Of temperatures in the 30s and, later in the week, perhaps even the 20s, with snow down to 1500 feet. Frost, certainly, here in the Willamette Valley-- I'm about a mile away from the Willamette River.
I was halfway through Lauds earlier before I realized it is Tuesday and not Wednesday. The less said about this the better.
Klassikaraadio in Tallinn is broadcasting a concert of the viola player and composer Garth Knox (Arditti Quartet, Ensemble intercontemporain) in twenty minutes or so.
Am looking forward to this. Knox is performing with Ansambel U. Have had the Hungarian radio on and must remember to switch to Klassikaraadio on time. Lauri Jõeleht's Chant harmonique is a premiere in this version (for solo viola and ensemble). This is from 2016, Garth Knox performing the solo viola version.
... His wealth allowed him to add many rare books to his library, the great passion of his life. A distich inscribed above the door read: Tel est le triste sort de tout livre prêté: Souvent il est perdu, toujours il est gâté. ("Such is the sad fate of every lent book: Often it is lost, always it is marred.") And inside each of his books, a slip of paper read: Un livre est un ami qui ne change jamais. ("A book is a friend who never changes.")....
Which solo version I very much like. And today's version was quite impressive.
In an hour and half or so, the Beethoven Festival ongoing in Warsaw is presenting another concert, although the description at YouTube says nothing (that I can see) about today's specifics.
Bartók Radio-- the 'Hungarian radio' supra; presumably it is the state radio but I don't know really, Hungarian being well-nigh impenetrable to me: I can't even figure out what to try to run through the translating machine without spending more time at this than I care to-- is broadcasting what is presumably a recording of Anton (Antoine, at YouTube) Simon's Quartet op 26, that I'll try to catch; I do like 'new' composers.
Hmm. '22 small pieces for ensemble', Wikipedia says, so I don't know how accurate BR's 'quartet' is; 12 minutes. At Spotify, there is one recording of the opus 26, performed by a brass ensemble, taking close to 40 minutes: so the BR is broadcasting an excerpt. It may be that the first six or seven or who knows of the morceaux are collectively known as 'the quartet'.
The Beethoven Festival is presenting a concert version of Cherubini's 1806 comic opera Faniska as I would have known if I'd gone to the World Concert Hall page this morning, tsk (as I have every other morning for weeks). It is in German, and based on an 1803 play called Les mines de Pologne by René-Charles Guilbert de Pixerécourt, called 'the Corneille of the boulevards'. Scores if not hundreds of plays over a long career; had never heard of him. This passage from the Wikipedia page inclines me in his favor, although I've never had a book returned noticeably gâté.
Ha; I see that Cherubini wrote an opera (1813) based on M. de Chateaubriand's Les Abencérages, a lyric tragedy in three acts.
Cherubini uses, in the ballet of Act I of Les Abencérages... of course I cannot immediately recall the name... 'la folia d'Espagne'. I think I must add this to the Folia Wikipedia page.
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