An impressionistic outlet for some of those thoughts, musical and otherwise, I don't have a chance to air in the media
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Note: this post has been on hold for months. I've neglected the blog, and probably spent too much time giving regular photo-journals on Bluesky. Next entry will be a cursory summing-up of other wonders. Spa-visiting was one thing we didn't do on a first visit to Baden-Baden. I wasn't so keen on the town then: the weather wasn't great, and the Rosenkavalier we saw, on the invitation of friend Peter…
This perfect mountain village in Bulgaria's Rhodope range is top of the list for music festivals I've attended (which I wrote about for The Arts Desk ; only Svalbard has excelled it for remoteness). I went armed with two books, the only ones I could find in terms of literature translated into English - Georgi Gospodinov's Time Shelter and Kapka Kassabova's Street Without a Name. By coincidence the…
Though a very effervescent New Year's Day concert crowned the afternoon of 1 January, my senior swimming companion Catherine and I were only satisfied once we'd celebrated our first dip of 2026 yesterday (3 January) - and it will be the last for a while, as this was extreme. Yes, the sun shone on Sandycove, and it was packed, not least because people weren't prepared to risk the much more exposed…
This is Siena's Fontebranda, mentioned in Dante and other Italian classics, built in the 13th century by the Guild of Woolmakers. We revisited it in brilliant sunshine on St Stephen's Day after a splendid Christmas feast which began with a Swedish breakfast, and still the light broke through in patches. If I use it as a metaphor for where we are now, it's a loose comparison: we try to swim in the…
Such riches, as usual on our Italian pre-Xmas wanderings. No time to chronicle right now, but we were well served with spontaneous events in curious Capua, a quiet centre from which to excurt to the second largest amphitheatre of the Roman Empire (in Santa Maria Capua Vetere, old Capua in other words), and to the ravishingly situated Sant'Angelo in Formis, an hour or so's walk from our homely…
This year's walk to raise funds for the Norfolk Churches Trust was rich in old glass - the county's oldest, pictorially speaking, in the four roundels of St Mary the Virgin, Saxlingham Nethergate, dating from 1250, two of them featured above. It was a day of mixed weather, ending with early evening post-storm sharpness in a beautiful hilly fold featuring three churches in one remote-feeling area,…
CDs Adams to Prokofiev after the fire in my London study: Kiefer-worthy, don't you think? Puccini to Zemlinsky safe, if a bit smoke-blackened, in the hall and opera DVDs OK next door. The water input here was necessary but has of course caused further damage. But how glad I was to be by the waters of Lake Vesijärvi a week later, after one of the superb concerts in the Lahti Sibelius Festival . And…
What a spectacular parade of greats we had to visit across 10 Monday afternoons on Die Walküre, which completes my Wagner Ring on Zoom (we started with Siegfried when lockdown meant I couldn't go to Gartmore for my annual course for the Wagner Society of Scotland, moved on to Götterdämmerung , Tristan , Meistersinger and Parsifal before going back to Rheingold ). A Siegmund came first (the…
Proud to say that for the first time I've completed year-round bathing from the Forty-Foot, Sandycove, Seapoint and Coliemore Harbour, most of it with my stalwart daily-dipping friend Catherine. I reported on the first, exhilarating taking the plunge a year after my op, and finding the stoma could withstand it, here . One of the February swims was the quickest in-and-out, and hardest because of…
Our first term with the two French maîtres and their contemporaries brought revelations, to me, at any rate: those which stand out especially, because I didn't really know either, are Chausson's exquisite incidental music for a puppet-theatre production of The Tempest - first ever use of the celesta - and the incredible subtleties of Debussy's piano Images, enriched especially by film of Arturo…
