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Busy (and hot) few days

In an earlier posting this week I said I was about to have a – by my indolent standards – busy few days. It certainly didn’t help that I picked about the hottest week London has experienced in a long time for all this gadding about.

Earlier in the week I did some socialising with GodDaughter2, and on Friday, it was her official graduation ceremony. In my eyes (and to my ears) she had graduated already, with her graduation recital, but on Friday the Royal College of Music made it official.

I took a ton of photos, of which this was just one:

That’s the Official Photoer, photoing all the soon-to-be-graduates, and presumably quite a lot of us friends and family behind as well, just before the stage filled up with RCM grandees, and the speechifying and graduating got under way.

And here is just one of the (us) unofficial photoers, together with a couple more that you can make out above and beyond this lady:

I’ve taken many, many more photos in the last few days, over five hundred at that graduation ceremony alone and many more besides, but those two will have to do for now.

I’m knackered.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Elephants in Sloane Square

And here are two of the best of them, recently photoed by me:

When I was there, about a week ago, there were six elephants in Sloane Square in all. But today is a busy day, so two is your lot.

They will, according to this, be there until July 18th.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Thumb out of glove

To comfort myself for the excessive warmth of the weather, here is a cold weather photo, from December 2012, on Westminster Bridge:

What intrigues me about this photo, aside from the fact that I like the colours and textures and whatnot, is what she is doing with her glove:

That’s the first (only) time I’ve ever seen (photoed) that done with a glove, by a photoer. Just the thumb out.

I’m guessing that this only happens with smartphones, with that button at the bottom of that flat screen. I never use my thumb to take the photo with my regular digital camera, only the forefinger. So, if I’m wearing gloves, one glove has to come right off.

Just now, it is very hard to imagine weather so cold that you have to put sweaters on your hands.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Quota sunset with quota crane

I have what passes for me as a busy few days coming up, and this posting is me getting ahead of myself, with a quota photo:

That was taken from the top of the Tate Modern Extension, on the same day I photoed that pub fire.

What with the smoke from that fire, on an otherwise totally cloudless evening, having been blowing directly towards and in front of where the sunset was asserting itself, I rather think that the lurid colour of the sunset was enhanced by the smoke from the fire. In fact, looking again at my photo, I rather think we can see the suggestion of a band of smoke just below half way down. Yes, I’m fairly sure that’s the fire, photoshopping the sunset for me.

It’s an ill wind …

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Heads at the bottom of the Cheesegrater

I like these sculptures. But I didn’t encounter them in a park, the way they are at the other end of that link. I encountered them on the ground floor of the Cheesegrater.

And, of course, photoed them:

The ground floor of the Cheesegrater was only pretending to be a park.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

One Kemble Street and the ME Hotel Radio Bar photoed from the Royal Festival Hall

Yesterday, before Gurrelieder, I had twenty minutes to fill, and ran up to the top of the RFH and took photos.

This was one of my favourites, of a favourite London building, and a favourite other place to photo London buildings.

That’s Richard Seiffert’s One Kemble Street, with its seldom noted other than by me hairdo of roof clutter. And lined up right in front of it, the ME Hotel Radio Bar, from which, a while back, I photoed those seven London bridges:

There is also some older-school roof clutter to be seen there, in the form of a chimney array. You see those a lot. If you want to, that is.

The funny thing is, I didn’t need to be attending a concert in order to make this short climb. I could just go to the RFH, go in, go up to that viewing spot, photo my photos, go down again, and leave. Memo to self: do this, soon, and quite often.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Gurrelieder at the Royal Festival Hall

Yes. Last night I went to the RFH, to see and hear Esa-Pekka Salonen conduct Schoenberg’s mighty Gurrelieder, something Salonen has done at the RFH, with the same orchestra, before. GodDaughter 2 was somewhere off in the distance, singing in the chorus, and had got me a seat near the front. So although I still heard lots of seats creaking and programmes flapping and coughers coughing, I also heard Schoenberg. And only Schoenberg, when Gurrelieder got loud, as it often does.

What a piece! If all you know about Schoenberg is twelve tone discordancy, all passion spent, but on the other hand if you like how the likes of Wagner and Mahler and Debussy sound when they get really worked up, then if you’ve not done so already, you really should check out Gurrelieder. Likewise Verklarte Nacht, if you like Brahms chamber music. Schoenberg greatly admired Brahms, I believe. When GD2 told me about this Gurrelieder concert, I mentioned Verklarte Nacht to her and she tried it, and loved it.

So, what does Gurrelieder sound like? Try: Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde meets Zombie Warrior Apocalypse meets Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream turned nightmare, meets some mad Russian novel with mad drunkard clowns and with Ring Cycle theology inserted, meets (and ends with) Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. Hence GD2 and her friends, singing in the chorus at the end.

I don’t go to many live concerts, but I am extremely glad that I went to this one, long and interval-less though it was. And there is now something particularly odd about my concert-going history. The dullest performance of a great piece of music I have ever witnessed (Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at a Prom) and the most exciting performance of a great piece (this), were both of them conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

I think this says something both about Beethoven and about Gurrelieder. If you just play the notes, exactly right, when playing a Beethoven symphony, but are not excited by the idea of playing this piece yet again and wanting people to like it yet again, the result is totally boring. Playing the notes exactly right (which in my opinion is a much under-rated musical virtue) is Esa-Pekka Salonen’s particular speciality, so his Beethoven 9, a piece the performance of which, yet again, seemed not to interest him, was the definition of tedium. But if you play the notes, exactly right, of Gurrelieder, and if you are interested in performing it, once again, and want everyone present to be astounded, then it is astounding. It has a lot of notes, and they are really difficult to master and play, all exactly right, all together, all as loud or as quiet as they should be. Salonen made all this happen, or so it sounded to me, and was also very excited about performing this amazing piece, once again. Accordingly, the result was amazing. As I thought it probably would be, because the less well known piece that Salonen also conducted at that Prom was almost as exciting as the Beethoven 9 that followed was crushingly dull. And you are not going to supervise a performance of Gurrelieder unless you totally believe, as Esa-Pekka Salonen clearly did, that this is a piece that should be performed, once again. Too much bother. Far too much bother.

A great concert and a great occasion. I was lucky to be there. GD2 was even luckier to be actually performing in it. I trust she realises this. Early emails following the concert suggest that she does.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Scalpel – close up – not finished

On that day recently when England ruthlessly crushed Tunisia, 2-1, with a late goal in extra time, I was checking out the Big Things of the City.

In particular, I wanted to see how the Scalpel was looking, close up. Here are a selection of the photos I took of it:

I especially relish those window-shaped gaps in the soon-to-be-pristine surface.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The bride wore red

Whenever, in London, I bump into Chinese couples doing a wedding photo session, I join in and photo away myself, taking care to include the official photoers in my photos.

That clutch of photos was photoed in September 2014 on Westminster Bridge, and is one of the nicer Chinese wedding photo sessions I recall joining in on, largely because of the splendour of that red dress. (And yes, she herself looks pretty good too.) Usually, the bride wears white.

Just like the official photoers, I lined up a landmark behind the happy couple in one of my photos. And note how another of my photos is just her, without him. That seems to happen quite a lot.

Until now, it never occurred to me to research this delightful Chinese custom, but today, I did. And I quickly found my way to this BBC report, published in October 2014, which explains that actually, these photos don’t get taken just after the wedding, but before it:

It’s a Chinese custom for couples to have their wedding photos taken before they are married, rather than on the day of the nuptials. “We wanted to take some sweet moments to share with the guests,” says Yixuan. On the wedding day, the photos will be shown to the guests on cards, via big screens and perhaps on video.

In China, pre-wedding photography is a huge – and lucrative – industry. …

Usually I hesitate to feature the faces of strangers at this blog. But my rule is, if you are making a spectacle of yourself, you are fair game. And these photoers often make a huge performance out of getting the exact shots they want.

I think I have mentioned here before that I believe someone should do a ballet based on the contortions that digital photoers twist themselves into. It would make sense to include a Chinese wedding couple in such a ballet.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The Peak and its window cleaning crane

It is called, at any rate by the people who built it, The Peak. What it is called by others, in the event that they notice it at all, I don’t know. But it’s more likely to be something along the lines of “that peculiar and asymmetrical lump outside Victoria Station with the big curved metal roof on it, that looks like it was stuck on the top during a refurbishment of some ugly old block built in the sixties or seventies”.

Today, personal business took me to Victoria Station, but before descending from the main concourse of the station into the Underground, and encouraged by the spactacular not-a-cloud-in-the-sky weather, I took a look around outside.

And saw this:

That being the top of “The Peak”, and on top of that top, the rather splendid window cleaning crane that periodically emerges from that bizarre roof. I love these cranes, especially when they have odd hats on the way that one has, to make them merge right back into their roofs, when they resume their hibernation.

But today, that peculiar curvey metal bit that sticks out on the left, as we look, was also looking wonderful.

Although almost any building looks good on a day like today was, that particular combination of sights particularly appealed to me, and made me particularly pleased that I had interrupted my journey.