Yvonne Melisande the Model

Just back from hearing Klangforum Wien perform music by Christian Fennesz to accompany the silent film documenting (and often fictionalizing) the hand-to-mouth yet joyful life of an Inuit family, shot in the 1920's---Nanook of the North. Wailing guitars, 2 violins, cello, contrabass, turntables...an extravagant setup, which mostly served to enhance the film, especially when the music became more transparent. You can find any number of film clips from Nanook on YouTube, but beware, the soundtracks are often deplorable. The striking photos resulting from Yvonne's invitation to model her hairdresser's artistry have nothing to do with the performance but they arrived a few hours ago and I wanted to share them, sofort. Enjoy!

Monumental

One end of Traungasse, the street I live on, leads to Schwarzenburgplatz, where one of the most dramatic monuments I’ve encountered resides, the Russian Liberation Monument (Befreiungsdenkmal). Erected by the Soviets in 1945, its heroically presented Soviet soldier, with his weapon pointed to the heavens and already practically in the clouds, is counterbalanced by the names of the fallen Soviet soldiers inscribed in the thick ochre marble below. Evidently this unknown soldier is also known locally as ‘the unknown plunderer.' The Austrian writer Rainer Metzger, in his book Der Tod bei der Arbeit (a title not very conducive to translation---Death with the Work doesn't quite convey) writes that the monument represents an 'aesthetic of violence.’ Fresh wreaths often embellish it, their ribbons inscribed in Cryllic. Also in Cryllic, etched into the upper part of the colonnade encircling the soldier: "Eternal mercy for the heros of the Red Army, fallen in the fight against the German fascist bandits, and who fought for the freedom and independence of the peoples of Europe." A few feet away, a refreshing fountain sprays thousands of droplets of water up and out into the atmosphere, a cool embrace, even from afar. At first I assumed the fountain was part of the monument, but learned that the Hochstrahlbrunnen (high jet fountain) was built in 1873 by Anton Gabrielli, in celebration of Vienna’s first long-distance water supply from the Schneeberg. It also serves to soften the harsh effect of its neighbor.

Erinnern / Remembering / Souvenir / Ricordare / ПОМНИТЬ

To balance work, the most significant event of the day was a foray a few blocks away to the British Bookshop with Yvonne, who commuted an hour back to the apartment to retrieve a fresh book to read...since she devoured The Secret Life of Bees in two days flat. Our haul, several on sale, yea!: Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood; Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen; The Zahir, by Paul Coelho; Medea in Performance 1500-2000, by Edith Hall; Romantic Affinities – Portraits from an Age 1780-1830, by Rupert Christiansen; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt. 3W, by Gabriel Brownstein; and then the ultimate finds priced at 1 Euro: Rain, by Brian Cathcart; Austria Blue Guide; and a long-time interest of mine, Good Vibes – Feng Shui, by Rosalyn Dexter. There are also discoveries to be made in the museum bookstore sale bins, like the large and beautifully printed volume of essays and photographs, a kind of memorial + textbook published ten years ago in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Mauthausen concentration camp, available in a Museum Quartier bookstore for 3 Euros. There were at least a dozen of these books marked down to practically nothing. The essays are in five languages, matching those of the book’s title: Erinnern / Remembering / Souvenir / Ricordare / ПОМНИТЬ. Mauthausen, located in Austria, was categorized as a “Level Three Camp”--- the most brutal. Of the 200,000 who were interned in the camp during its seven years, more than half (105,000) died there. In his essay, Hans Marsalek describes how works of art, which were forbidden, strengthened the will of the prisoners to survive. He summarizes: “Art can transfigure truth; it can also rouse, cry out, mobilize and remind.”

Marathon Mann

Nursing a cold in a nearby restaurant last night after the concert (the Indian proprietor made a luscious chai for me), I picked up Der Standard, the principal newspaper in Vienna, and read that the 25th anniversary of the Vienna Marathon would be held today, roads blocked, buses and trams stopped, city in suspended animation. Anywhere from 30,000 to 70,000 runners were expected, from around 100 nations. The last marathon I participated in (meaning with enthusiasm from the sidelines) was just outside our house in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh. I caught the final hour of today's historic event, as the runners circled the Ring to loudspeakers blaring Strauss waltzes, Goethe overseeing the last stretch as he reclined from his first-class seat in the trees.

A Concert of Wunderwerke

Dr. Christian Meyer, Director of the Arnold Schönberg Center, with his wife, Dr. Susana Zapke, at the post-concert reception.

Tonight the second of two stellar concerts took place in the concert hall of the Arnold Schönberg Center, presented by the Ensemble Wiener Collage. Spanning eight centuries, from Guillaume de Machaut to Sidney Corbett (whose arresting Knochentänze, for viola and accordion, was premiered this evening), nearly half of the pieces were written by composers in their 40's. As befitting the venue, the program began with three of Schönberg’s Five Piano Pieces, and closed with Webern’s Quartet for violin, clarinet, tenor saxophone and piano. Taking a clue from the unusual and compelling instrumentation employed by Webern (whose Quartet was praised by Alban Berg, at the 1931 premiere, as a ‘Wunderwerk,’ and the one composition in the world that was 100% original), the remaining works on the program were largely written for atypical instrumental combinations: Isable Mundry’s Spiegel Bilder for clarinet and accordion; Alexander Stankovski’s Linien for alto flute and trombone; Simeon Pironkoff’s Zyklus Sujets – Epilogue, for clarinet, trombone, cello and piano; Machaut’s Biauté paree de valour, arranged for accordion by Alfred Melichar; Sofia Gubaidulina’s Et Expecto for accordion; and René Starr’s Gemini A1 for violin and flute, and Gemini A7 for violin and saxophone. These latter two works were brief, intense, and rhythmically complex, yet the accelerating ‘spiral structure,’ with the instruments seeming to engage in a drag race, remained transparent. Alfred Melichar, a well-known interpreter of contemporary music written for the accordion, captured the harsh, thick sonorities of Gubaidulina’s solo work with passion and attention to the extreme dynamic contrasts, reflective of her tendency to oppose light and dark. Finally, the fractured components of Pironkoff’s Epilogue from the Zyklus Sujets were infused with a dry humor---one could almost hear the ghost of Erik Satie. Four strands of material unfolded simultaneously---faux Bach, played on a cello tuned in microtones against the piano; muted glissandos sweeping around on the trombone; chords repeated twice on the piano in a wide array of tempi and dymanics and register (these are what brought Satie to mind); and the clarinet, in his own world. I wanted to hear more, and in fact there are three earlier sections, written for trio, of this complex work. This evening's concert was the final event of two days devoted to the topic of music and number, with symposia, lectures, and panel discussions.

Tis the Season for Morchella

The Arnold Schönberg Center is hosting a symposium today and tomorrow, “Musik und Zahl” (Music and Number), with lectures, panel discussions, and evening concerts. Tonight I had the pleasure of hearing the Ensemble Wiener Collage perform works by Cage, Frescobaldi, Berg, Ligeti, and Zimmermann. Intercommunicazione, for cello and piano, by Bernd Alois Zimmerman, was a tour-de-force of a piece with unrelenting intensity, even when the intensity wasn’t apparent. Roland Schueler, the cellist, played this dark and difficult work with ferocious precision, and the pianist, Johannes Marian, let the crashing chords fly with violent finesse. Zimmermann’s music was like a roomful of Rothko canvases unleashed into space.

So what do morels have to do with numbers and music? A serendipitous confluence: having attended a concert tonight starting off with John Cage’s work, Two, and having had exactly one conversation with Cage in my life that had nothing to do with anything except mushrooms, and having been seduced into buying (instead of finding, much more exciting than hunting for Easter Eggs), sautéing, and consuming a few exquisite Viennese morels, I assume that if you've gotten this far you probably know that John Cage was a mushroom expert and aficionado---and in fact, a founder of the New York Mycological Association. I'd like to share an irresistible anecdote, appearing in an article, "Sounds and Mushrooms," penned by Edward Rothstein in the New York Times, November 22, 1981: "A woman once asked John Cage, ''Have you an explanation of the symbolism involved in the death of the Buddha by eating a mushroom?'' Mr. Cage thought: ''Mushrooms grow most vigorously in the fall, the period of destruction, and the function of many of them is to bring about the final decay of rotting material. In fact, as I read somewhere, the world would be an impassible heap of old rubbish were it not for mushrooms and their capacity to get rid of it. So I wrote to the lady in Philadephia. I said, 'The function of mushrooms is to rid the world of old rubbish. The Buddha died a natural death.' ''

Au Natural in Stadtpark

Walking through one of the nearby parks earlier this month, I happened upon this clever sculpture of a girl hugging a tree...a playful side of the Viennese not often revealed. The just barely warm sunshine today made it difficult to stay indoors, so I treated myself to a walk past the Lower Belvedere, perusing the volumes on Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele in the gift store. I'm saving a visit to the gardens and the grand interiors of Belvedere to share with Yvonne when she's around one weekend. On the way out of the complex, I discovered the Lower Belvedere cafe, sequestered up a flight of concrete stairs...with two English language newspapers, no smoking, and prompt service...oh, joy...and close to our apartment---yet another temptation just down the street.