Israel Philharmonic orchestra in Rotterdam

I was at "de Doelen" concert hall in Rotterdam this week, went to hear the Israeli Philharmonic orchestra. We passed some security guards outside and inside the hall then I realized it must be a strange sight around here.

After the concert I learned that 2 weeks earlier on the orchestra’s tour in London, at the Royal Albert Hall there were demonstrations against Israel and the concert was disrupted a couple of times.

We got to our seats and I was surprised to see many empty seats. How sad. I felt very bad for the orchestra and the maestro Zubin Mehta.

The performance was beautiful. They played the Passacaglia by Webern followed by Iberia by Debussy in the first part. Both pieces are from late romantic- modern period.  In the second part they played Mahler’s 5^th symphony, it was fantastic! Beautiful performance, we enjoyed it very much.

And then there was silence...

The night after the storm, clear sky and (almost) full moon...

Open air concert all night long - 10/09/2011

Last night, the sky over NL gave us a world class performance that lasted a good couple of hours of amazing scenery along with exquisite sounds. 

It came from the south; light thunders were heard in the distance, flashes of lights between the clouds. Within less than an hour the whole sky around Utrecht were clear and shiny as if it was broad day light; 

lightning’s from all over directions lit up the sky accompanied by the hard sound of tropical rain hammering on the roof, loud bangs of explosions as the thunders were sitting right above us, then the rain turned into a hail storm with hail balls the size of 3-4 cm, the wind got stronger which added a soft background sound to the strong, hard sound of the solo instruments.

The show is highly recommended, in case there will be a second performance…

Misty forest (Short story 14)

Rain drops. Then a bit harder. You look up to the sky, then far in the horizon, no clue of the sun, no brightness, only shades of grey and black. The way it looks you think the sun will never be seen again. And then it stops. The sun is picking through the clouds. They’re moving fast, you can actually see their movement, as if in a hurry to get somewhere.

“Run to the forest”, the voices in her head woke her up from the glooming feeling of the grey and the darkness, “run, run now, before it starts again”. And so she did. With her backpack ready, rain jacket, hat, camera and water, sunglasses on her head and out of the door on her morning adventure.

The smell, just as it is, wet grass, wet wood, wet air, so fresh it makes you sneeze. So quiet, you can hear the rain drops falling off the trees with the movement of the branches from the calm breeze. Between the water, the bushes, the trees, flowers, corn filed on one side, farm house on the other, the magical scene is intensified by the mist ahead. She stopped on the side of the track to look, observe, listen and enjoy. 

She took out the camera to try and catch the moment. She put the camera in the side pocket of the backpack when she felt an itch, a scratch from the itchy bushes that sting forever. 

The rest of her walk she was dancing in the woods…

Restaurant Pont 13 - Amsterdam

A short distance from the busy streets of Amsterdam, on the water as well but with a different view. Pont 13 is nicely located on the west port of Amsterdam. An old ship sitting in the water renovated as a restaurant with a nice terrace on board for the nice sunny days in the summer and a heavy heater inside for the cold winter days.

The food, in my view, is superb; 
First, every dish I had tasted fresh. The fish, sea food, meat, lamb, side dishes and the desserts, all tasted as quality ingredients.

Second, everything was cooked just right, not over, not less, nice and tender, just as it should be. From the raw dishes, steak tartar, oysters, ceviche, you could taste the quality, in addition to the interesting flavors and spices. I was trying hard to identify the ingridients and flavors of each dish as they all had a slight twist that was hard to recognize.

Overall, I enjoyed the food and will definitely go back there again. Highly recommended!

You can find all info including the menu (changes monthly), directions, photos and more on their website:

Pont 13 website

Enjoy!

Sounds of nature (short story 13)

The orchestra

She woke up like every other sunny morning feeling the gentle touch of the sun coming through the curtains into her bedroom. With a big smile on her face she slowly stretched out her legs, arms, feeling every muscle in her body and then remembered the forecast for today; rain, thunders, no sun. She already planned in her head the night before how she will spend the rainy grey Sunday afternoon with her toys in her living room, but when the day starts differently than expected the plans as well are once again proven to be made only to be changed later.

Heading towards one of her favourite forests she was all excited about the world she will see today. She chose a track and walked on. She walked a bit further, still able to hear cars driving on the road, passed by people only to notice them when they’re already behind her thinking "how rude of her not to great them…”, but then again, she was in her own world and didn’t really noticed the human intruders.  

As she was walking further deep in the woods, no more cars to be heard, no sounds of other humans talking or stepping on branches, no dogs barking in the background, as if the whole world has stopped moving, stopped living, “how loud the silence is!!” She was amazed to realize. And just then, at that point when all is standing still, enjoying this particular moment, the wind started blowing. It started calmly and slowly, increasing both the strength and intensity of the blow. Different sounds of whistles, deep, light, high, low, some are forming together a theme, some are individually introducing themselves through the melody, as if she was standing in the middle of an amphitheater listening to a live concert by a top orchestra, discovering a new piece of music she cannot remember hearing before.

Cleveland piano competition - the winners

The winners of the Cleveland International Piano competition were announced last night at the end of the final concerto round:

1st prize: Alexander Schimpf (29, Germany)
2nd prize: Alexey Chernov (28, Russia)
3rd prize: Eric Zuber (26, USA)
4th prize: Kyu Yeon Kim (26, Korea)

Congratulations to all!

The prize ceremony will be held today, Sunday 7th at 3pm (EDT). Live broadcast on WCLV 104.9FM

Enjoy! 

Cleveland piano competition - final - listen online

The final performances are not broadcasted online. It is possible to listen to them live on Cleveland radio station WCLV 104.9 FM.

At the end of tonight's performances the winners will be announced.

Enjoy!

Cleveland piano competition - Final round

Today is a rest day for the audience. The 4 finalists will practice today their concertos with the orchestra to be played in the final, firday and saturday evenings.

Schedule and program:

FRIDAY, AUGUST 5                                                                    

8:00 PM
Finalist #1 – Kyu Yeon Kim, Korea                                                                

Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15 J. Brahms
Maestoso
Adagio
Rondo: Allegro non troppo

INTERMISSION

Finalist #2 – Eric Zuber, USA                                                                                                 
Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18 S. Rachmaninoff
Moderato
Adagio sostenuto
Allegro scherzando


SATURDAY, AUGUST 6

8:00 PM
Finalist #3 – Alexey Chernov, Russia                                                           

Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15 J. Brahms
Maestoso
Adagio
Rondo: Allegro non troppo



INTERMISSION

Finalist #4 – Alexander Schimpf, Germany                                                             

Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58 L. Beethoven
Allegro moderato
Andante con moto
Rondo (Vivace)

Christopher Wilkins, Conductor
The Cleveland Orchestra

And again, no final without Rachmaninoff... :)

Good luck to the contestants.

Enjoy!

Cleveland piano competition - Semi final

The eight semi-finalists were selected last night at the end of the second round. The names are listed as the performance order for the next 2 days.

Kyu Yeon Kim
Yunjie Chen
Jae-Weon Huh
EunAe Lee
Eric Zuber
Alexey Chernov
Alexander Schimpf
Mateusz Borowiak


Each of the contestants will play a recital of 1 hour, the performances will start at 1pm and 7pm EDT on tuesday and wednesday.

For semi-final schedule click here

To see the program click on the name of contestant via this link

Enjoy!

Daniil Trifonov - concert schedule

For Daniil's fans, there's an updated concert schedule of Daniil for the next year on his website:

http://www.daniiltrifonov.com/concerts
http://www.trifonov.us/concerts/

The reviews of his concerts continue to praise Daniil on his performances. Well Done!

Enjoy!

Cleveland piano competition - End of Round I

Friday night’s performances concluded round I. I didn’t listen to all performances but it seems that the young contestants are in a hurry to get somewhere; especially Lu Chen (25, China) who almost made me jump off the chair with his Beethoven sonata No.23. A bit too aggressive with very sharp mood changes, almost frightening, in my view. 

Round II will start today, Saturday 1pm EDT. All 26 contestants will play another recital, a bit longer than 25 minutes. The order of performances is the same as in round I. 

You can find the schedule on this link:

Performances schedule 

For the program, check the contestants information on: 

Links to contestants info 

Note: I find the quality of the live webcast much better than the archive on YouTube. It makes it very hard get a good impression of the music listening to the archive. If you want quality, I suggest making the time to watch and listen to the performances live.

Enjoy!

Cleveland Piano Competition 2011 – Links and Info

The Cleveland piano competition started yesterday with the first 8 contestants playing their 30 Minutes recital in round I. Unfortunately I could not follow it online but am catching up right now on the competition's YouTube channel

Links with information, chats and webcast:

Cleveland piano competition Official website 

Daily performances schedule download 

Watch live webcast 

Contestants list and info 

Additional resources and chats 

Competition's YouTube Channel (Incl. all performances) 

Facebook page of Cleveland piano competition 

Come back soon to read more, listen and Enjoy!

The blog - (short story 12)

So what is this blog about? Reading some posts and scrolling around you probably have no clue. No "about me" nor photo, (using my writer's name), mixed posts of short stories, photos, flowers, beaches, foundation, quotes and then 2 weeks of Tchaikovsky competition.

I started this blog for fun, to have a place where I can write whatever I feel like and at the same time learn new toys and play.

When I started this blog the only visitors that got on it where close friends and some coincidental viewers that got to it from Blogger itself or as a result of irrelevant search. 2-5 page views a day. While I was following the Tchaikovsky piano competition in Moscow, I wrote a post about it for my friends that enjoy listening sometimes to classical music but don’t really know what to listen to. A great way to centralise info, links and recommendations.

As I was following the competition very closely, listening to all performances, watching the complete webcasts including the interesting interviews and commentaries, reading updates on the official website, I kept writing posts with relevant subjects I found interesting and some of my own opinions and views. After a week of writing I noticed a nice increase in the number of visitors to my blog, increase in time spent on the blog, increase in traffic sources, from 99% direct traffic and 1% search engines to 35% direct traffic, referring sites and search engines. The pick was on the last day of the finals (piano). The performance ended around 5pm and the awards ceremony was to start at 8pm but the actual start time was around 9:30pm. The tension was felt over the web and through everyone taking part or following the competition. As people were waiting to hear the results, I noticed the drastic increase in viewers, realising people are searching for the information and so I responded with update posts every 30 min on the progress.

Now you know what the 2 weeks of posts on XIV Tchaikovsky competition is doing here in between all the rest.

But what about me? This I leave for a future post.

What about the music? I will write more, as promised, so come back again soon to check the updates.

Enjoy!

Should I stay or should I go? - Part II

…. this is exactly why I go out in the sun & stay in with the rain….my rule never lets me down!!

July 13th, NL

And it doesn't look like its going to stop any time soon... 

Should I stay or should I go?

Every work place has its own rules and regulations, some rules are more important and written somewhere in the organization's policies and some are not exactly official and are not written anywhere but are commonly known and followed by most. A good example of an unofficial rule in a society that values high quality of life but unfortunately is located in a region with mostly shit weather all year round is, when it is nice weather, drop everything, go outside and enjoy while you can.

Good rules are easy to adopt, especially if they make so much sense. I personally don’t like too many rules but the above example is definitely one I am very strict on keeping. So how can I allow myself to go out and have fun when there’s so much work to do?

Remember many years ago, we used to use only paper and pen? Yes, before we all had personal computers and way before the internet became part of our daily lives. So school bag is ready, packed with a notebook (the original notebook, filled with papers), pen, pencil, sunscreen, sarong, hat, sunglasses, cooler bag with drinks & snacks and I’m all ready for another beautiful day at the park / lake / beach / forest, to be outside, get active and inspired, think, plan, schedule and document. 

And if I want to include a bit of workout before and after the hard day at work I’ll ride my bicycle and not the car. I love the summer!

Colours of nature

The Netherlands, land of flowers…

After a nice day at the park, bright colours and cool shapes of nature uploaded to my notebook and over the web…