Winter Russian Scenery

Here is a link to a livejournal post by some community that specialises on journeys and trips around where ever. The post contains mostly photos, so even if you do not speak Russian you are highly recommended to visit the link and view the photos — simply disregard what’s written: it simply describes the route (I can translate if there’s interest).

You actually especially suggest you view the link if you are not Russian: the photos have a very good quality and are professional. Very beautiful! Please do take the time to look at it.

Here’s the link (!!! Caution traffic: about 30 high quality photographs !!!).

Dmitry Hvorostovsky and Moscow Chamber Orchestra performance in Toronto

I would like to write a short response on Dmitry Hvorostrovky’s and Moscow Chamber Orchestra performace, which took place on 29th of November at Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto.

Here, you can find a short YouTube video of the similar concert that took place in Montreal a week or so before his performance in Toronto (Please note Show One Productions copyright).

This was the first time I ever heard him sing live, for I only had been enjoying recordings prior to that show. At first I was amazed by the power of the voice and beauty of the his singing. However, I quickly realised that the performance was not so impressive at all. I admire Hvorostovsky’s talent and his voice is truly one of the most marvelous baretones in the world, and hence perhaps this exactly is the reason of my feeling that he could do better. Much better.

In fact, in later into the show, he had to be given a microphone, because (as everyone felt this way) he wasn’t able to outsing the choir and the music. I believe this point should be very embarrassing for him. As simple as that.

I also had found out that during the entr’acte, he spoke of the audience as very “dry”. Well, I wouldn’t say so at all, because there were people who cried, there were people who brought flowers at multiple times, there were people who quietly sang along. So I think it was Hvorostovsky who was very “dry” in his performance, but definitely not the audience.

A much better job was done by the conductor of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Constantine Orbelian. The orchestra performed very well and was very organised, accurate and precise.

But truly the best job that night was done by one of the personel of Show One Productions, Liana Dedina, who bravely handled an enormous amount of people and helped literaly everyone to get around the concert.

I would rate Dmitry Hvorostovsky’s performance in Toronto as 7 out of 10, where 2 points are attained solely because of orchestra’s brilliance and another 2 points are obtained solely and completely by the enormously hard work of Liana Dedina to make all of it happen at all.

“Sleeping Beauty on Ice” by St. Petersburg State Balet on Ice

I here would like to write a short review on the performace by St. Petersburg Balet, which I had the pleasure to enjoy on Friday, December 21st.

So, first, the performers: the skating was absolutely outstanding. The main characters in the show were evidentaly former athletes, as one could tell from all the jumps and spins they were able to do during the show. Perhaps the best skating in the show was done by the Prince Desire (Oleg Yagubkov), Carabosse the Wicked Fairy (Viacheslav Vodopianov or Kiril Silantiev — I wasn’t able to figure out who it was) and the White Puss and Puss-in-Boots (Marina Maslova or Vladislava Blagonravova and Danil Vedernikov or Sergey Golodnev — again, I wasn’t able to figure out exactly who they were). I’d like to remark that skating by Oleg Yagubkov (Prince Desire) was especially outstanding, which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, for (as far as I have understood from my findings) he was a world champion in figure skating, when still competeing for the Soviet Union.

Second, the music: although there was no orchestra (which really is a disapointing feature of the theatre (Bluma Appel Theatre) and not the performance itself), one could still enjoy the marvelous music by Peter Tchaikovsky. The sound quality was great and so was the music.

Third, the plot: if you know the plot very well, then feel free to skip this paragraph. If you have never been to a ballet before, you would probably be shocked by how much information there can be communicated by only using moves, action, light, music and no words. The plot of the Sleeping Beauty is very involved. In short, it is divided into four parts [Warning! The plot give away follows]:

1. The Christening, where an infant Princess Aurora is being christened, while the Wicked Fairy, Carabosse, puts a spell on her that one day she will pick her finger and die. The Lilac Fairy promises that the young princess will only fall into a continuous sleep.
2. The Spell, where on her 16th birthday, princess Aurora dances with four suiters in the castle’s ceremony room in front of the King and Queen. At that time, an old lady crawls into the room, offers Aurora a spindle as a birthday gift and Aurora picks her finger on a hidden needle. The old woman reveals herself as Carabosse and everyone realise that the promised evil spell is coming to life. The Lilac fairy partially breaks the spell and the entire kingdom falls to sleep.
3. The Vision,where after many years, the Lilac Fairy shows a vision of princess Aurora to prince Desire, who instantly falls in love with Aurora and asks Lilac Fairy to be taken to the princess. He fights his way into the Palace, which is guarder by Carabosse, where he awakens princess Aurora with a kiss. They fall in love and vow to marry.
4. The Wedding, where the Court celebrates the marriage of the prince and princess, with special guests like Puss-in-Boots and the Red Riding Hood.

Fourth, the stage: The decorations were absolutely great; the walls of the Palace and the leaves in the forerst were very carefully drawn and with much detail. The constumes were one of the most remarkable aspects of the show (excellent job by Tatiana Zaikina, the senior wardrobe master, and Irina Nikolaeva, the senior makeup artist). The ice rink was evidently too small for the skaters, though; but they managed that obstacle with a perfect professional touch.

Fifth, the personel that helped make this show be held. An absolutely outstanding and grand job was done by the logistics and administration leader of Show One Productions, Liana Dedina. She was at the theatre everyday, during the show week, for 10 hours straight, never sit down, never rest, never eat alright, but always hard work and dedication.

All in all, I found the performance to be spectacular, well prepared and interesting and I definitely recommend the show. I would give it a 9 out of 10.

Eugene Astapov’s “Piano Trio number 2″

I would like to review a new piece by a young Russian-Canadian composer, Eugene Astapov, the Piano Trio number 2.

As it is always observed in almost all of Eugene’s pieces, the work is filled with sadness, restlessness and an uneasy and troubled state mind and soul. The very peculiar to all of Eugene’s work sounds of grinding, cracking and painful exhaustion of a soul forces the listener to somewhat open up and look at within himself.

There are several climaxes in the piece. Each time the listener slowly and gradually starts to be getting more and more restless and troubled, as if his soul tries to creep out of him. Each climax is then followed by a seemingly melodious and calm feeling, but the worrisome feeling is truly hiding just within this melodious part and is evidently heard, while being next to abruptly interchanged with an even greater weight of trouble.

Here’s what Astapov wrote about the piece himself:

My second Piano Trio was written in the memory of Mstislav Rostropovich, the great cellist. However, I did not try to describe his biography; it is just a piece which commemorates the life of a great musician. The piece is a single-movement composition consisting of melodious sections and extreme climaxes, as well tonality and atonality set in contrast to each other. The work concludes with an unresolved tritone, which is proclaimed a number of times to show its significance in this piece.

If there is an interest in hearing the piece, please let me know as I will try to arrange it.

P.S.: I’m not very good at reviewing musical pieces, am I? :D

Some News from My Headline

My exam session has successfully ended. Now I can share some of the thoughts that I wanted to share during, but lacked the time to.

First of all, I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas (one on 25th December), which is very fast approaching, and a very Happy New Year, which is, in fact, approaching just as fast (at a rate of one second per second — I guess that should be correct, yes), finishing up with an orthodox Christmas (one on 7th January)!

Second of all, in the following few days I will be slightly modifying my website, adding some more information and reorganising it a little bit. So you might want to check it out later, too.

Third of all, I have just (that is, a few minutes ago) figured out that Moldavian Airport should really consider redeveloping their website (here). It’s true, the website looks extremely well done and beautiful, but it has just taken me some 6.5 minutes to load the front page, where I was able to browse for another 20-25 seconds, which was followed by website’s “internal error”, such that I had to reload the front page (another 5-6 minutes). At this, my internet is actually very fast (it really is). I think this is mostly because the website is at .md, while I am here in rain-snowy Toronto, but I still have hard time believing that that is the reason for those 6 minutes of wait. Moreover, even if that is so, then they should consider a “non-flash version” available.

I had had hard time believing that web designers would read this post, so I wrote them a feedback. I really do hope they will make a not of that, do you think?

Fourth of all, I had a pleasure of seeing the performance of the St. Petersburg State Ballet on Ice that had been visiting Toronto for the last four or five days (today was the last performance), with their Sleeping Beauty on Ice. My feedback will follow shortly. More information here. Here is a short YouTube video (Show One Production copyright) with some of the shots from the show.
Update: You can find my review here.

Fifth of all, in addition to the “fourth of all” point, a month or so ago I also had a chance to listen to the performance of Dmitry Hvorostovsky, the feedback on which shall also follow shortly. Here is a short YouTube video (Show One Production copyright, once again).
Update: you can find my review here.

Sixth of all, the Toronto Maple Leafs aren’t doing very well lately, even though they won yesterday night’s game at Florida. Yet again, details will follow next.
Update: Here is my discussion on what’s wrong with Maple Leafs’ play.

Seventh of all, I have had a chance to listen to new piece by a new young Ukranian (Russian? Canadian? Soviet?) composer, Eugene Astapov. Details follow.
Update: From our conversation, Eugene confirmed that he is indeed a Russian-Canadian composer. He insisted on being called thus :)
Update: My review can be found here.

… There’s more to come :)

About “Little Dorrit” by Charles Dickens

I am currently making a number of attempts at reading Dickens’ Little Dorrit. I must say that it is not that easy of job: I have been making these attempts for a second week now and I have moved only about 60 pages through the text! And even though I have a little bit of an excuse (it is exam period and hence I can pretty much only read while riding a subway) this is still exceedingly slow.

Note: Before making any further remarks, I shall warn the reader that I am not saying that the book is bad; on the contrary — I love it and there aren’t too many literature pieces that are much alike.

As it is probably very well known, Dickens is very descriptive. And by ‘descriptive’, believe me, I mean very descriptive! As an example, consider the following comparison: a ‘regular’ author would write “She threatened her son with a book in her hands”. But Dickens is not a regular author — oh, no! He would never write it in such a way. Instead, he writes:

She put two fingers between the leaves, closed the book upon them, and held it up to her son in a threatening way.

And this is a really simple example, the one that I could find by just randomly flipping the book open to write this post.

One other thing that astonished me was that the main character of the book — Little Dorrit — does not appear anywhere (not even a hint of her appearance) until page 54 (well, I shall correct myself: there is a slight mentioning of some young lady that works in the house — about two sentences, no more). Moreover, some first 40 pages, you find descriptions yet ever more! I have literally skipped a page or two a few times, because otherwise I felt that I was on the verge of putting the book away.

So I what I am trying to say is that the book is hard to attempt it is not a light reading. But the beauty of Dicken’s writing overwhelms, truly. For example, here’s a piece of how Dicken’s describes the look of one of the characters’ face:

I am
self-contained and self-reliant; your opinion is nothing to me; I have no interest in you, care nothing for you, and see and hear you with indifference — this it said plainly.

Right now I am fighting with a feeling (the instance of which has occurred to me two or three times by now) to give up “Little Dorrit”; but a few
factors restrict myself from doing so:

• It is a classics book and I wanted to read it since long ago — I simply cannot betray myself;
• By having had a pleasure of reading Dickens’ Oliver Twist, I now that Little Dorrit has got to be not worse (and possibly even better) and not brighter and possibly even darker);
• It promises to be extremely very well written, according to many. And in the ase that every one of them is wrong, I have got to check it for myself!