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Music and Beyond is over for another year. We definitely got our money's worth out of our $85 passes, attending 18 concerts over the course of the festival.
Some highlights: Handel's Water Music, played on the water, from a boat along the Rideau Canal; a showing of the film The Iron Curtain, about the defection of Igor Gouzenko, with most of the action taking place in Ottawa in 1945, and with a soundtrack consisting mainly of the music of Shostakovich; the Ottawa Bach Choir; the Vienna Piano Trio; concerts where music was combined with dance (including two dancers from the National Ballet of Canada), Chinese acrobatics and works of art.
In the case of Water Music, the boat began at Dows Lake, went along the canal to the NAC and returned via the same route. They had allowed an hour for it to go each way, but unfortunately it got a very late start and then moved too quickly for us to follow it; eventually, we just sat on a bench and waited for it to come back, but unfortunately we only really got a few minutes of the music. What we did hear was great, though, and the weather was beautiful - sunny and not too hot.
The Iron Curtain was very much a product of its time and because of that, quite (unintentionally) funny in places. There was, of course, the ever-present smoking and drinking, combined with a certain prudery about sexual matters; the whole Cold War mentality; the sometimes-naive faith in western democracy; the hokey voice-over; the sexism. At one point, when Gouzenko says he is going to be late home, his wife Anna says she'll "keep the bed warm" for him - yet when we see their bedroom, they apparently have separate beds! And when Anna (despite the separate beds) manages to get pregnant, her husband confidently proclaims "Everyone wants their first child to be a boy. Boys have a much brighter future - they grow up to be MEN!"
The last concert we attended was one on Sunday afternoon at St. Andrew's, by the Vienna Piano Trio. And I discovered that "molesting" pianos, i.e. getting right under the hood (or perhaps wing in this case, as it was a grand) and playing the strings, may not be as unusual a practice as I had thought - Stefan Mendl, the pianist of the trio, played this way in a piece by a modern composer, Johannes Maria Staud - a rather interesting composition, actually, which made me want to learn a little more about him and what else he has written.
Music and Beyond ended on Sunday. Now we get a short break until Chamberfest.
Some highlights: Handel's Water Music, played on the water, from a boat along the Rideau Canal; a showing of the film The Iron Curtain, about the defection of Igor Gouzenko, with most of the action taking place in Ottawa in 1945, and with a soundtrack consisting mainly of the music of Shostakovich; the Ottawa Bach Choir; the Vienna Piano Trio; concerts where music was combined with dance (including two dancers from the National Ballet of Canada), Chinese acrobatics and works of art.
In the case of Water Music, the boat began at Dows Lake, went along the canal to the NAC and returned via the same route. They had allowed an hour for it to go each way, but unfortunately it got a very late start and then moved too quickly for us to follow it; eventually, we just sat on a bench and waited for it to come back, but unfortunately we only really got a few minutes of the music. What we did hear was great, though, and the weather was beautiful - sunny and not too hot.
The Iron Curtain was very much a product of its time and because of that, quite (unintentionally) funny in places. There was, of course, the ever-present smoking and drinking, combined with a certain prudery about sexual matters; the whole Cold War mentality; the sometimes-naive faith in western democracy; the hokey voice-over; the sexism. At one point, when Gouzenko says he is going to be late home, his wife Anna says she'll "keep the bed warm" for him - yet when we see their bedroom, they apparently have separate beds! And when Anna (despite the separate beds) manages to get pregnant, her husband confidently proclaims "Everyone wants their first child to be a boy. Boys have a much brighter future - they grow up to be MEN!"
The last concert we attended was one on Sunday afternoon at St. Andrew's, by the Vienna Piano Trio. And I discovered that "molesting" pianos, i.e. getting right under the hood (or perhaps wing in this case, as it was a grand) and playing the strings, may not be as unusual a practice as I had thought - Stefan Mendl, the pianist of the trio, played this way in a piece by a modern composer, Johannes Maria Staud - a rather interesting composition, actually, which made me want to learn a little more about him and what else he has written.
Music and Beyond ended on Sunday. Now we get a short break until Chamberfest.
