"Night Hawks" vs. "Mildred Pierce" and Minnesota vs. Northwestern

This has been a busy week for us.

On Monday, my parents returned from their brief trip to Washington, and Joshua and I had them over for dinner Monday night. We heard all about the art exhibitions they attended, and it was interesting to hear my parents’ reactions to the four exhibitions they viewed. Turner was the major event, of course, and my parents liked the Turner exhibition very much. They also liked the Spain exhibition, primarily for the Goya and Stuart paintings, but they believed that the presentation was “too minimalist”, lacking sufficient historical background information on the various subjects portrayed in the portraits to be meaningful to the general viewer. They were not particularly impressed with the Asher B. Durand exhibition—Durand simply was not a painter rewarding enough to sustain an art lover’s interest through 57 landscapes—and they were very disappointed with the Hopper exhibition.

Sometimes a major retrospective will, unintentionally, demonstrate how paltry was an artist’s imagination, as was most recently revealed, in spades, at the major Childe Hassam retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum Of Art in 2004. That exhibition pulled the rug from beneath whatever reputation Hassam’s works had managed to cling to over the years since the artist’s death, revealing him as a purveyor of kitsch.

Something similar is the result of the extensive Hopper exhibition at The National Gallery Of Art. Sameness quickly sets in, and viewers stop responding to Hopper paintings as works of art and instead begin drawing upon other associations—from films, magazines, works of literature and sociology, popular and otherwise—to make the paintings appear to be interesting. My mother, a great art lover (and a very knowledgeable one), pointed out that Hopper’s paintings looked, in person, exactly like photographs of the paintings, and that seeing them in person added nothing to the experience of seeing them in photographs.

Hopper was not a master of line or color or texture or composition, or movement or drama or emotion. He was a high-end magazine artist who tweaked the kinds of illustrations that filled American magazines of the 1920’s, 1930’s and 1940’s. Hopper was better and more interesting than his fellow magazine artists, in part because of his studied remoteness and his deliberate lack of passion and life, but he was a magazine artist nonetheless. I wonder whether he will have any reputation at all fifty years from now.

Hopper’s reputation is currently in flux, with the art world evenly divided between detractors and admirers. Half of this world is brutally dismissive, and the other half makes extravagant claims on Hopper’s behalf.

When the Washington Hopper exhibition opened in Boston last Spring, two art critics writing for influential publications started from identical premises and reached vastly different conclusions.

In May 2007, The New Yorker wrote:

In fact, Hoppers in the flesh add remarkably small increments of pleasure and meaning to Hoppers in reproduction. The scale of the paintings is indifferent, in the way of graphic art. Their drawing is graceless, their colors acrid, and their brushstrokes numb. Anti-Baroque, they are the same thing when looked at up close and when seen from afar. I believe that Hopper painted with reproducibility on his mind, as a new function and fate of images in his time.

After that opening missile, the writer proceeded, unaccountably, to defend Hopper, without in any way explaining adequately why Hopper’s works were worthwhile. The analysis was gibberish. His final argument boiled down to a childlike “I like it, and therefore it is good”.

In May 2007, The New York Times wrote:

Hopper was an illustrator from first to last, a just-O.K. brush technician, limited in his themes. His main gift was for narrative paintings with graphic punch and quasi-Modernist additives: Manet touches, de Chirico props. And like any shrewd storyteller, he knew the value of suspense. Reveal just so much of a plot — no more. Mystery keeps an audience hanging on. Unfortunately, there’s not much suspense or mystery in this show, which travels to Washington and Chicago. Museums are risk-free zones these days, spooning up boilerplates of what audiences are expected to like. On the whole, “Edward Hopper” fills that bill too well . . .Technically, he is a Modernist, but without a drop of Modernism’s utopian rationality, confidence and breadth. He didn’t make a dystopian art, either, one that stakes out an alternative position, as Warhol would do. He went with anxiety and longing, and made them feel-good entertaining, like Hollywood films, which he both influenced and was influenced by.

Like The New Yorker writer, The New York Times writer was not able to explain adequately the reasoning behind his dismissal of Hopper, although he made a better attempt than his confrere. Comparing Hopper to Hollywood films, while accurate insofar as it goes, is a cop-out.

I think there is a much easier and much more accurate way to assess Hopper. He was not a genius. He was not a protean figure. He was an unremarkable pure painter. He was not a thinker. His range was remarkably limited. He was emotionally ungenerous. Unlike Rubens or Velazquez, he could not paint anything or everything. His human figures are lumps. His inspirations—and his compositions—derive from the field of magazine illustration, from the painted flats of stage design, and from film noir. His chosen subjects were insufferably petit bourgeois, and his work primarily appeals to the petit bourgeois, “which prefers the art of recognition to the art of surprise”, to paraphrase Henry James (himself an art connoisseur).

Hopper was the art world’s equivalent of pulp novelist James M. Cain. Both men based their careers, pre- and post-Depression, on tough-as-nails Depression-era squalor, presented as realism, without meat on the bones; beyond that, neither had anything else to offer. Serious people would never dream of elevating Cain into the pantheon, in which case there can be no rightful place in the pantheon for Hopper, either.

Hopper’s current popularity is, nevertheless, easily comprehended: everyone has seen it all before, and there is some entertainment value to be derived from seeing it all again. Nevertheless, is “Night Hawks” really superior to “Mildred Pierce”, whether the Cain original or the Curtiz-Crawford Warner Brothers version? I don’t think so.

Hopper’s art can be fully appreciated by the casual art viewer who is familiar with similar shtick from movies and magazines. Hopper is not challenging, or difficult, or multi-layered, or even particularly good. Above all, Hopper is, however, familiar, and it this familiarity that provides the basis for his popularity among the general public. Casual museum-goers who could never make it through exhibitions featuring 100 canvases by Titian or Rembrandt or Poussin can easily wade through 100 Hopper paintings. It’s not art, it’s pop art—and no better (and no worse) than Addams or Gorey or Sendak. The term “kitsch” is never far from the surface.

On Tuesday night, we all went to Saint Paul to hear Canadian soprano Measha Brueggergosman in recital. Sponsored by The Schubert Club, Brueggergosman was a replacement for the originally-scheduled singer, Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian.

The recital was very disappointing. Brueggergosman has a wonderful voice—it has richness, and lots of color; she has an imposing, contralto-like lower register and a clear, free, ringing top—but she is not much of an artist. Her musical phrasing is not individual, and she does not make much of texts. During the entire evening, I felt like I was attending a graduation recital offered by a very promising college senior who, if she is lucky, will find the right teacher in graduate school.

Brueggergosman’s voice is one of some size—she had no trouble filling the Ordway Center with lots of sound—but it is also unwieldy. Throughout the recital, I felt as if her voice was always on the verge of veering out of control. The singing was not quite clean enough, and not sufficiently dead-center of pitch, to allow the listener to sit back and concentrate on the music.

The program did not help matters. Brueggergosman offered the Twin Cities audience the same program she had offered other audiences during a Fall 2007 North American recital tour: a cabaret program of Britten, Rorem, Schoenberg, Poulenc, Satie and Bolcom. This is much the same repertory as appears on her Deutsche Grammophon debut disc, just issued.

The program did not contain any heavyweight material, and only an artist with wit and charm and flair and personality to burn could have pulled off such an unusual program. Brueggergosman does not possess such gifts. A generalized and appealing flow of sound was all she offered, and this was not enough for songs that required point and shape and characterization and sophistication to make their marks.

Everything sounded much the same, whether Schoenberg, Poulenc or Bolcom. When Schoenberg’s Brettl-Lieder sound no different than a group of Bolcom songs, both the artist and the audience are in serious trouble.

Things were not helped by this singer’s weakness with languages. Brueggergosman’s English, more or less decipherable, was much better than her French. Her French was much better than her German. I was thankful she did not attempt a fourth language.

All in all, it was a very disappointing evening. I would never go hear her again.

Last night, we all went to see Minnesota play Northwestern. Even my mother went with us to the game. It will be the only game this year for my mother, who is not a basketball fan. Nonetheless, she had a good time, and so did my father, and so did Josh and I. The Golden Gophers pounded the Wildcats, 82-63. It was a fun night out for all of us. The crowd was large and very enthusiastic. Tubby Smith has brought a lot of excitement back to the program.

On our way to the game, we stopped and had chili for dinner. On our way home, we stopped and had hot fudge sundaes. It was a wonderful weekday night out for all of us. We had a great time.

This weekend, I think we will all catch up on our rest.

Home

Joshua and I stayed home this weekend.

This was extraordinary, because Josh and I had not stayed home for a weekend since October. Since the beginning of November, we have spent all weekends at my parents’ house or in Washington or in Oklahoma. It was almost odd, spending two quiet days at home.

Things were not too quiet, however, because we had a guest: my parents’ dog. He demands lots of attention, and we gave it to him. We took him to the park a couple of times a day, and fed him, and played with him indoors and out, and gave him lots of affection. He was entirely happy to stay with us for a couple of days. He is at home here.

My parents return tomorrow, and I think we will have my parents over for dinner tomorrow night so that my mother will not have to worry about preparing dinner her first night home.

Josh and I are talking about taking my father to see Minnesota host Northwestern Wednesday night. It will be the first game this season for all of us, and our first game under new coach Tubby Smith. We will find out tomorrow night whether my father wants to go.

We already have tickets for the following week’s Indiana game, as well as the ensuing weekend’s contest with Michigan State. We also already have tickets for the Iowa game and the Wisconsin game, both scheduled for February.

The Golden Gophers scored a coup in hiring Tubby Smith. I predict at least one Big Ten Championship within coach’s first five years in Bloomington. It may come as early as his third season.

From Russian History

Joshua and I have completed our recent round of books on Russian history. Josh and I read extensively from Russian history during the summer of 2006, and we returned to this subject late in 2007. All of the books we just completed reading were published in 2006 and all were 2006 Christmas gifts.

Michael Occleshaw’s “Dances In Deep Shadows: The Clandestine War In Russia, 1917-1920” is primarily an examination of the efforts of Britain’s intelligence service to influence events in Russia during the period in which the Revolution had taken firm hold in Russian cities but in which large swathes of the countryside remained in play among various factions. Occleshaw’s research is taken from recently-opened British archives, and the author does a fine job of presenting the fruits of his research. However, this is a specialist’s study, as well as largely a British study, and it is of minimal interest to anyone not keen on plowing through pages and pages of discussion of old foreign dispatches. Published as recently as June 2006, “The Clandestine War In Russia” is already out of print in the United States. A mere 360 pages, Occleshaw’s book is too long.

By contrast, Rodric Braithwaite’s “Moscow 1941: A City And Its People At War” is, at 416 pages, too short. “Moscow 1941” is one of many excellent books about the war on the Eastern Front that has appeared in recent years. Since the 1980’s, Western historians have devoted increasing attention to the war in the East, and this emphasis has been enhanced with the ongoing (but highly selective) release of Russian archives.

Braithwaite was Britain’s ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1988 to 1992. During his years in Moscow, he obviously developed a deep affection for the Russian people, whom he clearly admires.

Braithwaite argues that the Battle Of Moscow was the crucial showdown of the Eastern Front and the most important battle of the entire war, a claim that, on both counts, must certainly be dismissed. Although fought on the largest possible scale (seven million participants were involved in an area of operations the size of France), the Battle Of Moscow was the first crack in the armor of the Nazis and demonstrated, for the first time in the war, that the Germans were not invincible. As such, it had great symbolic importance, but the battle had no lasting strategic significance whatsoever. It was at Kursk and at Stalingrad that the Germans lost the war in the East, not in Moscow.

Braithwaite traces the outline of the battle, but his real concern is with the day-to-day fabric of life for Moscow’s citizens during this period. Relying upon old newspaper accounts, journals, diaries and interviews, Braithwaite tells us how Muscovites of all
social and political stripes engineered their way through this period and saved the city from German occupation (and certain destruction). It is a gripping story, well told, and this volume should have received far more attention and acclaim in the U.S. than it did (in the U.S., the book was largely ignored; in Britain, it was reviewed everywhere and became a bestseller).

Braithwaite is an interesting character, a type of man produced in great quantity in the United Kingdom but seldom produced in the United States.

His father was a conductor at Sadlers Wells, the forerunner of English National Opera. Braithwaite himself worked in military intelligence—he was stationed in Vienna—in the immediate aftermath of World War II. A member of the diplomatic service for over forty years, he had postings throughout Europe, Asia and North America. After retiring from the diplomatic corps, Braithwaite has served as Governor of English National Opera, Chairman of The Royal Academy Of Music, advisor to numerous corporations and not-for-profit enterprises, and has been a regular contributor to the Financial Times, The Guardian, The New Statesman and the Moscow Times. His advice and counsel have been sought by a bewildering array of entities: artistic, financial, political and charitable. Do we have anyone comparable in the U.S.?

Kenneth Slepyan’s “Stalin’s Guerrillas: Soviet Partisans In World War II” is an examination of The Soviet Partisan Movement, a people’s army of irregulars fighting behind enemy lines, engaging in raids, sabotage and intelligence, all on their own initiatives, unprompted and uncontrolled by the Stalinist regime. These insurgents were comprised of civilians (many of whom were women and ethnic minorities) and stranded Red Army officers, all determined to undermine the German war effort in occupied territories.

This tale of the Russian equivalent of the French Resistance should be bewitching reading, but this book is dull and dry, and reads like the doctoral thesis it was. Further, the book’s title is misleading, as the book’s focus is upon sociology, not history. Its examination of The Soviet Partisan Movement is presented strictly through a sociological lens. A more accurate title would have been “Women And Minorities Behind Enemy Lines And Their Path To Socialization: Journeying From Disaffection With The Soviet Regime To Collaboration With The Germans To Resistance”. This book is a dream come true for anyone looking for sociological cant, but it has no value as a presentation of history. It also offers incontrovertible proof that current standards in the world of American academia are depressingly low. Slepyan’s writing is so poor and his powers of analysis so feeble that he could not succeed in getting a header note published in the lowliest law journal at America’s worst law school. His book was a complete waste of our time.

“Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story Of An American Adversary” is a joint project of Alesandr Fursenko, a Moscow professor about whom I know nothing, and Timothy Naftali, a Canadian native with a flamboyant and checkered career who has worked practically everywhere in the U.S., in a veritable roundtable of successive positions that have taken him hither, thither and yon—everywhere from far too many universities to mention to the 9/11 Commission to the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library (where he was appointed, not by the Board Of Trustees, but by the National Archives), always leaving a trail of critics in his wake.

Based, in part, on selective Soviet archives declassified in 2003, “Khrushchev’s Cold War” examines Soviet foreign policy from the Russian perspective during the Khrushchev years of the Cold War.

Although in no way a Khrushchev hagiography, the authors present Khrushchev as a far more appealing individual than the historical record warrants. According to the authors, Khrushchev was “misunderstood”, a figure benignly helping the Soviet Union in its “search for national identity”. Anyone familiar with the standard biographies of Khrushchev must easily dismiss such cantankerous, albeit trendy, foolishness.

An even more absurd claim is the assertion that Khrushchev, in ordering nuclear missiles to be placed in Cuba, had no desire for war and was simply trying to offset U.S. advantages in nuclear weaponry elsewhere. Further, according to the authors, Khrushchev hoped to use the presence of nuclear missiles situated only ninety miles off the U.S. mainland merely as a tool of intimidation in negotiating with an inexperienced John Kennedy.

Such astonishing claims are profoundly wrong-headed, and based upon a twisted and decadent view of realpolitic, foreign policy and balances of power during the Cold War. While Fursenko and Naftali may find Khrushchev to have been benign, the members of the Politburo during the Cuban Missile Crisis certainly did not—they forced Khrushchev from power not much more than a year after the Crisis (a previous attempt to remove him from power had failed), believing him to be both dangerous and inept. I have seldom come across a more bizarre book, filled with more bizarre claims. Other scholars in the field, working from the same archives, are destined to issue sharp and stinging corrective readings of the events in question. In the unlikely event that Putin’s Russia ever releases all archives from the Cold War period, Fursenko’s and Naftali’s assertions will be completely demolished.

The fundamental lesson the reader learns, unintentionally, in “Khrushchev’s Cold War”, is that the United States—and the world—was fortunate indeed to have had a seasoned old pro occupying the White House during the first eight years Khrushchev was in power. Dwight David Eisenhower, during his time in office, was smart enough to discount most of Khrushchev’s most belligerent threats, committed enough to continue Harry Truman’s policy of containment, stern enough to provide adult supervision to the British, French and Israelis when they most needed it (Suez), wise enough not to provoke the Soviets when he had no realistic means to influence events outside the immediate area of American interest (Hungary), and patient enough to apply gentle but continuous pressure on the Soviets, worldwide, for eight years. Eisenhower was the perfect president for this perilous period, and that is the overriding theme readers glean from this book, despite the strenuous, misguided efforts of the authors to portray Khrushchev as a simple man of peace.

“Thank God For Dwight David Eisenhower” is the unspoken mantra running through their book, but authors Fursenko and Naftali are too obtuse to realize it.

Exhibitions

My father’s Christmas gift to my mother is a trip to Washington, D.C.

My mother is keen to do some serious art viewing, and she has not had an opportunity to do so since September, when we spent hours and hours at Tate Britain, The National Gallery Of Art and The National Portrait Gallery at Trafalgar Square, The Courtauld Institute Of Art, The Queen’s Gallery and The Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace.

There are no major exhibitions on the schedule this winter at any of the Twin Cities art museums. My mother did not go to Zurich when my father traveled there on business in November, so she was not able to explore Zurich’s great art museums. The trip to Washington is intended to make up for the lack of anything notable on the art front in the Twin Cities and my mother having missed out on Zurich.

My parents leave Friday night. They have to go this weekend if they are to see the J.M.W. Turner exhibition at The National Gallery Of Art, because the exhibition’s final day is Sunday. The Edward Hopper exhibition continues for a couple more weeks at The National Gallery, as does the Spain exhibition, “Legacy: Spain And The United States In The Age Of Independence, 1763-1848”, at The National Portrait Gallery.

However, it is the Turner exhibition that my mother most wants to see. This is so even though we all spent four hours exploring the Clore Galleries at Tate Britain in September, viewing every single Turner watercolor and painting on display at the time. Because so many rare marine paintings, seldom shown, are on display in Washington, my mother very much wants to see the Turner exhibition.

Joshua and I and my middle brother gave my mother the exhibition catalogs for the Turner, Hopper and Spain exhibitions as Christmas gifts. (Josh and I had picked up all three catalogs during our visit to Washington in early December, when we attended all three exhibitions.) My mother has already had a chance to go through all three catalogs, at least briefly, and I believe she will enjoy these exhibitions very much.

My parents also plan to visit a special exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum that Josh and I missed, “Kindred Spirits: Asher B. Durand And The American Landscape”. “Kindred Spirits” is a monographic exhibition of 57 Durand landscape paintings. The most famous painting on display is, naturally, “Kindred Spirits”, the celebrated 1849 painting sold by The New York Public Library to Alice Walton a couple of years back. Joshua mentioned “Kindred Spirits” and its controversial sale to Walton in one of his recent posts discussing the even more controversial Arthur Schlesinger, the American polemicist.

My parents will remain in Washington until Monday morning. While they are away, Joshua and I will have the dog in our care. We will keep him fed and exercised and entertained.

We got a preview entertaining the dog last night, because Joshua and I went over to my parents’ house for dinner. We watched the Oklahoma-West Virginia bowl game, which turned into a wake for Oklahoma fans. The game was so gruesome that we spent ninety per cent of our time playing with the dog and only ten percent of our time watching the Sooners implode.

The Holidays Are Almost Over

Our weekend was sort of busy. On Saturday, all of us helped my mother prepare the house and food for today, when several of my mother’s relatives were lunch and dinner guests.

Whenever we could spare some time, my brothers and Josh and I would get on the floor and play with my nephew. He loves it when we play with him, and talk to him and laugh with him. He loves it when we give him piggyback rides and swing him through the air. He likes lots of attention.

Apparently he had a ball on Christmas morning. He tore through his presents like a house on fire (with a little help from my middle brother). He became so excited that, after his gifts had all been opened, he could not even eat his breakfast. I wish I could have been there to see it.

It is fun to watch my nephew react and interact with my parents. He can tell that his grandparents love him devotedly and without limit, and he plays up to that, always looking and smiling at my mother and father. He likes it when my parents watch him, and keep their eyes on what he is doing, and talk to him, and he likes it when they stop what they are doing and pick him up and hold him in their laps.

He did not like having lots of guests today. He viewed my mother’s relatives as interlopers on his playground, and he was torn between two conflicting reactions: wanting to keep an eye on them, at a respectful distance, and wanting to be as far away from them as possible.

Much of the day my brothers and Josh and I kept my nephew in the downstairs family room, where we played with him and the dog. However, my nephew kept asking us whether the strangers upstairs were still there, and every half hour or so we would have to take him upstairs so that he could have a peek for himself, at which point he immediately wanted to go back downstairs.

My parents and guests ate lunch and dinner in the dining room, but the rest of us took our meals in the kitchen, where we normally eat. I don’t think my nephew ever figured out who the guests were or why they had been invited into his house. He appeared to be relieved when they departed and he could have his house back.

The holidays are almost over, hard as it is to believe. The holidays always seem to pass too quickly, but this year they passed more quickly than ever before. Happily, we will get to see everyone again over Presidents’ Day Weekend, because we all decided to congregate in New York that weekend. Northwest is having a fare sale, and we have already booked our tickets.

To Stay Our Minds On And Be Staid

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud –
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed.

Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says “I burn.”
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend.

It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.


Robert Frost, 1947

Christmas Preparations

Our weekend was very, very nice.

On Friday evening, Joshua and I had my parents over for dinner. We baked a small ham. While the ham was baking, we made homemade applesauce. Then, while the applesauce was finishing up, we made potato pancakes and glazed carrots. At the very last minute, we steamed some peas. It was a very nice dinner, as it turned out. For dessert, we ate some date/nut Christmas cookies that my mother had baked on Friday afternoon. They come from an old Norwegian recipe and they are one of my mother’s specialties—and they are my personal favorite kind of cookie. I could eat them every day.

On Saturday morning, Josh and I moved over to my parents’ house so that we could help them complete their Christmas preparations. The Christmas gifts Josh and I had ordered online had been delivered to my parents’ house last week, so the first thing we did was wrap and package the gifts for Josh’s family and take the package to the Post Office.

When we returned, we wrapped the remainder of our gifts and we helped my parents wrap their gifts, getting that out of the way. After lunch, Josh and I cleaned rooms upstairs while my mother did work in the kitchen. My father went back and forth, offering assistance as needed.

On Saturday night, we went out for dinner and, after a quick meal, we helped my parents do a little Christmas shopping. We were looking, mostly, for interesting toys for my nephew.

Today, after church, Josh and I finished our work cleaning rooms upstairs. When the job was done, there really was nothing more for my parents to have to worry about before my brothers arrive on Friday night. My mother will do some food shopping this week, and do some last-minute vacuuming and dusting, but otherwise she and my father are fully prepared for Christmas, more or less.

We listened to one piece of music all weekend, a work with a Christmas theme—the first, and probably the only, composition of Christmas music this year for all of us—but what a piece we chose: Hector Berlioz’s “L’Enfance Du Christ”, a three-part telling of the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt. Is there a more sublime composition appropriate to the Christmas season?

The recording we listened to was the Colin Davis recording on the Philips label, with Janet Baker, Eric Tappy, Thomas Allen, Jules Bastin and The John Alldis Choir and London Symphony Orchestra.

I have always loved “L’Enfance Du Christ” and I have always loved this recording. Janet Baker and Thomas Allen are in marvelous voice and make a tender Joseph and Mary. Eric Tappy, with his distinctive and slightly tangy voice, is a distinctive narrator. Jules Bastin’s recorded voice has always seemed to me to be too dry—my parents say that he was just as dry-voiced in person—but his role, Herod, disappears after the first part.

What holds this performance together is Colin Davis, as good a Berlioz conductor who has ever raised a baton. His performance is delicate and sensitive, but it is also pointed, where necessary, and it maintains its concentration beautifully. “L’Enfance Du Christ” is a very difficult work to bring off—performances are often either too pastoral to the point of blandness (John Eliot Gardiner), or they try too hard to relate the work to Berlioz’s overtly dramatic works (Charles Dutoit And Charles Munch)—but Colin Davis conducts this work better than any other conductor, past or present. His work is expressive and contemplative, focused but not in a hurry, and he maintains the momentum of the story, an almost impossible task, all in all. Davis in “L’Enfance Du Christ” makes Dutoit, Gardiner and Munch in this same work seem clueless and inept, unstylish and inelegant.

Until this weekend, Josh had never heard “L’Enfance Du Christ”, and he did not like the work the first couple of times we played the discs. By the third or fourth listen, however, Josh started to like the work very much. By this afternoon, as soon as the 100-minute work concluded, Josh was ready to press the “play” button immediately in order to start the work anew.

On Saturday, Josh and I will fly to Oklahoma. Things have been interesting recently in Oklahoma, what with the snow and ice storms, another of which hit this weekend. Josh’s family has been without electricity a couple of times over the last week, and I told Josh that he needed to find out from his family whether he and I were still welcome as Christmas guests. My worry was and is that things in Oklahoma are still in disarray, and that our imminent arrival might become nothing so much as an unwelcome burden upon Josh’s family.

Josh’s family assured us that Christmas was still on, bad weather or not, and that Josh and I were expected to come, as planned—as long as the Oklahoma City Airport was open.

We are looking forward to spending Christmas with Josh’s family. I am looking forward to meeting Josh’s aunts and uncles, and spending time getting to know Josh’s family better.

Josh and I will get our things together for the trip this week. On Friday night, we will help my parents collect my brothers and my older brother’s family at the airport, and we will go to my parents’ house and have a preliminary Christmas celebration, during which Josh and I will exchange gifts with my family. Josh and I will give everyone our gifts to them, and everyone will give Josh and me their gifts to us. They will save the rest of the gifts until Christmas morning.

My mother is still trying to decide what foods to have for dinner Friday night—she wants to have something special, but she does not want to duplicate Christmas dinner. I suggested that she stick with something very simple and very easy to prepare, but she may not heed my wishes. She will, no doubt, have a very special dinner that night, both to welcome everyone home and to send Josh and me on our way.

This will be my first Christmas away from home. I think this will be very hard on my mother. According to my father, my mother does not look forward to my absence, to put it in the mildest possible way. Happily for her, she will have everyone else to make a fuss over while Josh and I are away. Further, Josh and I will be back two days after Christmas, and we will spend the remainder of the holidays at my parents’ house.

Compared to last year, this year’s Christmas preparations have been a snap, I think. Last year, it seemed that we spent the entire month of December preparing for the holidays.

Things were much more complicated last year for three reasons. First, my mother wanted to have a very special Christmas last year: we had missed out on Thanksgiving (we had been in Germany over the Thanksgiving period); it was my nephew’s first real Christmas (the previous Christmas, he had been only two months old, and he had been nothing more than a sleeping machine); and it was Josh’s first Christmas with my family. Second, having had no Thanksgiving last year, we had made no Thanksgiving preparations that carried over to Christmas; this year, in contrast, my Mom and Josh and I did a lot of work preparing for Thanksgiving while my Dad was in Zurich, and our Thanksgiving preparations carried over to Christmas, making things much simpler this year. Third, my parents had observed Josh and me performing our Christmas shopping online last year, and this year they decided to do the same, at least insofar as possible.

The result: this year’s Christmas preparations were completed, soup to nuts, in two weekends, and two weekends alone. I think that this must be a record for my family—and, moreover, my mother hardly had to lift a finger (except to do some baking, which she loves to do anyway).

This week will be a busy one for Josh and me. We have Christmas parties on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, we have to get our things ready for Oklahoma, and we have projects to complete at work before we go (both of us will be working every day this week). It is good, therefore, that my parents are taken care of.

Everything has fallen into place.

Christmas Is Drawing Closer!

This weekend Joshua and I will help my parents complete their Christmas preparations.

Tonight Josh and I will have my parents over for dinner. This will give my mother a break from all the cooking she will be doing over the next three weeks. I think we may bake a small ham. Tomorrow my mother can boil the remaining meat and bone for an hour, and give it to the dog—the hambone will occupy him for a couple of hours while the rest of us are busy working throughout the house.

Now that Christmas is drawing closer, Josh and I are starting to get excited!

Getting Ready For Christmas

We had a nice weekend.

On Friday night, Joshua and I had my parents over for dinner, and our agenda for the evening was to try to select as many Christmas gifts as possible before the evening was over.

Per Joshua’s choice, we gave my parents the same dinner he and I had prepared two nights earlier: chicken noodle soup, chicken boiled in herbs, baked-macaroni-and-cheese, homemade stewed tomatoes, butternut squash and lima beans. We had gingerbread for dessert.

We succeeded in deciding upon a good portion of our Christmas gifts for everyone. Some of the gifts we ordered online Friday night, and we ordered more gifts online Saturday night.

I think a couple of trips to a mall will be all Josh and I will need to do in order to complete our shopping for the season, although my mother, I fear, will probably make half a dozen shopping outings between now and Christmas.

As for me, my only hope is that everyone will enjoy the finger-painting kits Josh and I picked out for everyone!

On Saturday morning, Josh and I moved over to my parents’ house for the weekend to begin Christmas preparations. First thing, over breakfast, we made a long list of things that will have to be completed over the next two weekends.

Then we set about getting things done.

First thing, while my parents stayed in, drinking coffee and catching up on the newspapers, Josh and I went out to do some food shopping for my mother. We had a long list of things to pick up, including all kinds of flours and fruits and nuts and other baking items my mother will need for her Christmas baking.

When we returned from the food store, Josh and I oiled furniture in the living room and dining room and foyer, and we oiled the staircase in the foyer, and we laid down wax on the floor of the foyer and the front stairwell. This latter task was not easy to do, because another member of the household wanted to get into the midst of things and leave a paw-print motif on the floor of the foyer and on the stairwell. Finally, just to get the job done, we had to put him in the living room and close the doors that separate the living room from the foyer. The dog remained on the other side of the doors, barking and whimpering in turn, because he had been shut out of our fun.

When we were done applying wax, we all had a quick lunch, and then we all went out to get the Christmas tree. My mother selected the tree she wanted, and we brought it home and erected it in the living room.

Afterward, Josh and I laid down wax on the downstairs hallway, on the center stairwell and on the upstairs hallway. My parents had to keep the dog in the kitchen until we were done, because the dog would have made a mess of everything. He carried on the whole time, because he knew that he was missing out on something. He remained in the kitchen until the wax had dried, at which point he had to run around all over the house and inspect everything in order to see what Josh and I had been up to.

Josh and I rested for an hour before dinner, and so did my Dad. He had been oiling kitchen cabinets and kitchen furniture while Josh and I had been oiling and waxing other parts of the house.

For dinner, my mother gave us prime rib and baked potatoes, along with a garden salad created with what seemed to be dozens of different fresh vegetables. We had raspberries and ice cream for dessert.

After dinner, Josh and I oiled furniture in the downstairs family room, and then we pretty much called it day, at least in terms of getting the house ready for the holidays.

On Sunday, after church, we decorated the Christmas tree. We also polished all the furniture we had oiled on Saturday, and polished the floors and stairwells we had waxed on Saturday. By Sunday night, most of the house, except for upstairs, was ready for Christmas. A little touchup vacuuming and dusting is all that will be required between now and Christmas.

On Sunday night, my mother asked Josh and me how she could reward us for our work, and we told her that we would be happy to accept an around-the-world cruise on the new Queen Mary. However, since Josh and I have too little vacation time to go anywhere anytime soon, we decided to settle for some Belgian stew, one of my mother’s finest dishes. It is made from cubed beef, spices, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, peas, carrots, sweet onions, different cheeses—and dark lager beer! It is one of my favorite things to eat in the wintertime—it creates the most divine aroma, and it has an unusual and most satisfying flavor. The dog goes nuts when he smells it brewing, and it is one of the few things my mother will feed him that contains vegetables. Since my mother had spent so much time preparing the Belgian stew, the dog did not get his usual Sunday night chicken, and I do not think he minded in the least.

The dog had a lot of fun this weekend, because he likes to observe and participate in all household activities. The Christmas tree always fascinates him, of course, but the living room is always closed off to him when the Christmas tree is mounted, because otherwise he will knock it down and literally destroy it. He will be allowed to enter the living room for the next three weeks only when accompanied by someone.

My parents learned all about the dog’s fascination with Christmas trees in 2001, the first year he lived with my parents. My parents had erected and decorated the tree one weekend. The following Monday morning, my mother had to step out to run a few errands. She was only gone for forty-five minutes, and before she departed she had specifically told the dog to leave the Christmas tree alone. Generally, the dog is very good about following instructions. However, the Christmas tree must have been irresistible to him, because when she returned home the living room was in a state of total disarray.

The dog had knocked the Christmas tree down. The tree was on the floor, and ornaments and tinsel and lights were strewn across the room. When my mother found him, he was busy chewing on ornaments and tinsel and lights to the point that most were completely unsalvageable. Because there is carpeting on the living room floor, only a handful of the ornaments were broken, happily, or otherwise the dog might have cut himself on broken glass. Luckily, as well, my mother had unplugged the lights before she left the house. If she had not done so, the dog might have electrocuted himself while chewing on the string of lights (which he was in the process of doing when my mother discovered him).

My parents had to discard the tree and most of the decorations and start over. At least the permanent silver and crystal decorations emerged unscathed, probably because they were heavier and sturdier than the non-permanent decorations. My parents were able to keep those. However, because of the mess, my parents had to have the carpeting in the living room professionally cleaned before they could erect a second tree the following weekend. From that point forward, the living room has been sealed off from the dog during the Christmas season.

The dog does not mind not having the run of the living room, however, because he always remains in the room my mother is using during the weekday and he always remains in the room my parents are using during weeknights. When others are in the house, he goes back and forth between whatever rooms people are using, trying to keep an eye on everyone.

When everyone is home, he always enjoys a houseful of people, because that means he has lots of people to play with and lots of people and lots of activities to monitor. For the Thanksgiving period, when extra family members were present for over two weeks, he had a marvelous time.

However, the week after Thanksgiving, according to my mother, he seemed to welcome a rest period, spending a lot of time sleeping or napping during the day. This only lasted for about a week, she said, at which point he was ready for lots of activity again. It was good, therefore, that Josh and I were there to help keep him occupied and stimulated this weekend. He was happy we were there (although he was unhappy when he was prevented from interfering with our waxing of the floors), giving him lots of attention and affection—and snacks.

All weekend, while we worked, we listened to music. We listened to three discs of music, all by great masters. None of us was particularly ready yet for any Christmas music, but all of us wanted to listen to great music filled with spirit and spirituality.

One disc we chose was a recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Since Josh and I had spent the latter part of last week listening to a recording of the Goldberg Variations performed on the harpsichord, we chose a completely different version for the weekend: an arrangement of the Goldberg Variations for string orchestra, performed by the New European Strings under Dmitri Sitkovetsky, on the Nonesuch label. The arrangement is Sitkovetsky’s own, and uses fourteen string players—eight violins, three violas, two cellos and one double bass—and a harpsichord.

I have loved this arrangement of the Goldberg Variations since the first time I heard it in high school (I received this disc as a Christmas gift from my parents when I was fifteen years old) and I remain fond of this disc even after the passage of twelve years. Sitkovetsky’s arrangement allows the different contrapuntal lines to be heard clearly, in sharp relief, and the players are encouraged to use lots of color, which works splendidly in this performance. In addition to its color, this performance has lots of concentration and lots of energy (and lots of quick tempos, much quicker tempos than most keyboard performances offer). The Goldberg Variations is such a great composition that this Baroque masterpiece can easily survive a vigorous, neo-Classical performance—and neo-Classical is precisely what Sitkovetsky’s performance is. The effect is bracingly modern, if perhaps a little short on spirituality.

Bach purists probably detest the Sitkovetsky arrangement, and I recall my father not being particularly impressed when he first heard this recording many years ago. However, my father enjoyed this recording this weekend, and so did my mother. Josh loved it—in fact, Josh liked it much more than the Gustav Leonhardt harpsichord recording of the Goldberg Variations we had listened to last week, even though he had very much enjoyed the Leonhardt recording while we listened to it—and I fear it may be hard for Josh to listen to another harpsichord recording of the Goldberg Variations any time soon.

Of course, Josh loves Bach above all other composers, and to some extent this is true of my mother, too (for her, it is a contest between Bach and Mozart). My father is very much a Beethoven man, while my favorite composer has always been Brahms.

My mother insists that it is Bach’s music, and only Bach’s music, that babies respond to. According to my mother, babies do not respond to Mozart’s music, or music by any other composer—but babies DO respond to music of Bach. To this day, my mother contends that all three of her babies, whenever unsettled by a mild case of indigestion or whenever tired or cranky or out of sorts, were comforted and soothed by Bach’s music. She says that she could not have raised us without Bach’s help.

The dog, however, seems not to respond to music of Bach, or music of other German masters, either, for that matter. Is this because German Shepherds are actually a breed from the Alsace-Lorraine? He is fascinated, above all, by the music of Erik Satie, particularly the Gymnopedies piano pieces, which he will listen to with utter fascination over and over. Satie’s music must be hypnotic for some animals.

The second disc we listened to was Mozart’s Mass No. 19, his Requiem Mass. The recording we chose was the Odyssey recording made in 1979 in Stuttgart (originally issued by Columbia, then transferred to Columbia’s budget label, Odyssey, and recently made available again on Sony). The conductor is Helmuth Rilling, leading the Bach Collegium Stuttgart and the Gachinger Kantorei Stuttgart, with soloists Arleen Auger, Carolyn Watkinson, Siegfried Jerusalem and Siegmund Nimsgern.

The Mozart Requiem is a difficult work to listen to, because so little of it is genuine Mozart. Many pages of the score are inspired, but even more pages of the score are not, making it a very uneven and, ultimately, not very satisfying work. The edition Rilling used in this recording was the standard version of the time, more Sussmayer than Mozart. Rilling now uses a more modern version of the score, the Robert Levin edition.

We chose this particular recording because we had not listened to it for many years. We also chose this particular recording because it features what is probably the finest quartet of vocal soloists that appear in any recording of the work.

Siegfried Jerusalem and Siegmund Nimsgern were known as Wagner singers, not Mozart singers, and yet this recording captures their voices before the music of Wagner had destroyed their vocal sheen. Both are excellent, and fully in keeping with Mozartean style as practiced in the first three-and-a-half decades after World War II, and the beauty of their voices surely must incite disbelief among those who only heard these artists later in their careers, in heavier repertory.

In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, Carolyn Watkinson was the anointed successor to Janet Baker, and her voice definitely carries the sound associated with the British mezzo-soprano tradition. For some reason, however, Watkinson’s career did not take off, at least at the exalted level many had expected, and she long ago disappeared from the world’s concert stages. My parents heard Watkinson on a couple of occasions, and they believed her to have been a very fine artist.

Arleen Auger has always been my favorite soprano, and this recording was the first of three recordings of the Mozart Requiem she was to make. Her final recording of the Mozart Requiem was made on the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s death, December 5, 1991, under Georg Solti, and that day was to be the last occasion Miss Auger was ever to sing Mozart, at least professionally. Two months later, Miss Auger was diagnosed with the brain cancer that was to end her life so prematurely, thus ending the career of the finest singer America has ever produced.

The soloists are the primary reason to listen to the Odyssey recording. Rilling has never been anything more than a capable Mozart conductor, and this recording offers a capable performance of the work, and nothing more. However, I have never heard a great recording or performance of this work, probably because the inspiration of the writing is too uneven to allow a great performance to be created.

The third disc we listened to was a recording of the Brahms Serenade No. 1, performed by the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin, on the RCA label.

It is amazing how many Leonard Slatkin discs my father owns, considering how little regard he has for Leonard Slatkin. The reason my father owns so many Slatkin discs, I believe, is because he used to buy most major releases on most major labels.

The Slatkin RCA performance of the Brahms Serenade No. 1 is not bad, and it is superior to the contemporary release of the same work by Michael Tilson Thomas on the Sony label.

RCA and Sony tried out Slatkin and Tilson Thomas in the music of Brahms by having them record the two serenades as tests before embarking on complete Brahms symphony cycles. In both cases, RCA and Sony decided not to carry out the projects after witnessing the results of the serenades.

I love the Brahms serenades, and Slatkin’s performance of No. 1 is very lovely, but mostly because the playing is so fine and not because he brings anything special or notable to this repertory. The Saint Louis Symphony plays beautifully in this recording—it was a far, far finer ensemble in the late 1980’s than the mediocre body it is today—and the recorded sound is rich and clear and mellow.

It is regrettable that great Brahms conductors like Eugen Jochum and Herbert Von Karajan and Bruno Walter never bothered to record the Brahms serenades. There are lots of versions that have been made—Boult, Haitink, Kertesz, Slatkin, Tilson Thomas and others—but great Brahms conductors always seemed to have given these charming works a pass. I cannot understand why. I would give my right arm to hear a Karajan version of these works, what with his wondrous command of orchestral timbre, texture and color, surely ideal for these works.

Nevertheless, we enjoyed hearing the Slatkin recording very much. Despite the dark coloration of the orchestration, Brahms revealed sunniness and charm and wit and whimsy in this delightful work.

Josh had never heard the Brahms Serenade No. 1 until this weekend, and he loved the work. My mother loves this work very much, too, and it was a perfect complement for the Bach arrangement and the Mozart mass.

Next weekend, we will get the rest of the house ready for Christmas, and get the gifts wrapped, and help my mother with baking, and perhaps do a little shopping, mostly for my nephew (it is more fun to buy toys in the toy store than to buy them online). And, by the end of next weekend, we hope to be ready for Christmas, more or less.

Tentative Plans

It is already December 4. Christmas is exactly three weeks away, and Joshua and I have made no Christmas preparations whatsoever.

Neither have my parents, and all of us need to make amends.

My parents have done nothing but relax since Thanksgiving, and I think they have enjoyed having a quiet period, with the house to themselves, for a few days between holidays.

Josh and I, having spent last weekend in Washington, will have to devote the next two weekends to getting things ready for Christmas, because we only have two weekends to get everything done before we head to Oklahoma.

Josh and I had dinner at my parents’ house last night, and this was the first time we had seen my parents in a week. They were very happy to see us, and so was the dog.

We told them about our trip to Washington. They loved hearing about the art exhibitions we attended, especially my mother, and I think my mother would like to see all three exhibitions we visited. Since the three exhibitions we viewed will begin to close, one by one, in January, my father told my mother to think about going to Washington the first weekend of January. My mother would like that very much.

We also talked about getting ourselves organized for Christmas, and we made some tentative plans so that we can get everything done the next two weekends without running ourselves ragged.

On Friday night, Josh and I are going to have my parents over for dinner. We are all going to plot our Christmas-gift selection that night. By the time the evening is over, we hope to have most of our gifts selected, and a good portion of them ordered online.

On Saturday, Joshua and I are going to move over to my parents’ house for the weekend. We are going to devote the weekend to helping my parents get the house ready. One thing we will do on Saturday afternoon is go pick out the Christmas tree. On Sunday afternoon, we will decorate the tree.

The following weekend, Josh and I will go over to my parents’ house again, and help my parents finish getting the house ready and help my parents wrap gifts and do assorted other things that will demand attention. By a week from Sunday night, my parents will be ready for the holidays, mostly—or so is our plan.

My brothers will be home on the evening of the 21st, but the following day Josh and I will be off to Oklahoma to celebrate Christmas with Josh’s family. Josh and I will return on the 27th, and we will spend the rest of the holidays with my family.

I cannot believe that Christmas is only three weeks away.