Monday: re-viewing of Woody Allen's under-rated classic 'Deconstructing Harry' on DVD. Funny how we often say of an actor 'Oh but he/she's always just playing him/her-self in whatever role...' and that's usually meant as a negative remark. For me the one exception is Allen the actor. You can't possibly picture him as anything other than the quintessential, neurotic, hapless, highly intellectual, vaguely nihilistic Jewish New Yorker. And why should he be?
Tuesday: the Guardian interview with David Hare at the NFT (I still refuse to call it the 'BFI Southbank'). We hadn't seen any of the screenings at the Hare season (TV films, really mostly 'plays on TV') but recently saw Gethsemane, his latest, at the National, which has just a few more final performances. Apart from the predictable moment when he couldn't help expressing irritation at critics who'd trashed The Reader ('Oh how satisfying it was to know that we lived amongst people who enjoy such moral certainties!'), it was a most enjoyable session. On the BBC's change in attitude towards drama (specifically, stage drama) over the years: 'Basically, journalists distrust fiction because they don't believe what we do that, by lying, you get to the truth more easily.' TV's 'fundamentally transient and transitory nature' distinguishes it from, say, the stage. On how/why all good plays are political on some level: 'The way in which what is happening makes us who we are.'
Wednesday and Thursday: in Paris, attending the Orchestre de Paris concert with a battery of Chinese artists: conductor Long Yu, cellist Jian Wang, composer Qigang Chen, and the army of (beautiful young female) soloists required for the latter's masterpiece 'Iris devoilee'. I'd got to know the work very well from recording but it was the first time I heard it live. A very full Salle Pleyel which greeted the artists with a thundering ovation at the end. A quick but efficient walking tour of the Marais (emphatically my favourite neighbourhood in Paris) and lots and lots of scrumptious food. Of which more later.
Friday: Aurelien Bury's uncategorisable, and totally triumphant theatre piece 'Les sept planches de la Ruse' at the Barbican. Simply stunning. My only regret being that I couldn't get more friends to see it as there was only one more performance left. It was obvious on Friday that, despite the mixed reviews (the critics really didn't get it this time! I'll write more about it later if possible) word of mouth had clearly got around already that this was a show not to be missed. I walked out of the theatre thinking how there was not a single wrong note in the entire production in any way, and our friend YY couldn't stop smiling with pride at the fabulous performers from her hometown, Dalian.
Saturday: 2 hours of rigourous Yoga with the incomparable Jaqui. I'd enquired last week about the possbility of joining an extra class of hers mid-week to ensure that I'm securely Yoga-ed through the week, and she brings me good news. A rare theatre/concert-free Saturday means the opportunity to catch up with laundry, grocery shopping, reading (at the moment, Alan Booth, 'Looking for the Lost') etc.
Sunday: more glorious sunshine! Full-table Middle-eastern breakfast courtesy of Waitrose (I'm quite convinced that I could live on nothing but hummous and olives for a long time - mind you, would have to be top-quality hummous and olives at that). There are many ways to spend a perfectly civilised Sunday afternoon, one of them being going to a 3pm piano recital at Festival Hall by our friend Stephen Hough. Only the best of artists could put together such a thoughtful and inspiring programme (Bach/Courot - Faure - Franck - Copland - Chopin), bound together by the themes of 'counterpoint' and 'Paris'. He said more with the brief but exquisite Faure Imprompu No.5 than some pianists could with an entire year's concerts, and the Chopin B minor sonata was delivered with such a combination of total assurance, technical virtuosity and thorough understanding of the poetry, it actually got me interested in Chopin all over again (not an easy conversion, after all those childhood hours I spent practising the same bloody Etudes, primarily to get all the right notes).
Life is good.
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Quite a bit of knowledge for me to try to figure out even just half of the mentioned artists' names. Could not agree with you more, --- life is good, particularly good as we are in London, such a xxx (any words would not be exaggerating, so I give it a miss here.) city to live in.
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