Our Trek Eastward

We did not leave Minneapolis until Saturday, one day later than we had planned.

We decided to spend one additional day at home, since we had been running ourselves ragged, getting things ready for our departure, in the three days since we had returned from Britain.

As things turned out, we were pleased to be able to enjoy an extra day of rest at home before we set out on our long drive.

Josh and I and my middle brother left Minneapolis at 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning and we arrived in New York at 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning. The doorman of my older brother’s building was waiting for us, and he let us into the garage and he let us into my brother’s apartment.

My brother and my sister-in-law were asleep when we arrived, but our beds were waiting for us—my brother and my sister-in-law had already pulled out the sofas in the living room and had made them into beds. We hit the sack immediately.

By 8:00 a.m., we were up. My nephew rises at 7:30 a.m., and he saw us as soon as he came out of his bedroom Sunday morning. He was very excited, running around the living room, touching us and talking to us, telling us to get up. My older brother soon picked up my nephew and took him into the kitchen and tried to keep him quiet, but we could still hear my nephew say, over and over, “Why don’t they get up? Why don’t they get up? Why don’t they get up?”

Not long after, we did.

We did not do anything on Sunday other than play with my nephew and visit with my brother and my sister-in-law. We heard all about their visit to London, and they heard all about our visit to Southern England. We went to bed early, and we were asleep before 9:30 p.m.

We left New York at 8:00 a.m. Monday morning and headed for Boston.

We first stepped into our apartment Monday afternoon.

The location is the best feature of our apartment. It is in a safe and quiet neighborhood, and it is as conveniently located in relation to law school and in relation to my workplace in downtown Boston as we may expect.

The apartment is small: a living room and a kitchen, with a half-wall dividing the two; a bedroom; two small closets; and a bath.

There is only one window. The window is in the living room, and the lack of windows makes the rest of the apartment sort of gloomy.

The ceilings are also low, which gives the apartment a cramped feeling.

Josh and I and my middle brother gave the place a quick look over, and we immediately left. We set out to find a nearby food store where we could buy food and household cleaning products.

When we had picked up what we needed, we returned to the apartment and spent the rest of the day giving everything a solid cleaning and polishing. We worked until midnight, when we went to bed for the night on the living room floor.

Today we rose early and continued to clean the apartment until the entire apartment was spotless. Once everything was clean, we went to a home improvement center to select paint, to pick up a few other things, and to rent a carpet cleaner.

The apartment does not require painting, but we decided to paint it anyway. We chose a brilliant shade of white in hopes that this brilliant shade of white will brighten the place up a bit. From what we have managed to paint this afternoon and evening, it seems to be doing the trick.

We shall complete our painting job tomorrow, after which we will give the carpeting a deep cleaning and leave the apartment and check into a hotel for one night in order to allow the carpeting to dry. We will pick a hotel with a pool.

Josh’s orientation begins on Thursday morning and continues through Friday night, so my brother and I will use those two days to shop for and assemble furniture.

All day today, while we worked, Josh and I discussed furniture for the apartment, and we have more or less settled upon what we plan to buy.

For the kitchen, we plan to buy only a table and chairs.

For the bedroom, we plan to buy a bed, but nothing else, at least for now.

For the living room, we plan to buy an integrated desk/computer table/sound system unit and two chairs, a three-unit set of bookshelves, a sofa and two end tables. We also will buy a sound system, but we plan to buy nothing more than a basic sound system, since we left a magnificent sound system back in our old apartment in Edina for my brother’s use.

Josh and I agreed that, if we are to live here for three years, the apartment needs all the help it can get. Consequently, Josh and I decided to buy new furniture, not used furniture. We hope to be able to find what we need at a Scandinavian furniture store, and we hope it does not cost us too much money.

Josh and I decided that the one thing we need to splurge on is, of all things, lamps—beautiful, colorful, well-designed lamps. We have decided to buy four lamps for the living room: one with a cut-crystal base, one with a deep-rose porcelain base, one with a deep-blue porcelain base, and one with a painted Chinese porcelain base. Between four beautiful lamps in the living room and the lights in the kitchen, the apartment should acquire some brilliance and color when all the lights are turned on.

We hope that we will be able to get everything picked out, purchased, delivered and assembled on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Our wish is to have the apartment fully habitable and fully presentable no later than Saturday evening (and we do not want to have to sleep on the floor any more nights than absolutely necessary).

On Sunday, my parents and my older brother’s family will drive up from New York to visit us, to inspect our living quarters, and to take my middle brother back with them when they leave.

On Monday, Josh and I plan to relax and get settled in. On Tuesday, Josh’s classes begin and I start my new job.

Josh and I have been enormously thankful that my middle brother has devoted a full week to helping us get settled in Boston. He, too, starts a new job on Tuesday, and I suspect that he would much rather have spent his final week of leisure time up at the lake, relaxing and swimming, instead of accompanying Josh and me East and involving himself in housecleaning, painting, assembling furniture and other tedious tasks.

He has been great company and he has been a great help to us. As always, he has been a great brother.

I owe him.

Arrival

Well . . .

We're in Boston.

Return

We returned yesterday afternoon.

The very minute we were dropped at home, my father and I jumped in the car and went to retrieve the dog. The dog went berserk when he saw us—he literally ran in circles and jumped endlessly all over us—and it took us thirty minutes to settle him down enough so that we could bring him home.

When he arrived home, he went berserk a second time, running in circles around the back yard and jumping all over my mother, my brother, Josh and Josh’s sister for a full twenty minutes.

He’s quite a guy.

I think he may have been glad to be back home!

This morning we took Josh’s sister to the airport for her flight home. She arrived home safely late this afternoon. Her parents were immensely pleased to see her for the first time in three weeks and two days. Alas, they will not have her at home for long—early next week, they will take her away for her freshman year of college.

This afternoon Josh and I made a couple of trips to the Post Office to mail boxes of belongings to Boston. The boxes contained cookware and dinnerware, linens and bath cloths, a computer, and other things we will need in Boston. All of the things belong to my brother—the boxes contained his belongings from Denver, which we packed over Memorial Day weekend and shipped to Minneapolis, where they have remained, unopened, ever since. We simply placed new shipping labels on the boxes and forwarded them to the East. This had been planned back in early May in order to make his move to Minneapolis and our move to Boston as simple as possible. My brother recently assumed our apartment and its belongings, and Josh and I will now assume his belongings, at least for the next three years. Two complicated cross-country moves involving three persons, accomplished by shipping a single set of household effects: I think that was a pretty efficient way to handle things.

Tomorrow night we will give my mother a delayed birthday dinner. Her birthday occurred while we were in Britain. We gave her a lovely dinner that night, but tomorrow tonight we will officially mark the occasion.

We shall give her a dinner of avocado-tomato salad, chicken breasts baked in a cream sauce, wild rice, glazed carrots, steamed broccoli, butternut squash and a cranberry-apple salad. For her birthday cake, she will get a seven-layer chocolate cake, made with several different kinds of chocolate. Each layer is slightly different, and each of the layers has a unique filling. The cake takes hours to prepare, but the end result is well worth the effort. Before we cut the cake, we will give my mother her birthday gifts.

We will give my mother the best possible birthday celebration. For her, the evening will be tinged with sadness, because Josh and I will head East the very next morning.

We plan to leave at 3:00 a.m., because we will drive straight through to New York without stopping. If there are no hitches, we should arrive in New York around midnight local time the same night. If there are hitches, we will arrive considerably later.

My middle brother will accompany us. This will give us three persons to share the driving burden. We will take our own food with us in order that we need stop only for fuel. We will gather food for the trip tomorrow afternoon and evening: sandwiches, snacks, fruit, cookies and juices. We will prepare thermoses of milk and coffee early Friday morning. We also have our listening organized for the trip: music of Kurt Weill, which my brother especially likes; and an unabridged book on tape, John Lukacs’s classic 1991 study, “The Duel—10 May To 31 July 1940: The Eighty-Day Struggle Between Churchill And Hitler”. Between the Kurt Weill music discs and the John Lukacs book discs, we should be amply entertained not only all the way to New York but over much of the subsequent week as well.

We three will spend Saturday and Sunday in New York, visiting with my older brother and his family (who themselves recently returned from London). On Monday morning, we will drive up to Boston. My middle brother will accompany Josh and me to Massachusetts—he will spend our first week in Boston with us. He will help us clean our apartment (and paint it, if necessary), help us unpack the boxes we shipped today, and assist us in locating second-hand furniture that will get Josh and me through the next three years. It will be good to have his companionship and assistance.

We hope to have everything in our new apartment arranged no later than next Saturday.

Over Labor Day weekend, my parents will fly to New York to visit with my older brother and his family. On that Sunday, they all plan to drive up from New York to Boston to see for themselves where Josh and I will be living. When they return to New York late Sunday afternoon or early Sunday evening, they will take my middle brother back with them, and Josh and I will be on our own.

We will be on our own, but we will not be alone.

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

--W. S. Merwin

Departure

We leave tomorrow and we will not be back until August 19. I shall not be online while we are away.

During our absence, one of our dearest friends will depart on his own glorious vacation.

J.R. Donasco, one of God’s kindliest and most precious creatures, will be traveling in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina in the latter half of August, visiting Mexico City, Rio De Janeiro, Sao Paolo and Buenos Aires.

J.R. writes about art, literature, music, drama, opera, poetry, ballet, European football, Marcel Proust and the world of high fashion in what is indisputably the classiest site on the worldwide web. I fear that the world may come to a standstill—if not an outright collapse—while he is away, unable to sustain and refresh itself with a daily dose of high culture, beauty and inspiration.

All I can say, J.R., is that I am relieved that your vacation will overlap, at least in part, with our own! Hurry back! You will be missed greatly.

We wish you the happiest and most splendid of journeys!

Two Causes For Celebration: A Birthday, And A Guest

Yesterday was a beautiful day. It was my father’s birthday.

Truly, I believe that my father would rather have celebrated his birthday weekend up at the lake rather than in town. However, Joshua and I had a party to attend on Saturday night, a farewell gathering in our honor organized by our friends, and we would not have been able to join my parents at the lake. My brother, too, was invited to Saturday night’s party, which meant that my parents would have had to go to the lake by themselves on my father’s birthday weekend. This they did not want to do. They wanted to celebrate my father’s birthday with my brother, Josh and me, so they stayed in town.

On Sunday morning, I made my father Eggs Benedict and apple pancakes and apple sausage for his birthday breakfast, and my mother made for him her special zucchini bread, which is to die for. My father likes Eggs Benedict, and he likes to eat apple pancakes and apple sausage for breakfast on special occasions (and so does everyone else, including the dog), and he likes to eat my mother’s zucchini bread at any time. Everyone enjoyed the treat.

Sunday Morning Service was sad, in many ways, because it was the final Sunday in Minneapolis for Josh and me, and we had to offer farewells—not permanent ones, happily—to everyone at church.

We spent the afternoon and evening at home. We had planned to take my father downtown to attend the Sunday matinee performance of Agatha Christie’s “A Murder Is Announced” at Theater In The Round, but the weather was so beautiful that my father said he preferred to spend the day at home.

None of us minded. We were all entirely happy to skip “A Murder Is Announced” because all of us had already seen two different television adaptations of the Christie material and we all knew precisely how the mystery developed and resolved.

I made my father a seafood soufflé for Sunday lunch. It is the single dish I can prepare as well as my mother, and for some reason it always turns out. I wish I knew the reason for this mystery. My mother says it is because I beat the mixture so vigorously that the soufflé ingredients are afraid NOT to rise as expected!

We spent Sunday afternoon playing with the dog, indoors and out, and joking around, and helping my mother prepare my father’s special birthday dinner.

She prepared a very special pork roast cooked in an apricot compote, accompanied by a special potato dish made with onions and three different cheeses. She also served fresh parsnips, fresh green beans, a tomato-cucumber salad and a special raspberry-nut salad. My brother and Josh and I provided assistance, on and off, all afternoon.

We also pitted cherries for my mother, because my mother made my father a cherry cake for his birthday, one of her finest cakes. It has a subtlety and piquancy of flavoring that has to be experienced to be believed, in large part because the cherry taste is highlighted by ground walnuts inserted into the batter, ground almonds inserted into the frosting, and minute amounts of fragmented orange and lemon rind inserted into both the batter and the frosting. It is a divine creation, capturing a trace of citrus that blends well with the primary cherry flavor, supplemented by the two different types of nut.

After dinner but before the cake-cutting, my father talked on the telephone to my brother and his family in New York so that they could offer him their birthday greetings. After we cut the cake, we presented my father with his birthday gifts.

Because the last year has not been a particularly distinguished year for book publishing or music publishing in the U.S. or in Britain, it was especially hard for me to locate books and compact discs for birthday gifts for my father this year. For the last month, I had searched and searched and searched, online and in shops, for interesting books and discs to supplement his collections. I could locate nothing inspiring.

A week ago, in panic, I had telephoned my brother and my sister-in-law in New York and had alerted them that my gift search had come up empty (I am keeper of my father’s book and music libraries, and I know what he has and what he does not have, and I generally make recommendations to my brother and sister-in-law so that they may order gifts online and have them shipped directly to Minneapolis).

My sister-in-law told me not to worry, and that she would come up with something.

And she did.

An hour after she and I had talked, she called me at my office and—without so much as a brief hello—very simply, very quietly but very decisively uttered two words: “Inigo Jones”.

Hers was a brilliant suggestion. My father has no books about the great Palladian architect and his work, and it had never occurred to me to search for books about Inigo Jones, a most suitable subject because Jones was the architect of Banqueting House, Queen’s House, The Queen’s Chapel and Saint Paul’s Church, all of which we had visited last September or will visit next month.

Within another hour, between the two of us, we had located three books about Inigo Jones that would serve as perfect birthday gifts from my brother and his family, and my sister-in-law ordered them online and had them shipped to Minneapolis.

My middle brother was the lifesaver when it came to the other gifts for my father. Since he has enjoyed lots of free time the last two weeks, he has been scouting out antique shops and visiting private antique dealers, looking for something intriguing. On a couple of these trips, my mother has gone with him, and on one of their excursions they found exactly what they were looking for.

First was an antique mechanical bank, in perfect working order, which my brother picked up as a joint gift to my father from him, Josh and me. The bank was cast in 1876. It is a commemorative bank, produced in conjunction with our nation’s Centennial. My father has always liked antique mechanical banks.

Second was a Three Weight Vienna Regulator Clock, also in perfect working order, made in Austria in 1885. This was my mother’s gift to my father. It is a wall-mounted clock, very beautiful and very distinctive and very elegant, of the very finest craftsmanship. My parents have yet to decide where to mount it, but I suspect that they will determine that it is ideal for the landing on the stairwell in the foyer.

My father was very pleased with his gifts. It was a wonderful birthday celebration for him—and for everyone else, too.

My father had to go to the office for a few hours today, and he must go to the office for a few hours tomorrow, too, but he has more or less already moved into full vacation mode. He is happy, mellow and content, greatly looking forward to eighteen days of relaxing but stimulating travel with his family.

My parents’ birthdays are six days apart. My mother’s birthday will be on Saturday, when we will be in London. She will have a wonderful birthday in London—a visit to The British Museum in the morning, a performance at The National Theatre in the afternoon, dinner in the Covent Garden area in the evening, a performance at Donmar Warehouse at night—and we shall all make a great fuss over her, but we will not officially celebrate her birthday until two days after we return to Minneapolis. Her special birthday dinner will be on Thursday evening, August 21, when we will give my mother her gifts. That will be the night before Josh and I leave for Boston.

We shall all have our eyes open wide for birthday gifts for my mother during our trip!

Early this afternoon, Josh and I picked up Josh’s sister at MSP and brought her home. Home for all of us, between now and Thursday night, will be my parents’ house.

Josh’s sister has visited Minneapolis once before. Last summer, Josh’s family had undertaken a two-week “baseball road trip” which involved a swing through Kansas City, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago and Saint Louis, all for the purpose of visiting baseball stadiums and attending baseball games. Last year’s trip brought Josh’s family to Minneapolis for four days. Josh’s sister had been an involuntary participant in that trip—it was not her idea of a perfect summer vacation, I believe—but at least she DID get an overview of the Twin Cities last year.

Josh and I plan to keep her entertained as much as possible between now and Thursday night, but we do not intend to run her ragged. We will save that for Britain.

Tonight Josh and I and my brother took her to a Twins game. None of us is much of a baseball fan, if truth be told, but my brother very much wanted to attend at least one Twins game this summer, and he very much wanted Josh and me to accompany him. Given everyone’s calendar, tonight was one of the final opportunities for the three of us to catch a game together. We took Josh’s sister with us because we thought it would make a nice evening out for all of us on her first night in Minneapolis. We arrived at the game early, we left the game early, and we arrived home early. Baseball may be America’s pastime, but it’s not ours. It was a nice night out, but it more than satisfied our appetite for baseball for the year.

Tomorrow Josh and I will take Josh’s sister to the Weisman Art Museum in the morning and to the Walker Art Center in the afternoon. Last summer, Josh and I took his family to see the key paintings and key antiquities at the Minneapolis Institute Of Arts, but we had visited no other art museums. We will make amends tomorrow, visiting two of the finest museums for modern art in America. We do not know whether my mother or my brother will choose to join us for our jaunt tomorrow to the Weisman and the Walker.

On Wednesday, all six of us will go downtown to attend the matinee performance of Nikolai Gogol’s “The Government Inspector” at The Guthrie Theater. Josh’s sister has never visited The Guthrie Theater, and she very much wants to attend a performance at the famed venue during her stay with us.

Other than these plans, between now and Thursday night, we will not do much other than prepare our traveling clothes for the trip, attempt to get as much rest as we can, and give the dog as much attention and affection as possible.

He will miss us during our absence, and we will certainly miss him, but the kindly friend of my mother who always keeps the dog when my parents are out of town will lavish attention upon him and treat him like a king—plus her neighbor’s boys will take the dog to the park twice a day and romp with him. He will be in the best of care (and probably be fed as lavishly as my mother feeds him).

For the first time since we planned this trip, I am starting to get excited. I have always looked forward to this trip, but I had not previously reached the excitement stage. The excitement phase has finally kicked in over the last couple of days. I believe that the pressure of completing my assignments at work may have prevented me from getting excited about the trip until now.

Josh’s sister IS in the excitement phase, and very much so. This will be her first trip out of the country, and she is completely thrilled about our impending journey.

Because of her excitement, we have decided not to spoil her great anticipation.

Consequently, we will wait until we land at Heathrow before we break the news to her that the British eat nothing but lamb’s liver every night at dinner.

English Music

For the last two weeks or so, Joshua and I have been listening to four discs of English music whenever we have had the chance, a preparation of sorts for our upcoming trip.

English string music by Bridge, Butterworth and Parry, performed by the English String Orchestra under William Boughton, on the Nimbus label

Elgar’s Violin Concerto, performed by Pinchas Zukerman and the Saint Louis Symphony under Leonard Slatkin, on the RCA label

British band music by Holst and Vaughan Williams, performed by the Eastman Wind Ensemble under Frederick Fennell, on the Mercury Living Presence label

Anglican Church Music by Herbert Howells, performed by The Choir Of King’s College, Cambridge, under Stephen Cleobury, on the Argo label

The Nimbus disc consists of Frank Bridge’s Suite For String Orchestra, three compositions by George Butterworth—The Banks Of Green Willow, Two English Idylls and A Shropshire Lad—and Hubert Parry’s Lady Radnor’s Suite.

The disc is a disappointment. None of the compositions is strong, and only a master musician can bring these wilted pieces to life. William Boughton is not such a musician.

Boughton was the virtual house conductor for the Nimbus label during its short-lived existence. Boughton recorded for Nimbus a wide array of English music with Birmingham-based pickup ensembles before the label halted its recording activity and Boughton sank into oblivion. I have several of Boughton’s Nimbus discs, and they are, on the whole, a pretty unimpressive lot. It is understandable that, outside the Nimbus recording studio, his career went nowhere (he currently is conductor of the nonprofessional New Haven Symphony).

A little over a year ago, Josh and I listened to another of Boughton’s discs, orchestral music of Benjamin Britten, and that particular disc was one of the least impressive Britten discs I have ever heard. I wrote about that disc on April 1, 2007.

The Nimbus disc of English string music parallels last year’s Nimbus disc of Britten's music in that the performances lack polish, drive, energy and character.

Frank Bridge is remembered today, if he is remembered at all, as the teacher of Benjamin Britten. His Suite For String Orchestra is skillfully written but has nothing else to recommend it. Hubert Parry’s Lady Radnor’s Suite is a little more interesting, if for no other reason than it was inspired by Baroque dances, but it is a pretty faceless and unimaginative composition all the same.

Many Englishmen believe that George Butterworth might have turned into an important composer had he not been killed in his youth (he died in the trenches of France during World War I). The Banks Of Green Willow and A Shropshire Lad are undeniably charming compositions, and they capture the beauty and poignancy of the English countryside, but they are hardly major pieces and they do not display an individual voice in the process of emerging. Butterworth’s pieces are pastoral compositions, offering the musical equivalent of paintings of the English countryside. Such works have never been able to export themselves beyond the British Isles and have never acquired non-British advocates (although Carlos Kleiber, for some reason, liked to conduct Butterworth’s English Idyll No. 1).

If these pieces are to work, they must receive magical treatment. There is no magic in the Nimbus performances.

The RCA recording of the Edward Elgar Violin Concerto, from 1993, was Pinchas Zukerman’s second recording of the work. It is the only recording ever made of the Elgar Violin Concerto involving an American violinist, an American orchestra and an American conductor.

The performance is dull beyond belief. Zukerman does not appear even to be remotely interested in the proceedings—he plays the notes, as written, but he displays all the vitality, emotion and commitment of a telephone operator. His work here is mere noodling, pure and simple. Someone should have poked Zukerman with a cattle prod while this recording was being made. I am surprised the release of this disc was even approved.

Zukerman made a fine recording of the Elgar Violin Concerto for Sony in London in 1976 under Daniel Barenboim, and anyone who wants to hear Zukerman in Elgar is far better served with his earlier effort. This remake is a total dud.

Leonard Slatkin does not help matters. The performance lacks “Englishness”—there is no “Englishness” in the orchestral sound and there is no “Englishness” in the music-making—and Slatkin and the orchestra, like Zukerman, simply go through the motions. Of Elgarian melancholy and nobility there is none.

There is a brief and irrelevant coupling, Elgar’s Salut D’Amour in its orchestral guise. In Zukerman’s hands, it does not surmount its inherent salon-music nature.

The Elgar Violin Concerto is a very great work, but it is a supremely difficult work to bring off. I have never heard an adequate account of the score, and the finest recorded versions of the work—Kyung-Wha Chung on Decca and Zukerman I on Sony—are far from perfect (I have not heard the recent Hilary Hahn).

Josh and I chose to listen to Zukerman II on RCA because we had heard an immensely disappointing performance of the Elgar Violin Concerto back in April, and Josh wanted to hear the work again, but in capable hands (I wrote about that particular concert on April 25, 2008). We deliberately chose a modern recording with good sound—and the sound on the RCA disc is excellent indeed—but I had forgotten how listless was the Zukerman remake. I doubt I shall forget in future.

The disc of British band music includes Gustav Holst’s Military Suites Nos. 1 and 2 and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s English Folk Song Suite and Toccata Marziale. (The disc also includes compositions by American composers Peter Menin, Vincent Persichetti and Owen Reed, but we did not listen to the American works on the disc.)

The Holst pieces, written early in the 20th Century, virtually define the band repertory in the English-speaking world. There was no serious repertory for wind ensemble before Holst wrote these amazing pieces, but there has been a proliferation of excellent pieces ever since.

For whatever reason, the wind ensemble is taken seriously only in the U.S. and the U.K. and, consequently, it is primarily American and British composers who have written fine pieces for winds. French, German and Russian composers have more or less ignored the medium (although Paul Hindemith wrote a fine symphony for concert band during his U.S. years), and yet the wind ensemble continues to thrive in the U.S. and Britain.

At least one composer, Alfred Reed, got rich writing for wind ensemble. His 1944 “Russian Christmas Music” may be the single most profitable piece of concert music written in the 20th Century. His royalties for that single piece, from Japan alone, are mind-boggling.

On the Mercury Living Presence disc, the finest composition is the Holst Military Suite No. 1. The Suite has three movements, all using the same melodic cell, and yet Holst created one of his greatest masterpieces from the material. The work has a unity, a variety of expression and an economy of means that remain startling after a century of exposure. I think it is the finest composition ever written for military band, yet to be equaled.

In comparison, the Military Suite No. 2, in four movements, is much more conventional (and much easier for nonprofessional musicians to play). The second Suite is based upon English folk song. It is pleasant, tuneful and zippy, but not the work of imagination, originality and power its predecessor and companion was.

Vaughan Williams’s English Folk Song Suite, likewise, is based upon folk song. It is a nice piece, full of good tunes, but it lacks the harmonic invention, rhythmic interest and wizardry of orchestration of Holst’s pieces.

Vaughan Williams’s brief Toccata Marziale, a makeweight, is an empty piece, too opaquely orchestrated to boot. It seems never to come off, and it does not come off here.

This particular Mercury Living Presence disc was one of the most famous recordings of the early LP era. Issued in 1955, it was the first disc recorded by the Eastman Wind Ensemble and Frederick Fennell. The disc was an immediate best seller and has acquired legendary status over the years. Some commentators insist that these performances have never been bettered.

In fact, the Fennell/Eastman performances HAVE been bettered. The performances of the London Wind Orchestra under Dennis Wick on the ASV label, recorded in 1978, are markedly superior to the Fennell/Eastman efforts. The London ensemble is tighter, with purer intonation and a vastly superior sound quality, and plays with much greater characterization and much more rhythmic flexibility than these old Fennell/Eastman performances. The Wick/London performances are brilliant; the Fennell/Eastman performances, in comparison, are sturdy.

The difference is most apparent in the most difficult of the works, Holst’s Military Suite No. 1. The London performance has a firmer grasp of the counterpoint that underlies the score, there is a wider, more sophisticated range of timbre and volume, and the players know how to spring the rhythms of the second and third movements exquisitely. The Wick/London performance is thrilling; the Fennell/Eastman performance is serviceable.

The Argo disc of Herbert Howells church music is titled “A Celebration Of Herbert Howells”. Many of the compositions on the disc were written for The Choir Of King’s College, Cambridge, the choir used on this recording.

The disc includes psalms and anthems, and music for Matins, Evensong and Communion Service, as well as works for solo organ (the organ works are divided between Stephen Cleobury and Peter Barlow). All of these works may be inserted into Anglican Service, and most of the compositions are only a few minutes’ duration.

Josh and I selected this disc because we will be visiting several British churches and cathedrals, and attending Anglican Service, and we thought it would be appropriate to hear Anglican church music from one of the 20th Century’s most esteemed practitioners in the field.

In an Anglican Service setting, these short, tidy works no doubt serve their purpose honorably, leavening the readings and providing worshippers with an opportunity to pray or contemplate or gaze upon some interesting feature of the church structure while the choir sings its portions of the Service.

As a home listening experience, however, these works are some of the blandest music ever written, bereft of all musical interest, lacking a single satisfactory—let alone memorable—compositional idea. I doubt that I have ever heard more generic, banal works. The music is one part Gerald Finzi and four parts water, dull and deadening stuff indeed, music of the most astonishing triteness. It is easy to understand why this music has never been successfully exported beyond the British Isles.

It is almost painful to listen to this bloodless music for more than a few minutes at a time because it is so startlingly unimaginative. It single-handedly supports (and perhaps even proves) the notion, held among many, that the British are not a musical people.

The Howells disc made Josh’s teeth grate.

It simply made me numb.

Cookout II

Our cookout Saturday night was a success.

The food was good, the lawn was beautiful, turnout was exceptional, the weather cooperated, and everyone had a wonderful time.

My parents have a large and beautiful back yard, filled with trees and shrubs, and we had the caterer set up three groups of serving tables around the back yard. It was a lovely setting for an informal Saturday night affair, and the tables with their white linens arrayed amongst the greenery of the grass and trees and bushes created a very attractive sight.

We did the grilling up on the deck, which is elevated one story above the lawn, so that any smoke would not waft among the guests.

Despite the expense, I am glad we hired a caterer for much of the work. This saved us a great deal of trouble. We would have had to take three days off from work had we done everything ourselves, and it was simpler to farm out most of the project. We did not even have to worry about cleanup after all the guests had departed—within one hour after everyone had gone home, the catering crew had removed all evidence of a major gathering from the back yard. The catering firm was exceedingly professional and exceedingly efficient.

Today we did not do much. After church, we did not even have lunch because no one was hungry. Instead, all afternoon my brother and Josh and I delivered fresh salmon and fresh steak—excess from last night’s cookout—to friends of my mother, many of whom are from our church. There was no point in allowing such good food to go to waste, and my mother’s friends were pleased to see us and pleased to be presented with some fresh Alaska salmon and some fresh Omaha prime steak.

Tonight we did not do much, either. We had more salmon for dinner—except for the dog, who had chicken—and we discussed how to celebrate my father’s birthday, which is a week from today. My brother and Josh and I also tried to figure out whether we will be able to make it to a Twins game before the month is out. Given everything on our schedule, and given the Twins’ home schedule, it may not be possible.

There is too much going on, and I am simply overwhelmed.

Between wrapping things up at work, attending farewell functions, preparing for our trip and preparing for Boston, there will not be a single minute for rest and reflection over coming weeks.

We are all sort of in an uproar, and the dog can sense it, which puts him in an uproar, too.

He knows something’s afoot.

To London, To London

My older brother and his family will travel to London in August in order to visit with my sister-in-law’s parents.

They will depart on Friday evening, August 1, one night after the rest of us embark for London, and they will return to the States on Sunday, August 17, two days before the rest of us head for home.

We will all actually be in London on Saturday, August 2—my mother’s birthday—but we will not attempt to get together that day. We will allow my nephew’s British grandparents to have their grandson and his parents to themselves that day, with no interference from us.

It is fortunate that our travel plans for August 2 will involve precisely the kind of day my mother will love: a visit to The British Museum, followed by a matinee performance at The National Theatre, followed by dinner in the Covent Garden area, followed by an evening theater performance. It will be a splendid way for us to celebrate her birthday, and the planning for that day was purely fortuitous, a most beautiful thing, I think.

This will be my nephew’s first visit to London. My brother and sister-in-law have not been out of the country since my nephew was born, and my sister-in-law, especially, is looking forward to a visit home. The past three summers, her parents have been forced to fly to New York for visits, since my sister-in-law could not fly in the late summer of 2005 and since she and my brother did not want to undertake long flights to London in 2006 and 2007 with an infant in tow. Further, if my brother and his family are to go to London, they more or less must go now, before it becomes unsafe for my sister-in-law to hazard a long flight.

I know they will have a wonderful visit.

Cookout

This will be a big weekend for us—Joshua and I will host a summer cookout tomorrow night.

We have to hold the cookout at my parents’ house, but my parents do not mind.

Josh and I hosted a cookout last summer, too, but this year’s cookout will be bigger because we will be hosting my brother’s friends as well, making this year’s cookout a “Welcome Home” party on his behalf.

We are keeping things as simple as possible: we hired a caterer to prepare all the foods except for the grilled meat and seafood, which we will do ourselves. Accordingly, the caterer will supply a variety of hot and cold appetizers, two kinds of garden salad, two kinds of pasta salad, two kinds of cole slaw, two kinds of potato salad, two kinds of fruit salad, twelve varieties of breads and rolls, five flavors of sherbet and six varieties of petit fours. The food will all be homemade, of the finest and freshest ingredients.

The caterer will also handle the serving tables and linens, and the dinnerware and the glassware, and the seating, and will be responsible for setup, takedown and disposal. There will be six catering staff members on hand throughout the cookout to attend the food and beverage tables, freeing us to attend to our guests.

We are taking care of the meat and seafood ourselves. We had fresh salmon flown in from Alaska (it arrived this morning, and my brother has already picked it up), and we ordered chicken parts and steaks from a butcher (for pickup tomorrow).

Because we hired out so much of the work, tomorrow all we will need to do is to prepare the lawn, await the 3:30 p.m. arrival of the catering crew, and direct them where to set up.

We have saved ourselves days and days of exhaustive preparation, well worth the expense, I believe.

It should be a great cookout.

Preparations

Joshua and I did not do much this weekend.

We stayed home on Saturday, catching up on things. My father and my brother played golf on Saturday, but Josh and I do not golf and we did not join them.

Today, after church, Josh and I went over to my parents’ house. We are still working on our Oxford itinerary, believe it or not, trying to fashion a beautiful day in Oxford on the last full day of our trip. It is not easy, given the constricted hours Oxford colleges are open to the public. We all spent the entire afternoon reading about Oxford, and we still have not decided how to spend our time there.

The rest of the month will be very busy. Both Josh and I are working long hours, completing assignments at work before our last day on the job (July 25). Next Saturday evening, Josh and I will host a cookout with our friends at my parents’ house. The following Thursday night is my farewell dinner at work. The next day is Josh’s farewell lunch at his firm. The next night, Josh and I have a party in our honor to attend.

Somehow, over the next two weeks, Josh and I will get all our work done, prepare for the trip, take care of some other things, and try to spend time with my brother while we still can.

It is nice to have my brother home. He has been helping our mother and father with things around the house and yard, and driving my mother around town on her errands, and taking care of the dog (who, in a fit of pique, has announced that he will NOT be accompanying us on our trip because we will not be visiting The Shepherd Islands).

To help us get into the proper frame of mind for a trip to Britain, Josh and I have been listening to four discs of English music whenever we have the chance: string music by Frank Bridge, George Butterworth and Hubert Parry; Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto; music for wind ensemble by Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams; and Anglican church music by Herbert Howells. We did not select well, all things told, but we will keep the discs in our player for eight to ten listens, since it often takes time to appreciate fully a composition or a performance.

For this evening’s dinner, my mother made us what she calls a “Farmer’s Lunch”, concocted from fresh ingredients grown on a typical Midwest farm in the summer.

She started with a garden salad made with leaf lettuce, sliced radish, sliced green onion and shredded tomato. She followed that with fried chicken, pan-fried in cast-iron skillets, mashed potatoes, corn-on-the-cob, green beans, a special sweet-and-sour cabbage-and-carrot salad and homemade applesauce. For dessert, she had prepared one of her greatest masterpieces, her strawberry pie, made from her secret recipe that took her more than twenty years to perfect. It should be patented—it is to die for.

My father loves my mother’s “Farmer’s Lunch” because it was the kind of lunch he enjoyed while growing up on the farm. The rest of us love it, too.

The dog was given de-boned fried chicken and mashed potatoes, with a little applesauce, too.

He loved his dinner.

Of course, he is still furious about that Shepherd Islands thing . . .