Rembrandt, Bruegel the Elder, and Messiaen

I spent the past week-end with friends and music enthusiasts at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) and Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor. The DIA's installation entitled REMBRANDT and the Face of Jesus appeared to be an overwhelming success based on the packed galleries featuring some paintings and drawings of Rembrandt and many paintings of the master's contemporaries. I was told that the show cost $1.5 million. I must say I didn't enjoy the show. One couldn't view the paintings and drawings in a felicitous way - too many onlookers herded into too small a space.

   After the above noted unpleasantness, my wife and I along with our friends were surprised by a remarkable film,  The Mill and the Cross, directed by Lech Majewski. The film employs along with its painterly staging computer technology to take the viewer inside of Pieter Bruegel's painting The Way to Calvary. I must say that I was very doubtful that I'd be fulfilled by two treatments of Jesus in one day. I was right about the Face of Jesus installation. But the Bruegel film was enthralling. 

    Sunday afternoon the University Music Society presented the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Olivier Messiaen's exciting Des canyons aux étoiles … . Jeffrey Tate was the conductor. The soloists were extraordinary - Francesco Tristano, Piano; Tunca Dogu, French Horn; Alexander Radziewski, Xylorimba; and Frank Tackmann, Glockenspiel. Daniel Landau, Video Artist created a film that was shown above and behind the orchestra that is termed in the concert's program notes to be Mr. Landau's interpretation of Messiaen's wonderful music. Conjoining Mr. Landau's video with the music was a very bad idea, because his film was quite amateurish, incredibly boring, and detracted from one's listening to the music. But because the music was so exciting and the performance was so incredibly expert Mr. Landau's pretentious fluff was blown away.

     Our group of ten - eight music fanatics and two skeptics - had a very delightful evening of music, conversation, food and drink.

      Two hits and only one miss in two days - not bad.      

Well! That is not to say …

My blogging hiatus has ended. My time spent between 16 December 2011 and today has not been without interest. I've done very little serious reading, except for reading about music. I have watched some quite interesting films, more football than I care to recall, and my favorite television-series reruns - The Naked City, Peter Gunn, and The Untouchables. I still look at The Guardian newspaper every day to find out about what's not happening in the Imperial United States of America - which like The Holy Roman Empire is neither imperial or united. I have avoided the Republican's freak show. And I shall continue to avoid the Democrat's version of the same puppet show. I did learn that President Obama is an introvert. Not all puppets need be introverts, I guess.
    I have a bunch of music discs that I've been going through. And I have a performance of Olivier Messiaen's Des Canyons Aux Étoiles … that I'm looking forward to.
   So I hope to report on my listening and attendant reading and thinking in the next few days.