Whitsun
30 May

We've reached that last of the early Bank Holidays.

From here on in, summer has unofficially begun.

I continue to be indebted to fail blog for providing mirth and merriment in my life.

There's been a recent crop of things they didn't mean to say on church noticeboards. You just wonder how subconscious and/or unknowing some of those ambiguities and mistakes actually were.

But then, who cares?

Before the Bank holiday kicked in, Thursday night took me to the Phil. The first half was Mozart's Violin Concerto No4 and our soloist was Alina Ibragimova who impressed me in the recordings of the Beethoven Violin Sonatas which she made with Cédric Tiberghien.

I would have to say that her Beethoven sounded better than her Mozart but then I'm not sure that it is really a piece that I warm to anyway.

The second half was given over to Mahler's Symphony No7. This is the Cinderella of the cycle. It's not often performed and is problematic in many ways.

I've gotten to know the work through my old Kubelik recording with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. The sound world that Kubelik conjures is very smooth and integrated. The opening of the second movement was, famously, used in the Castrol GTX adverts on TV. It was a sound that hinted of great, deep, hushed pine forests.

Well, of course, Vasily Petrenko would have none of that. His forest was the forest of the Brothers Grimm. It was a forest of hobgoblins and shrieking terrors. The whole was completely unsettling.

I've not been aware before as to how self-referential the work is. I heard quotations from all six previous symphonies mashed and thrown about. It was as though Mahler was chewing through his previous œuvre in order to digest it and move on. There was some sense of where he was moving to with the deployment of large forces that were quite often reduced to chamber sized sound bites. Exactly what Mahler was going to do in his next symphony. (And, for the record, I do think that Mahler's Symphony No8 is an awful lot of effort with its near on 600 performers for a disproportionate return)

But, hats off to the musicians, conductor and players alike. It was a miracle of orchestral balance that we heard the mandolin and the guitar and the cow bells and all the solo lines against that late post-Romantic sized orchestra. Vasily Petrenko has his orchestra drilled to perfection. They can turn on a hairpin of dynamic and tonality to suit his purpose. And it was quite something to hear them go at in the hall.

Nothing, however, will persuade me that this is anything other than an inferior piece of music. There is a very good reason why the work is the Cinderella of the cycle. It is a dud.

There was cheering and standing and stamping of feet a the end. Well, Mahler writes a good finale, after all. But I suspect that, whether they realised it or not, people were, in reality, cheering for the novelty of the occasion and the bravura virtuosity of the orchestral playing rather than for the piece they had heard. The work itself is, I repeat, a dud. Still, I'm rating the evening very good for the effort given by the players and the conductor to give the work a good go.

We watched a number of films over the weekend. None ranked as truly memorable.

Let Me In was a gritty vampire movie and was good of its type.

I Am Number 4 was a teen, sci-fi, conspiracy, they're coming to get me narrative which felt like a computer game. About two-thirds of the was through I said to Ross that it felt as though it was setting itself up to be the first of a series. And so it proved. Well, it transpired that it was based on a novel for young adults. I was bored; Ross thought it was OK.

Alex Pettyfer got his pecs out just once - which must be a cinematic record for him.

Simply put, Battle: Los Angeles was the computer game Tour of Duty with aliens plus real live actors. Aaron Eckhart and Ramon Rodriguez starred. We recognised Jim Parrack from True Blood and Michelle Rodriguez from Lost. Will Rothhaar won the award for cutest marine. Expertly staged but ultimately unengaging.

Otherwise the weekend has been spent domestically, composing this Journal, having a drink with Roland, visiting my parents, making whoopie with my Rossi, writing letters and emails, sorting out the laundry, ironing, cleaning, shopping for food, cooking, watering the plants, etc, etc.

I just want to get going now on the next bit of the adventure.