E. B.White

by Peter Cates

Paragraphs from E. B. White

I offer two paragraphs from E.B.White’s One Man’s Wheat in which he writes about the movies from the sweet peace of his Brooklin, Maine, farm in May 1939:

“There is no movie house in this town so I don’t get to many pictures; but I keep in touch with Olympus by reading Motion Picture magazine and the daily papers. On the whole, this is a higher type of entertainment than seeing the films-although I miss Tarzan and Lamour, and I am not getting ahead very fast with my study of trees in the movies, a work I have been engaged in for some years.

“The newspapers, of course, keep one informed of the marriages, births, deaths, separations, divorces, and salaries of the stars. If Gable weds Lombard, I know about it. When Tone and Crawford reach the end of the road, I am informed. Separations and divorces are scented with the same delicate orange blossoms as marriages and elopements, the same romantic good fellowship. One of the most interesting accomplishments of the film community, it seems to me, is that it has made real for America the exquisite beauty of incompatibility. Divorce among the gods possesses the sweet, holy sadness which has long been associated with marriage among the mortals. There is something infinitely tender about the inability of an actor to get along with an actress.”

A footnote to the above-mentioned actor Franchot Tone (1905-1968). He is one of the most underrated actors I have ever seen in films and his roles as Roger Byam in 1935’s Mutiny on the Bounty and the President of the United States in Otto Preminger’s 1962 Advise and Consent conveyed his talent at sucking the air out of a room.

Vivid moments from two recent concerts:

I traveled to Portland for the last concert of the Symphony’s 2018-19 season on May 13 at downtown’s Merrill Auditorium. It featured guest conductor Jeffrey Kahane who had already directed two previous concerts this season. Kahane lives with his wife in Santa Rosa, California, and they have another home in Denver, Colorado. He resigned in 2017 as music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra after 20 years.

The Maestro led the Beethoven 1st Piano Concerto by memory from the keyboard. He then conducted a powerful Rachmaninoff The Bells for choir, orchestra and soprano, tenor, and baritone soloists and finished with Rimsky-Korsakov’s colorful showpiece, Capriccio Espagnol. The Orchestra has achieved considerable growth in the more than 45 years since I last attended a concert under one of their former conductors, Paul Vermel, who did do very good performances with it. I remember a Berlioz Romeo and Juliet, Charles Ives 2nd Symphony, Brahms Violin Concerto with Itzhak Perlman and a nicely-staged Mozart Cosi Fan Tutte.

Last Saturday’s Detroit Symphony live link featured the 26 year old Italian-born pianist, Beatrice Rana, in the Sergei Prokofiev 3rd Piano Concerto with the Orchestra under guest conductor, Kent Nagano. The Concerto, completed in 1921, was premiered by the Chicago Symphony in 1922 with the composer as soloist. Its technical demands are ferocious, its rhythms very compelling but it has the most exquisite delicacy and lyricism. Ms. Rana brought a wonderful balance of these musical qualities to her playing .

The accompanying Bruckner 3rd Symphony has the gripping power, serenity and eloquence of that composer, along with long stretches of development that need the right pacing or the symphony could become quite dull. As with long-gone conductors Eugen Jochum, Herbert von Karajan, and George Szell and the still living Ivor Bolton and Daniel Barenboim, Nagano met these challenges.

The concert can still be watched for a while through the DSO link.

My favorite Mamas and Papas pop song has always been the 1966 hit record, Go Where You Wanna Go; for those who no longer have that record, it can be heard through YouTube.

by Peter Cates

Last week, I listened to a live link, via computer, from the Bucharest, Romania, Radio Hall; it is one of two major venues in that city to see classical music concerts, the other being the Atheneum. And very frequently, these concerts can be heard worldwide on romania muzical.

George Enescu

Luiza Borac

The concert featured the Radio Orchestra in a program of three works – the Enescu and Grieg Piano Concertos, played by the exceptionally gifted Luiza Borac, and Antonin Dvorak’s 7th Symphony conducted by Rossen Gergov, currently music director of the Bulgarian National Radio Orchestra.

George Enescu (1881-1955) is best-known for his Romanian Rhapsodies 1 and 2 and was also a great violinist, conductor and teacher. Cellist Pablo Casals wrote that Enescu was “the greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart.” Casals’s quote was a bit exaggerated but it also conveyed the depths of his own feelings about the composer.

Rossen Gergov

The 1st Piano Concerto, Part 1, was Enescu’s only Piano Concerto and left unfinished. It is beautiful music, in the late romantic style favored by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, etc., yet having its own individuality. Ms. Borac gave captivating renditions of the work and the much more popular Grieg Piano Concerto.

Sarah Orne Jewett

The deeply moving 7th Symphony received a very fine interpretation from Gergov and the orchestra players.

Quote from Maine novelist Sarah Orne Jewett, 1849-1909, who lived her entire life in South Berwick – “Find your quiet center of life and write from that to the world.”

by Peter Cates

A few weeks ago, I covered E.B. White. Today I have an opening paragraph from his April 1939 entry in One Man’s Meat:

Saturday. A full moon tonight, which made the dogs uneasy. First a neighbor’s dog, a quarter of a mile away, felt the moon – he began shortly after dark, a persistent complaint, half longing. Then our big dog, whose supper had not sat well, took up the moonsong. I shut him in the barn where his bed is, but he kept up the barking, with an odd howl now and again; and I could hear him roaming round in there, answering the neighbor’s dog and stirring up Fred, our dachshund and superintendent, who suddenly, from a deep sleep, roused up and pulled on his executive frown (as a man, waking, might hastily pull on a pair of trousers) and dashed out into the hall like the moon might be a jewel robber. The light lay in watery pools on lawn and drive. The house seemed unable to settle down for the night. and I felt like moaning myself, for there is something about a moon disturbing to man and dog alike.

Again the great E.B. makes this resonant casual description of a spring morning in Maine seem so simple – simple as doing spinal surgery.

Recently heard

Johnny Mathis

Faithfully
Columbia, CS – mid-’60s LP.

Johnny Mathis

Now in his 80s, Johnny Mathis has some of the finest of pop love songs. He knows how to exactly put across material ranging from the Great American Songbook through Broadway staples to current chart-toppers. Faithfully collects a range of 12 songs; West Side Story’s Maria and Tonight, Sinatra’s Where Are You? and the Doris Day’s Secret Love, etc.

Heinrich Schutz

Twelve Small Sacred Concertos
Wilhelm Ehmann conducting instrumental and vocal soloists; Musical Heritage Society MHS 3769, LP, recorded 1970s.

Heinrich Schutz

Another great composer of very beautiful music for the church, along with Bach, was Heinrich Schutz (1585-1672), born 100 years before Bach, and is much more well known than the latter composer. The 12 works are hymns of sorts with similar pious words, and involve organ, viol da gamba, lute, etc. Wilhelm Elmann was one great German baroque interpreter; this record is worthwhile listening.

by Peter Cates

Heckle and Jeckle

4 cartoons, posted on YouTube.
From 1946-1952.

Paul Terry

Among the funniest animated characters, right up there with Foghorn, Wiley and Bugs, were two blisteringly arrogant magpieish partners in crime, Heckle and Jeckle. These semi-birds/buzzards of too many feathers were among the creations of animator Paul Terry (1887-1971); he launched Terrytoons, which included Mighty Mouse and Farmer Alfalfa, with his lazy dawg, and a host of other such beings. I remember some of these from my 1950s childhood, when they and other such suitable, syndicated programs were scheduled during the Monday through Friday children’s hour between 5 and 6:30 p.m. and on Saturday mornings.

The four very hilarious examples of their unique scorched-earth humor were the following:

The Uninvited Pests – 1946. Farmer Alfalfa and his lazy, good-for-nothing, very loyal and endearing dawg are trying to have a family picnic but the two pestulants are fighting hard battles to keep them derailed.

King Tut’s Tomb -1950. Arguably the funniest visit to Tut’s underground museum of Egyptian mummified cadavers. The choreography of the magpies and mummies are worth the time spent .

Bulldozing the Bull -1951. H and J see huge profit potential for their homemade hot tamales inside the food court of a bullfight astrodome; unfortunately, they don’t have enough pocket change for admission from the beer-bellied ticket seller. And his personality might seem nice upon initial acquaintance but, once they connive at getting in for free, his true colors are quickly seen in all their deadly glory.

Ned Sparks

He even uses the bull as an agent of his wrath. But the giftedly manipulative birdbrains convince the bull to deploy his wrath towards the ticket seller.

Off to the Opera -1952. Heckle and Jeckle deliver a comic rendition of Rossini’s Barber of Seville that holds its own with the one of Bugs Bunny and his arch nemesis, Yosemite Sam.

Actor Ned Sparks (1883-1957) did captivating voices for both conbirds from the mid-’40s to early ‘50s.

Author Joe Sharkey

by Peter Cates

Above Suspicion
written by Joe Sharkey; published 1993, St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 310 pages.

Above Suspicion is the account of an eastern Kentucky woman, Susie Smith, murdered back in 1989 by the area FBI agent, Mark Putnam, also a married man with whom she was having an affair. The murder case has sustained interest since then with films, other books and droves of media coverage while this title was turned into a film a year ago. Meanwhile the author Joe Sharkey has been working on an updated edition.

I have dipped into it as I frequently do these days with the many read and unread books around here, not finishing that many.

The author has a gift for narration and a sense of humor. So I offer an example referencing the criminal element in those Kentucky mountains:

To a bank robber, eastern Kentucky offers unusual challenges and unusual opportunities. In some ways, it is not an ideal place to rob a bank. For one thing, the region has an FBI office, and bank robbery has been a federal crime since John Dillinger’s days. For another, robbing a bank is usually a daylight pursuit requiring the capacity to get away in a car – not an easy task in a place where the roads run up one side of a mountain and wind down the other, and the nearest interstate is two hours of bad road away.

But on the other hand, banks in isolated mountain settlements tend to be guarded with about as much fortification as a hot dog stand, in towns without full-time police protection. So they draw free-lance opportunists who haven’t always clearly thought through their plans, such as the robber who hid on a bank roof to pounce on the driver from the Piggly-Wiggly store making his night deposit – and missed, knocking himself out cold in the parking lot. Or the hapless gang who held up a bank on Peter Creek, found themselves stranded when the getaway driver got lost en route, politely borrowed a teller’s car keys, and ran out of gas a half mile down the road.

I notice the rave reviewers mention nothing about the humor.