The Royal Wedding and the Endeavour Space Shuttle Mission

April 29^th, 2011 is shaping up to be a momentous day on both sides of the Atlantic.

In London, it’s the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton.

In Cape Canaveral, Florida, the last but one of the space shuttle missions, Endeavour, will take off at 3:47pm EDT.

There is no doubt, however, that the Royal Wedding is hogging all the media attention.

It’s easy to understand why.  William and Catherine are a couple made in heaven.  They have similar interests; they have spent time among a similar social circle, and they have been steady for some time.  Their marriage stands a good chance of surviving, unlike that of William’s parents.

Catherine is good-looking, intelligent, well-educated and has flair as opposed to mere glamour.  The Royal Wedding gives the UK welcome respite from depression in the worse economic belt-tightening since Charles and Diana tied the knot thirty years ago.

Besides, much as the monarchy can be an anachronism in an age of liberal values, members of the royal family have celebrity appeal by virtue of their elevated status, and it’s impossible for any other event on the day to compete with the pageantry of the wedding.

In short, William and Catherine’s wedding will fulfil the commoner’s yearning for fairytale dénouements.

By contrast, the Endeavour space shuttle mission is blasé.  There have been many such flights, although as the last but one mission before the programme shuts down, it has some peripheral historical significance.  Nor is it the first time the commander, Captain Mark Kelly, has been in space.

The story behind the Endeavour mission, on the other hand, is more touching.  Whereas the Royal Wedding is about coming together, the Endeavour mission is about separation.  Captain Kelly’s wife, congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, is recovering from severe brain injury after taking a bullet in an assassination attempt in January.  She is almost re-living her life all over again.  It was a wrenching decision for Kelly to carry on with his role in the Endeavour mission.

USA Today says of the couple: “This is a love story, which at its heart, is very grounded. A story of two driven but devoted people who love, respect and support each other -- and in the process, are inspiring family, friends and strangers alike.”

All expectations are that the Endeavour mission will return safely to earth, but NASA has lost two shuttles and their crews in the past, Challenger and Columbia, so it’s not a foregone conclusion.  Giffords will be on hand at Cape Canaveral to witness the blast-off, probably praying.

Rabbi Stephanie Aaron, who married Kelly and Giffords, is reported to have described the couple this way: “They both have a strength of person, a strength of character — the courage to be a leader, he in terms of space, and she, to step onto the floor of Congress.  People want to listen to them and go on the path with them.”

The Royal Wedding harks back to traditions and institutions dating back centuries; the Endeavour mission is forward looking in that it pushes the limit of human exploration into the outer world.  William and Catherine exude glamour; Kelly and Giffords draw from inner strength.  Two facets of human existence.  Both try to vindicate mistakes of the past.  Which of these two events will you be watching on April 29^th?  Have you noticed that the space shuttle is spelled “Endeavour” rather than “Endeavor”?

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The Hong Kong Philharmonic turns light entertainment into high artistic accomplishment

April 9^th, 2011

Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall

Rameau             Dardanus suite

Mozart              Così fan tutte: Una donna a quindici anni

                         Le nozze di Figaro: Giunse alfin il momento…Deh vieni non tardar

                         Così fan tutte: Temerari, sortite…Come scoglio

                         Exsultate Jubilate, K165

Beethoven         Symphony No. 2 in D, op 36

Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor           Jan Willem de Vriend

Soprano               Mara Mastalir

Giving its concert on April 9^th the subtitle “Sing Mozart Sing” and promoting it with a tongue-in-cheek portrait of the mischievous genius with his mouth half open in a wry smile, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra probably intended the audience to expect an evening of cheerful and light entertainment.  The programming suited this intention down to a tee.  Progressing from the baroque to the classical, it was chronologically correct, and temperamentally appropriate.

Opening the concert was a rarely heard work by French baroque composer, Jean-Philippe Rameau, the suite from his opera Dardanus.  Although the opera itself is a tragedy, replete with mythological deities in acts of war, the suite consists of bright and jolly dances.  Conductor Jan Willem de Vriend applied a light touch well suited to the dainty elegance of the music, and the orchestra responded well with a fresh and vibrant tone.

The eight sections of the suite vary greatly in tempo and rhythm, and the orchestra handled the changes in pace with confidence and ease.  From the slow, measured Ouverture, to the Tambourin, akin to Morris dancing, and the spirited Bruit de Guerre pour Entr'acte, representing ferocious military action, the orchestra never missed a beat, as it were.  The Chaconne closed this part of the programme with a stop-start melody of immense grace and polish.

Sandwiched between the two orchestral pieces in the programme were four vocal selections by Mozart, two arias from the opera Così fan tutte, one from Le nozze di Figaro and the motet Exsultate Jubilate.  Soloist Mara Mastalir curtsied deeply upon coming onstage in a black gown and long black gloves, winning over the audience immediately.  With a voice more mature than one would expect of someone her age – she is not even thirty – her tone is lush and she displayed superb control.   Smoothly gliding from the top to the bottom of her vocal range, confidently skating through coloratura and lyricism, she is clearly a master rather than a servant of the demanding material.  The variety of matching facial expressions accentuated the dramatic impact of the arias.

As Despina in Così fan tutte and Susanna Le nozze di Figaro, both vivacious and flirting maids, Mastalir was flippant but not flaunting.  She could have been a little more teasing as the wily Susanna and more forceful in her dramatic rejection of the Albanians as Fiordiligi, one of the sisters in Così fan tutte, but these were small blemishes.

Returning after the intermission in a bright red gown with a diamond-studded girdle, she was decidedly resplendent.  Launching herself vigorously into the first part of the motet Exsultate Jubilate, she changed gear almost unnoticeably into the gentle middle movement, finally rounding off triumphantly in the concluding movement Alleluia, cementing her performance as the centrepiece of the evening.

Beethoven wrote his second symphony during a particularly difficult period in his life, as he confronted the increasingly disturbing signs of deafness and contemplated suicide.  Yet the work is full of joyous optimism, humorous twists and mischievous charm.  After the brooding opening passage, the orchestra gave the first movement a full-blown buoyant treatment.  Tiptoeing on the somewhat elusive melodies in the second movement, it underlined the bucolic atmosphere prescient of the sixth symphony.

The third movement, a scherzo marked allegro, was graceful and refined, with the prancing woodwinds adding colour to the festive mood.  The bold and forceful opening bars of the finale were resolute and unequivocal, developing meticulously into a crescendo of cheerful triumph, bringing the concert to a gratifying close.

Three cheers to conductor Jan Willem de Vriend and soprano Mara Mastalir for turning an evening intended to be light entertainment into one of high artistic accomplishment, through thoughtful application of their skills and talent, and smart programming.

(This review also appears on Bachtrack)

The Brave New World of Books – a layman’s view

I have always had an interest in books, but should have read more than I have.  My excuse?  That the books that matter are too bulky.  The arrival of e-books has totally destroyed this excuse.  My iPad now carries Oscar Wilde Complete Works Ultimate Collection (140+ works), Works of George Bernard Shaw (30+ works), James Joyce’s Ulysses, War and Peace, and The Works of Mark Twain (24 books in a single file).  It weighs exactly the same as it did without them.  Some of the books were even free to download.

The world of books has gone through wrenching change in the last few years.  Prognosis, diagnosis and predictions aside, we don’t quite know what it will look like when the dust settles.  Yet the new world already looks exciting to some, and frightening to others.

Despite the idiosyncrasies of some of the players in it, the world of books is not that different from other industries.  Some generate the product ideas (the authors), some manufacture the products (publishers and printers), some distribute them (booksellers) and others consume them (readers).  There are the usual intermediaries, such as literary agents and editors who work for publishers.

So what does the new world of books mean to all these players in the industry?

Authors

Many published and aspiring authors feel that they are the most oppressed people in the world.  They toil for years to develop their product (the book), only to get serial rejection letters from publishers and biting comments from editors.  With the increasing popularity of e-publishing, authors feel truly liberated.  They don’t have to ask publishers for permission, or beg editors not to change their work.  They can now choose to self-publish anything they want, provided they are prepared to put up with a lot of extra administrative work.

Yet like karaoke, which gives people who can’t sing the illusion that they can, e-publishing gives authors who can’t write or tell a story a similar illusion.  This blog post you are reading could be a case in point.  As the quantity of published material in the market goes up, the general quality comes down.

In other words, authors can now bypass publishers as gatekeepers of “quality”, but there are no more or less “good” authors.  It only means that the work of more bad authors gets out into the market.  Let’s face it, some authors who publish their own works electronically now may not be worthy of publication at all.

The Wall Street Journal reported that some authors also complain they earn less per e-book than they do the physical equivalent.  All we can hope is that a larger number of e-books sell to make up for this shortfall.

Publishers

The manufacturers of books – the publishers – have never been short of raw materials.  They have always been inundated with more manuscripts than they can handle in several lifetimes.  Their trade is also fraught with sometimes substantial risks.  How many titles have they published which don’t even cover the cost of printing, not to mention the occasional advances and huge marketing and distribution costs?

E-publishing has cut the cost of production for publishers to the bare minimum, although physical production probably accounts for a small part of a publisher’s total cost.  A few printers will go out of business.  The cost of distribution has also come down, as there is no real physical handling of an e-book.  Besides, there are now more cost-effective channels for promotion, for example social networking.

The price of an e-book, however, is sometimes 20% cheaper than its paperback equivalent, and sometimes even more expensive.  As e-publishing guts a publisher’s business of costs, book pricing doesn’t seem to have fallen proportionally.  Publisher profitability should have gone up, and the business should be less risky.  Although publishers are also vulnerable to literary agencies selling rights to direct to new-world retailers such as Amazon, as Wylie did last year, this doesn’t seem a widespread threat yet.

As purveyors of quality products the reading public wants to buy, publishers should feel secure in their jobs, as long as they continue to keep close to the taste of readers, insist on quality writing, embrace new media and don’t get too naïve about forking out huge advances for celebrity appeal.

Literary agents

Authors love to hate literary agents.  They need them to get to a decent publisher and a wide market, but simply getting to them is a five-year project itself.  With the right confluence of temperament, a literary agent will remain an author’s best friend.  This sometimes cantankerous and oddball breed will likely continue to thrive, and behave just as obnoxiously to the unfortunate writing low-life that dares cross its path.

Booksellers

By all accounts, booksellers seem to have hurt the most.  In an article in Fortune magazine dated June 21, 2010, Borders CEO Michael Edwards defends the raison d’être of bookstores: “If they continue to innovate in the services and experiences they offer…consumers will continue to make bookstores a vital part of their lives…The next chapter is up to them.”  For Borders, that next chapter was Chapter 11, in February, 2011.

My personal experience may be a curved mirror of reality, but it should nevertheless make booksellers stand up and take notice.  Browsing in bookstores is no longer a pastime.  The few physical books I have bought in the last year have either been bargain end-of-the-line titles, or ones I need to share with others.  A few months ago, I saw a title in an exhibition which appeared to be on sale, around 20% cheaper than in bookstores.  There and then, I looked online, found and downloaded an electronic copy it at almost half the already reduced price at the exhibition.

Predictions about the demise of anything are usually correct in direction but wrong in timing.  Die-hard physical book lovers will be far bigger in number and slower to change their habits than futurists envisage.  Bookstores will die a slow, painful death.  A few may even survive.

Readers

For the already overloaded reading public, it’s now harder to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Who cares?  We have always made bad choices anyway, and can now do so at lower cost.  Nor do we need to find bigger bookshelves to house those unwanted and unread titles.  As a life-long reader, I find the immense convenience of e-books simply irresistible.  Similar sentiments may even drive up general readership, and give the book industry needed impetus for growth.

Lastly...

As a reader not in any way involved in the book industry, I am excited by the changes I have seen, but would like to see more.  I want more titles to be available electronically, and at the same time as the hard copy comes on to the market.  I want pricing to come down further.  I’d hate to get caught in the commercial maelstrom, though.

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Yundi and the San Francisco Symphony de-romanticise Tchaikovsky

Davies Symphony Hall
San Francisco, California
Friday April 1^st, 2011

Tchaikovsky    Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Opus 23
Sibelius           Symphony No. 2 in D major, Opus 43

San Francisco Symphony
Herbert Blomstedt Conductor
Yundi Soloist

I had long thought that Tchaikovsky was a pioneer of decadent romanticism.  Many of his melodies have become well-hummed signature tunes of amorous longing in popular music, as in Caterina Valente’s Tonight We Love.


The San Francisco Symphony under Herbert Blomstedt with soloist Yundi (formerly known as Yundi Li) in the piano concerto number one in B flat minor put paid to that idea for good.


Tall, lanky, with sharp features and a full body of wavy hair, Yundi cuts a dashing figure as a teenage heartthrob.  The standing ovation that followed his performance, I suspect, was due in no small measure to his Korean soap-opera star looks.  That is not to say he is not a competent pianist.  On the contrary, he is very much a technical virtuoso.  Yet I wonder whether underneath the pyrotechnics, the breakneck speed and the fluency in his performance, there was genuine empathy with the emotional intentions of Tchaikovsky in creating the work.


Quite apart from the repressive environment of conservative sexual mores in 19^th century Russia, Tchaikovsky suffered traumatic ups and downs in his emotional life.  After being jilted in an infatuation with the soprano Désirée Artôt, his marriage to Antonina Miliukova drove him to the brink of nervous breakdown.  These disastrous experiences with the opposite sex led to a slow coming to terms with his homosexuality: “…nothing more futile than wanting to be anything other than what I am by nature,” as he wrote in a letter to his brother Anatoly.


Some commentators have surmised that Tchaikovsky secretly coded Artôt’s name into the concerto.  Whether or not this conjecture has any merit, the work effuses unmistakable passion.  The melodic progression rises and falls like white foam in a stormy sea, straining to break out as Dr. Bruce Banner does to his clothes when he turns into the green giant in The Incredible Hulk.


In his focus on the technical challenges of the concerto, Yundi glossed over the emotional contours of the work, leaving the audience yearning for a more intimate connection with the composer.  His technical virtuosity was like a sheet of steel over which the emotional hot water of the work flowed.  The heat was quickly cooled, and there was no attachment.


The orchestral accompaniment was compartmentalised, with each section executing its part competently but hardly welding into a cohesive whole.  The tone was jagged, sometimes even strident, and the colour was lacklustre.  The rhythm was at times inappropriately pointed.  I know something was awry when I heard, although for only a fleeting moment, snippets of a Mozart divertimento in the third movement.


I mustn’t be too harsh, for Yundi made his name as an interpreter of Chopin.  His performance in the Carnegie Hall of Chopin and Mussorgsky last year was certainly much more sensitive.  Perhaps he is better at handling muted hankering than explosive outbursts.


Compared with Tchaikovsky’s concerto, Sibelius’ symphony number 2 is more measured with structural clarity.  The work seems to trace the germination of a small idea into triumphant maturity.  As if taking us on a tour of a forest in Finland, with thick trees allowing only small streams of light at a time, the elusive melodic machinations stretch forth and withdraw in a tug-of-war with our imagination.


Blomstedt launched into the tame and understated opening theme of thirds with a full frontal assault, and throughout the work there was a lack of contrast in intensity between the soft and loud passages.  Like a shy young debutante, the best of the thematic material in the symphony needs to be teased out gradually.  Blomstedt didn’t seem too interested in the subtlety.


The orchestra did excel in the passages where frenzied trills on the strings gave way to a single statement in the woodwinds, the oboe in the second movement and the bassoon in the third.  In addition to the horns and brass providing the impetus that frog-marched the melody into triumph, the strings also handled the suspended development of the theme in the last movement with suitable restraint, inveigling it gradually into full bloom.


The San Francisco Symphony dedicated its concert to victims of the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  Opening the concert, conductor Herbert Blomstedt led the orchestra in Japan’s national anthem.  This extra-curricular addition was probably the work I could least find fault with, on account mainly of its unfamiliarity.

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