ large – unlike The Maltings, at Snape, where Bostridge let rip one summer at Aldeburgh Festival [reviewed by #UCFF as 'A swaying, snarling, even spitting Schubert for our times'] ! – and large gestures were unnecessary, when small ones (such as, early on, fluttering eye-lids) worked in this context much better, alongside the usual recital-room process of clearly and visually thinking her way to, and into, the next Lied.


Even if partly filled in by Müller in Die schöne Müllerin (?), he is anyway handling the universals of love, life and their loss, so there is no need for him or us to delay on the particulars – and those, similarly, who still remark that they are hearing a mezzo-soprano perform Winterreise are perhaps missing the point of its universality, and that there is no good reason why any character of voice cannot inhabit these texts* (or they the singer ?).

The texts speak to us, from and through the performers, of things that extend far beyond any literal scenario outlined, and, excepting, perhaps, the strangely placid encounter (or non-encounter [as of Beckettt's Murphy with Mr Endon] ?) with the vision that ends the cycle (and the eerie scoring that might as effectively have launched Pierrot lunaire from Earth), who cannot relate to the narrator's awareness of how perspectives can be curiously mixed and changed by time, as recalled in 'Der Lindenbaum' or, say, 'Die Post' ?


On half-a-dozen occasions (in live concerts alone), it appears that one can have followed the poems that make up Winterreise and seemingly not have noticed before that – except in three cases ('Die Post' [no. 13], 'Täuschung' [19] and 'Die Nebensonnen' [23]) – they compromise some number, between 8 and 3, four-line stanzas. However, one palpable reason not to be aware (other than that each poem is headed by a title) is that substance far outweighs form in this Liederkreis, and this is not La divina commedia's intense terza rima, or equivalent to a sonnet-sequence (such as Sidney's Astrophel and Stella).

Winterreise is far more condensed, so, with its many different scenes (those titles, again), let alone changes of heart or direction of thought, its progression is at a different scale, and of a different scope, from Shakespeare's sonnets or those of Sidney (though some have disputed that the former appear in the correct order) : there can be (in fact, need to be) such changes, but the formality and requirements of fourteen lines, even if they are constituted as three quatrains, is then affected by leading up to ending with a couplet. (Or there may be, say, a differently structured division, with a rhyme-scheme for the first eight lines, and another for the final six.)

Barron's rendition, matched by that of versatile and gifted recital-partner Middleton, gave us the full, passionate spectrum of depiction of states of being or mind that, when written and set nearly two hundred years ago, had a different status as literature and as a form of life https://t.co/ilKpSWpdDB

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 1, 2021

We can see this most easily in the language and vocabulary of such phrases as 'Was fragen sie nach meinen Schmerzen ?', 'Mit meinen heissen Tränen' or 'Seine kalten Flocken saugen / Durstig ein das heisse Weh'.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 1, 2021

[...]

Ich bin zu Ende mit allen Träumen*

[...]
























One emotional centre that Fleur Barron found and gave to us in this series of pieces was in 'Im Dorfe', from which the words that head this review are quoted*, and these words, in particular, threw into retrospect other times when dreaming and dreams had occurred in the texts of Wilhelm Müller's poems :

Seven poems away from the seeming inevitability of 'Der Leiermann', and after the narratorial voice has already passed through – and given us insights into – such moments as something heartfelt, resolution, noble feeling, moodi- and vengefulness, pride, and despairing***, its experiences seem to have come to one definite conclusion, from which the remaining poems will not deviate – although of course, and not least in 'Der Leiermann', there are more realizations, dreads and existential horrors to come.



[...]



End-notes :

* Maybe we cannot easily forget Dylan Thomas, reading his own work, once heard, but he is not the only one who can or should be heard, reading it aloud.

** #UCFF would render this I'm through with all these dreams. (As perhaps too prosaically translated as 'I am finished with all dreams' in the English version, by Richard Wigmore, provided ?)

*** To capture ones just from the first four poems ('Gute Nacht', 'Die Wetterfahne', 'Gefrorne Tränen' and 'Erstarrung').


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

The Invented Quotations [and Ascriptions] : A Compendium (in subject order)

The Invented Quotations [and Ascriptions] : A Compendium (in subject order)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

20 September

The Invented Quotations [and Ascriptions] : A Compendium (in subject order)

Invent the riposte, and attribute it to Jean Harlow, Joan Rivers, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, etc.*, as you see fit ! ;)#YouAreMakingUpYourOwnJokesNow - literally

* Though unlikely, perhaps, that *all of them* worked on the gag ? Unless... : https://t.co/OL1fPtbVBe

2 / 2

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 15, 2021

Attentiveness :

Might being attentive and seeking not to be inauthentic be - or seem to be - all that one needs do in life ? ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 1, 2024

Bagels :

Toasted Bagels and a Bath at Noon would make an excellent title for one's memoirs ~ Serge Koussevitzky

Discuss.

How would you answer differ, if you had :

1) Read Oblomov (1859), by Ivan Goncharov ? and / or

2) Been an author who had been compared to its titular head ?

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Brinkmanship :

Brinkmanship simply has no meaning when everyone has now seen your hand (which they anyway knew had nothing in it) ~ Montaigne https://t.co/D3uAZUn8bF

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 9, 2021

Charitable objects :

If ever the claimed good intentions behind the objects of a charitable institution come under sorry scrutiny, 'tis oddly most likely in the particulars of how it gainfully offers employment to those who are - or are entitled to be - its stated beneficiaries ~ Benjamin Franklin

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 22, 2021

Cromer Delicacies

Cromer Delicacies [according to Mark Twain*] :

Jellied adder's tail or marinaded Jersey-herd udder

* Allegedly.

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Deceit :

Deceit is an unnecessary, but frequently present, part of political and public life ~ Thomas Hardy

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Employment and its so-called rights :

'Even with the sound off, the stench both of the finger-wagging and from the hideous assurance that comes from having so much capital that one can spout fantasies* makes me hasten to beckon the servant with the bucket and refreshing lemon-infused towel !' ~ Evelyn Waugh

1 / 2

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 14, 2022

Friendship :

When it comes down to it, friends who sometimes prove to be an irritatant are one thing, essentially : irritating ~ Victor Hugo

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 12, 2024

Insincerity :

The only thing that astounds me more than your lack of sincerity is your sincere and deep indifference to its easily being found out ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

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Kissing :

If a person kisses a fish, the person may be happy, but the fish will not be ~ Voltaire

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 9, 2021

Lives led well :

An examined life may still not be a life will led, but it has more chance of being so than one left unexamined ~ Henrik Ibsen

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 2, 2023

London :

If one is but kind to London, see how it does, indeed, reciprocate ~ Samuel Johnson

If you are called Jonson, it shouldn't be spelt Johnson ~ Ben Jonson

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When a man is tired of London, he may use his One-Day Travelcard to go home again ~ Ben Jonson

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Love-apples :

Love-apples, Hodge ? They are but an riotous fruit ! ~ Samuel Johnson

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 13, 2023

Low-achievers :

As LBJ privately told JFK, it's these kids who are low-achievers - objectively considering the advantages that they've already had in life - but think that they can sort out everyone else's lives who are the problem ~ Henry Miller

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 9, 2021

Lunar eclipses :

The first demotic record, in English, of what appears to have been a lunar eclipse suggests that witnessing it may have given rise to some strange - not to say wildly transgressive - behaviour ! ~ G. K. Chestertonhttps://t.co/S3N84U2KMp

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 29, 2023

Need :

A plain deal table - and, maybe, a plate of tepid tapioca - is all that any of us needs ~ Mark Twain pic.twitter.com/v56rbohGn8

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 19, 2020

The Night Sky :

Although, despite the frost,
The Night Sky was not
Crisply - not so sharply -
Defin'd, 'twas to me
Comfort to look - and see.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson#OneLovelyThingToDay

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 5, 2022

Parfums :

Oh, but I procure *all* mes parfums, my dear, through the caring offices of Boddle & Shrike - don't you ? ~ Oscar Wilde

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) March 11, 2023

Parties :

Parties are, generally, to be endured, forgotten, or recalled unbidden, and with the accompanying cold sweat ~ Walter Matthau

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Penguins :

A plain penguin is no match for a fancy penguin, but a pretty penguin surpasses all ~ John Gielgud

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 12, 2022

Poverty :

Poor people are just rich people who don't have any money ~ Mark Twain

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 3, 2021

Set-backs :

Whatever set-backs there may have been, some will turn out to be blessings in disguise - and blessings are always worth being grateful for ! ~ Novalis

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) February 12, 2023

Sex :

More than the question whether the sex act itself is ridiculous or demeaning is the matter of all the things that the sexes do to achieve, adulterate or avoid it ~ Joan Rivers

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 1, 2021

I 'love' about the writing of Henry James that beyond the middle of The Golden Bowl, for example, one can be sure that the pair of leading characters *must have* had sexual relations, but, even by re-reading the likely chapter, one can never work out where ~ S. J. Perelman

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 17, 2021

Shakespeare :

Even the much-maligned Compositor D (?) took more skill in setting the works of Shakespeare than he did in writing them ~ Frank Muir

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 13, 2024

'Sporty' clothes :

When 'being sporty', it is essential to wear sporty clothes : if not, people may not think that you're serious about it, or, even worse, realize that that's what you're doing ~ Stephen Potter [a paraphrase]

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 17, 2023

Standards in public life

The decline of standards in public life or politics is epitomized by this analogy : a fresh turd on a packed coach whose windows won't open, but with passengers who all seem to have lost their sense of smell ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 9, 2023

Tchaikovsky :

As Rimsky once remarked, it may be that the best of Pyotr Ilyich's symphonic writing is not to be found in his Symphonies ~ Leonard Bernstein https://t.co/EAof8ySLSK

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 1, 2022

Work :

Those infamous words are perhaps better understood as Machtfreie Arbeit : Power-free work ~ E. B. White

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 24, 2024

Youth :

As Dostoyevsky maybe once said, what we might imagine to be the arrogance of youth is actually its insecurity :

All too aware *that* it is, but - not yet (ever ?) knowing *why* it is - repeating the mistake of over-emphatically announcing its presence.https://t.co/Hmen3gyRfu

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 8, 2024

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)