Indian Teacher explaining…

Cultural fusion and exchange has created many great works of civilization. Today’s post presents a teacher from India explaining the multitude of meanings of the “f” word. With his particular melodic accent, he softens up the harshness of the word, and makes it sound like a river flowing, almost meandering in a lush countryside.

Enjoy it! With a smile!

Indian_teacher_explaining_the_word_Fuck

Supplement of Etymology

The first known occurrence, in code, is in a poem composed in a mixture of Latin and English sometime before 1500. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, “Flen flyys“, from the first words of its opening line, “Flen, flyys, and freris”; that is, “Fleas, flies, and friars”. The line that contains fuck reads “Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk”. The Latin words “Non sunt in coeli, quia”, mean “They [the friars] are not in heaven, because”. The code “gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk” is easily broken by simply substituting the preceding letter in the alphabet, keeping in mind differences in the alphabet and in spelling between then and now: i was then used for both i and j; v was used for both u and v; and two vs were used for w. This yields “fvccant (a fake Latin form) vvivys of heli”. The whole thus reads in translation: “They are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely” (a city near Cambridge). (Available, with minor adjustments to the translation, at The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition). The phrase was coded because of its meaning; it is uncertain to what extent the word itself was considered acceptable.

La Mezquita in Cordoba – Part I

I am not familiar with Islamic art. But my recent visit to the Great Mosque of Cordoba in Spain was an ecstatic experience. This is the first part of an article on the Mezquita of Cordoba.

I start with some history, borrowed from the vast resources of the Metropolian Museum of Art in New York, then continue with a short tour of the outside, and conclude the first part with the entrance in the Mezquita and the first impressions and feelings.

“On July 19, 711, an army of Arabs and Berbers unified under the aegis of the Islamic Umayyad caliphate landed on the Iberian Peninsula. Over the next seven years, through diplomacy and warfare, they brought the entire peninsula except for Galicia and Asturias in the far north under Islamic control; however, frontiers with the Christian north were constantly in flux. The new Islamic territories, referred to as al-Andalus by Muslims, were administered by a provincial government established in the name of the Umayyad caliphate in Damascus and centered in Córdoba. Of works of art and other material culture only coins and scant ceramic fragments remain from this early period of the Umayyad governors (711–56).

When the Umayyad caliphate of Damascus was overthrown by the Abbasids in 750, the last surviving member of the Umayyad dynasty fled to Spain, establishing himself as Emir Abd al-Rahman I and thus initiating the Umayyad emirate (756–929). Abd al-Rahman I (r. 756–88) made Córdoba his capital and unified al-Andalus under his rule with a firm hand, while establishing diplomatic ties with the northern Christian kingdoms, North Africa, and the Byzantine empire and maintaining cultural contact with the Abbasids in Baghdad. The initial construction of the Great Mosque of Córdoba under his patronage was the crowning achievement of this formative period of Hispano-Islamic art and architecture.”

(Source: The Art of the Umayyad Period in Spain (711–1031) | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art).

Aerial view of the Mezquita in Cordoba (source: Wikipedia)

The Great Mosque of Cordoba was built over a period of three centuries, from the 8th to the 11th. It is a rectangle with a orange tree court with a basin adjacent to it. This court is the oldest Moorish garden in Spain (marked as 7 in the plan that follows).

The concept was to imitate if not exceed the Great Mosque of Damascus.

At the edge of the tree line at the bottom of the photo is the bank of the famous river, Guadalquivir. The plan of the Mezquita that follows is “turned upside down” compared to the photo. The river is at the top. The resolution of the plan is high so that you can download it and view it in full resolution for the details.

The Minaret, enveloped by a Baroque Tower in 17c

Door of Forgiveness (1 in the plan)

Puerta San Esteban (Door of Saint Stephen) - Marked 3 on the plan

Puerta San Miguel (Door of Saint Michael’s) – Marked 4 on the Plan.

Door of the Psalms, viewed from the Orange Tree Court – Marked 6 on the Plan.

Carved wooden beams in the cloisters – detail (Marked 8 on the plan)

When the Moors first arrived in Cordoba, they were content to share the Visigothic Church of Saint Vincent with the Christians. When this became insufficient, AdbAl-Rahman purchased their part and started building  the Mosque (marked 9 on the plan) with 11 aisles, opening onto the Orange Tree Court. The architectural innovation in the mosque was the superimposition of two tiers of arches to give added height and spaciousness. They used marble pillars and Roman stone from St Vicent’s Church and other buildings in the area.

Once you are inside (you enter in the area marked 8 on the plan) you get overwhelmed by the “forest of pillars” as one traveler put it, and the  completely new feeling of space. It is as if space is distorted, but yet it returns to its normal state, If there is one thing that I will never forget from my visit there is this “feeling” of space. The last time I felt this was when I visited the Chillida museum in the Basque country. The photos cannot convey this feeling, but you get an idea.

This is one of the corridors that take you from the entrance to the Mihrab (marked 13 on the plan), which you can barely see at the end. The two pillars at the beginning of this corridor are supporting the Christian Cathedral that is almost embedded in the Great Mosque. In the photo below you see the parallel corridor on the left as we face the Mihrab.

As I walk down this corridor with direction towards the Mihrab, I get to see some of the marvelous arches within arches of the Great Mosque.

With these first impressions of the inside area, I conclude Part I of my visit to the Mezquita of Cordoba.

In Part II I will cover the Christian Cathedral and the area of the Mahrib.

Bar Food in Cordoba, Spain

As a traveler, there are moments when you want to eat something simple, fresh, well prepared, without having to go through the motions of a meal.  Spain is one of the countries where this is possible. The place is Cordoba, the center of town. Sunday early afternoon and the locals enjoy their bar food with ice cold beer.

I could not resist and joined them.

Here are some samples of the delicious food that is served at prices that would shame some establishments in Greece.

Tortilla de patatas

This is the staple food of Spain: Omelette with potatoes. Juicy, tasty, with a texture that rewards the mouth.

Calamares

Fresh, fried to perfection, wonderful taste of sea with the cold beer.

Boquerones

I conclude with the crispy but tender boquerones, or anchovies, or GAVROS in Greek!

Just for the record, the calamares and the boquerones cost 3,9 EUROs each!

RABITOS DE CERDO IBÉRICO ESTOFADOS Y CIGALITAS SALTEADAS: The Princess entangles the Serf in a messy enjoyment of life

Iberian Pig’s Tails with crayfish.

The humble tail with its skin intact and crispy combines with the white immaculate flesh of the crayfish in a never ending game of pure pleasure, amplified by jamon iberico crisps.

The flesh of the tail is surrounded by streams of fat, the best tasting fat in the world!

The contrast in the texture between the skin and the subliminally soft, almost creamy fat  is unbelievable.

And when you get back to Earth after this excursion into extreme pleasure, the crayfish comes into play and with its soft flesh and sweet flavor takes you to the cool ocean of elevated joy.

A crisp of jamon iberico completes the palette of tastes and you find yourself asking the simple question:

“How could I ever taste something more satisfying than this?”

The Princess has danced with the Serf, the lights are off,  and the Prince with the skull on hand walks by wandering:

“To be or not to be?”

He obviously didn’t manage to get even one bite!

P.S. This dish is on the menu of the re-opened Mugaritz Restaurant, near San Sebastian in the Basque Region, which was completely rebuilt after a fire destroyed the entire kitchen and a big part of the dining area on the 15th February 2010.

Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan: Heart’s Time wrapped in Darkness

Paul Celan was born in 1920 in Bucovina, Romania. He became one of the most prominent 20th century poets. Celan committed suicide in Paris, in 1970, before turning 50.

Ingeborg Bachmann, was born in 1926 in Klagenfurt, Austria. She wrote poems, libretti, novels and is considered one of the most talented German – Austrian writers of the 20th century. Bachmann died in rather strange circumstances in a fire in Rome, in 1973.  She was 47 years old.

Heart’s Time (Herzzeit) is the title of a book published in Germany in 2008 (the English translation has been published in 2010) containing more than 200 items of correspondence between the two lovers, friends.

Dr. Klaus Hübner observes in his review of the book’s publication:

“Love is always a very private matter, and it is only by means of the extent to which the lovers are known that an element of public awareness and interest is added to it. This is surely true in the case of the relationship between Ingeborg Bachmann (1926–1973) and Paul Celan (1920–1970). The works of these two writers belong to the essential core of German-language literature after the end of the Second World War, and they also belong to it because, in their different ways, they are marked by the collapse of German civilisation during the Nazi era, above all by the industrialised murder of many millions of Jews and its unspeakable and unending consequences. What would German lyric poetry be without Bachmann’s Die gestundete Zeit from 1953 (title poem of this collection variously translated as Mortgaged Time, The Respite, and Time Borrowed) or Anrufung des Großen Bären from 1956 (i.e. invocation of the Great Bear)? Without Celan’s Mohn und Gedächtnisfrom 1952 (i.e. poppies and memory) or Sprachgitter from 1959 (i.e. language-grille)? What would the memory of the ‚Fifties and ‚Sixties be without the celebrated Gruppe 47? Our view of the post-war period would be incomplete without Bachmann’s and Celan’s verses, voices and photos.”

“Glorious news” the 21-year old Ingeborg Bachmann writes in a letter to her parents, the “surrealist poet” Paul Celan has fallen in love with her. It is May 1948, Vienna. Celan sends Bachmann his poem In Ägypten (in Egypt) with the dedication: “For Ingeborg. To one who is painfully precise (peinlich genau), 22 years after her birth, from one who is painfully imprecise.“

Celan visits Bachmann in Vienna and stays there for a month or so. He then goes to Paris where he is going to stay until his death in 1970.

Visit “Once upon an Autumn” to read “Corona”,  the last poem that Celan wrote before leaving Vienna in 1948.

In 1950, Bachmann received her Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Vienna with her dissertation titled “The Critical Reception of the Existential Philosophy of Martin Heidegger,”

Bachmann writes to Celan in 1949:

“Sometimes I’d like nothing better than to get away and come to Paris, to feel you touch my hand, how you touch me completely with flowers and then not to know yet again where you come from and where you are going.  To me you come from India or from a more distant dark, brown land, to me you are the desert and the sea and everything secretive. I know nothing about about and that is why I am often so afraid for you, I cannot imagine that you are doing the same things the rest of us are doing here, I should have a castle for us and bring you to me, so that you can be my enchanted lord, we will have many tapestries in it and music and invent love. I have often thought that “Corona” is your most beautiful poem, it is the most perfect anticipation of a moment where everything becomes marble and exists forever. But here it is not my “time”.  I hunger for something that I will not get, everything is flat and vapid. tired and used-up even before it is used.   in mid-August I will be in Paris just for a few days. Don’t ask me why, but be there for me, for one evening, or two or three. Take me to the Seine, we want to look down into it for a long time until we’ve become small fish and recognize each other again. “

Although they are no longer “lovers” in the exact sense of the word, the correspondence continues stronger than ever. Ina Hartwig in her Frankfurter Rundschau review (published in 2008) relates.

“In September 1950 she will mention her first “nervous breakdown” and tell Celan that she is “lost, desperate and embittered”. She writes: “I have such desire for a little comfort” and she entreats him: “Please try to be good to me and hold me tight!” He obviously senses a good portion of stylisation here, in any case he soon cautions his now most sought-after companion to be “a little more sparing with your demands”. Because, he continues, she has “had more from life” than most of her contemporaries. Jealousy? This is the astoundingly sober reply to a letter from June 1951, in which she admits: “I love you and I don’t want to love you, it is too much and too difficult…”"

In his article “Expressing the Dark“, Hans-Gunnar Peterson observes:

“What impelled her was a wish to work with death as a motif and with reflections on the hidden forces of violence and oppression in society. She was appalled and yet fascinated by the fact that crimes against humans are being committed on such a large scale also outside of the boundaries of war. “Since long have I pondered the question of where fascism has its origin. It is not born with the first bombs, neither through the terror one can describe in every newspaper … its origin lies in the relations between a man and a woman, and I have tried to say … in this society there is permanently.”"

Bachmann with Henze

In 1953 Bachmann goes to Rome, where she works with Hans Werner Henze, the German composer, and writes two libretti for his operas: the Prince of Homburg, and The Young Lord.

In 1957 the two “lovers” meet again and their relationship is revitalized. But it is only an interlude. They go back to their own separate lifes until 1961, when Ingeborg experiences a writer’s block wen it comes to her correspondence with Celan.

Psalm

Paul Celan

No one moulds us again out of earth and clay,

no one conjures our dust.

No one.

Praised be your name, no one.

For your sake

we shall flower

Towards

you.

A nothing

we were, are, shall

remain, flowering;

the nothing-, the

no one’s rose.

With our pistil soul-bright

with our stamen heaven-ravaged

our corolla red

with the crimson word which we sang

over, 0 over

the thorn.

Bachmann writes to Celan shortly before the “blockage” in her writing in 1961: “I really think that the greatest disaster is inside you. The wretched stuff that comes from outside – and you don’t need assure me of the truth of this, because I am well aware of much of it – is certainly poisonous, but it can be overcome, it must be possible to overcome. It is up to you now to confront it properly, after all you see that every explanation, every event, however right it might have been, has not diminished the unhappiness inside you, when I hear you speaking, it seems to me as if … it meant nothing to you that many people have made an effort, as if the only things that counted for you were dirt, maliciousness, folly. … You want to be the victim, but it is up to you to change this…” (Ina Hartwig ).

Bachmann with Henze in Rome

“Enigma” 1967

Ingeborg Bachmann

Nothing more will come.

Spring will no longer flourish.

Millennial calendars forecast it already.

And also summer and more, sweet words

such as “summer-like”–

nothing more will come.

You mustn’t cry,

says the music.

Otherwise

no one

says

anything.

After 1967 Bachmann almost sopped writting poetry and turned to prose. Marjorie Perloff explains:

“Why did Bachmann stop writing lyric poems?  In an interview, she remarked: “I have nothing against poems, but you must try to understand that there are moments when suddenly, one has everything against them, against every metaphor, every sound, every rule for putting words together, against the absolutely inspired arrival of words and images.”  What she means here, I think, is that, in the writing of lyric, she couldn’t seem to get around the male and patriarchal voice so powerful in German poetry.  “I had only known,” Bachmann admitted in 1971, “how to tell a story from a masculine position.  But I have often asked myself: why, really?  I have not understood it, not even in the case of the short stories.”  Then, too, Bachmann feared, as did her contemporary Paul Celan, that German lyric too easily falls into the trap of “harmony,” the harmony which, as Celan puts it, “no longer has anything in common with that ‘harmony’ which sounded more or less unchallenged, side by side with the most dreadful.”  The reference here is of course to the Holocaust: Bachmann was well aware of the difficulty Celan speaks of.”

‘For me it is not a question of a woman’s role, but the phenomenon of love – how you love. […] Love is a work of art, and I don’t believe many have the capacity for it.’ Ingeborg Bachmann said this in an interview in 1971. By then, her correspondence with Paul Celan was long over. In the early 1960s, Celan had been in the midst of an existential crisis that clouded his relationship with her. (Angelika Reitzer)

In late spring 1970, Gisèle Celan-Lestrange, estranged wife of the poet Paul Celan, wrote to the Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann, an early love and life-long friend of the poet’s: “In the night from Monday to Tuesday, 19 to 20 April, he left his apartment, never to return… ” (Bachmann-Celan Correspondence, p. 197). (Ina Hartwig).

“My life is over, for during the transport he has drowned in the river’, says the dream ‘self’ in Bachmann’s novel Malina; and ‘he was my life. I loved him more than my life.’ (Malina: A Novel. Translated by Philip Boehm. Holmes & Meier, 1990.)” (Angelika Reitzer)

Stereo Nova – Wireless world

In 1995 I visited Husum, a small town near the German – Danish borders, on my way to Neukirchen, where Emil Nolde’s studio and house is, today a museum of the Nolde foundation.

I posted an article on my visit and showed some of the photos I have taken.

A visitor to the blog, liked the photos so much that he decided to use them in a video clip he was preparing, featuring music of the Greek Group Super Nova. Here is the result of his efforts.

The music reflects perfectly the mood of the place, the darkness and calmness of the North seascape.

I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

The Thracian Maid

In Plato’s Theaetetus, the Maid laughs at the philosopher who, while walking with his gaze to the stars above, falls into a well.

A summertime dish: Trio of Fava, Vlita and Halloumi

Today I offer to all visitors and friends a panathinaeos original, a summertime dish that will nourish you and at the same time refresh and delight you. In addition to everything else, it is a value for money dish, as its cost is very low compared to its value. And this is something we need very much in a period of crisis!

Fava in Greece is made with yellow lentils, not with fava (broad) beans. These yellow lentils are especially tasty on the volcanic island of Santorini. This packet shown in the photo weights about 500 grams and costs around 10 Euros. But is is worth every penny, as their smoky flavor cannot be found in other fava!

I boil the lentils until they become a puree. I then add some olive oil and lemon and let the mix relax.

Today fava is becoming the key ingredient in a summer dish that is very light and refreshing.

The second ingredient is “Vlita”, the summer greens of the Greek countryside, that I just blanch for three minutes and let rest for ten before using them in the trio.

The final step is to compose the trio. Fave is the foundation, vlita on top, capers around the hexagon, and on top and on the sides fried or grilled chunks of “halloumi”, the white goat’s and sheep cheese from Cyprus. For added flavor, you may want to season the vlita before with lemon and olive oil. It is a matter of personal taste. Enjoy!

J.S. Bach and Roger Woodward: The Well Tempered Clavier

Today’s post is about one of music’s most fascinating and intriguing work, “The well tempered Clavier” composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, and its interpretation by the Australian pianist Roger Woodward. Until yesterday I was a fan of Glen Gould’s interpretation. Now that I have discovered Roger Woodward I feel richer.

I dedicate the post to Natalia, who loves music.

The Work

Few works have so often been reinterpreted as the 48 – two sets of 24 preludes and fugues, in every possible key in turn, written two decades apart that together form what pianists call their Old Testament. (Beethoven’s 32 sonatas constitute the New.)

In the 18th century, performing musicians and music theorists gave great importance to the emotional and affective characteristics of the different keys.

Begun as a pedagogical exercise for one of Bach’s sons, it became a work of towering genius, encapsulating music of all the main schools that had gone before, from Renaissance to regional Baroque, and looking forward across the centuries.

The term “well-tempered” as used by Bach refers to a tuning system in which all keys could sound well, if not identically so. This is because in Bach’s time, musicians employed a great variety of tuning systems. In most of these systems, some keys would be very well in tune, while others, most notably the extreme sharp or flat keys, would be discordant or out of tune. This is one reason why much Baroque music is written in a fairly limited range of keys, compared to the music of the 19th century.

Each pair within the Work features two different kinds of movement. The fugues are governed by highly specific compositional processes and techniques. the preludes are in an extremely free style with few specific rules governing their development.

The Pianist

Roger Woodward (right) with Iannis Xenakis (left)

In the website bearing his name, we read: ” The Australian pianist Roger Woodward performs both traditional and contemporary repertoire although his musical training is steeped in church music and the romantic repertory.  He rose to international prominence in prestigious collaborations with Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Jean Barraqué, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Toru Takemitsu, Franco Donatoni, Luciano Berio, Leo Brouwer, Iannis Xenakis, Arvo Pärt, Larry Sitsky, and worked with such contemporary German composers as Peter Michael Hamel, Rolf Gehlhaar, Hans Otte and Karlheinz Stockhausen.”

I run into Woodward from Iannis Xenakis. Xenakis dedicated three works to pianist and conductor Roger Woodward, with whom he forged an intimate working relationship that involved the major international music festivals with a wide range of orchestras, chamber ensembles and international radio and television networks ranging from the BBC, French and German Radio to networks in the USA, Poland, Italy, Japan, Israel and Australia. A long exerpt from an interview given to Angela Boyd in January 2010 is illuminating:

Was there a defining moment or breakthrough when you decided that music would be your life?

There were various impressions, but the most significant was when I first heard the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Nothing was ever the same again. From that moment on, I knew I would live the rest of my life with music. Not long afterwards, l began studying the keyboard suites, “The Well-Tempered Clavier”, and, from the age of thirteen, most of the organ works, some of the church cantatas, the passion music and B-minor Mass. Piano studies were spent sorting out fugues whilst reading the works of earlier and later composers. During this period l was lucky enough to have had access to a memorable instrument with four manuals at St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney, and a magnificent cembalo.

The breakthrough, however, came a few years later, when I won the Commonwealth Finals of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Concerto and Vocal Competition. The series of concerto and recital appearances that followed formed part of the award and they provided an effective transition into the profession. It was from this time that I began playing concerts and teaching. However, this is only half the story, because I had also been smitten by the music of early twentieth century Russian composers, as well as Schoenberg, Webern, Bartók, Debussy, Messiaen and the music of Messiaen’s students – principally Xenakis, Stockhausen, Barraqué and Boulez. I left Sydney to continue studying at the National Chopin Academy in Warsaw where there was an annual showcase of new music called the “Warsaw Autumn”. From then on I played what was invariably described as either “modern” music or the “traditional” repertoire, when there seemed to be little or no difference between the two.

Music was always new at one stage or another and it certainly remained that way for me irrespective of when it was composed. Some of the programmes which I enjoyed putting together were of Frescobaldi+Gabrieli+Xenakis or Cage+Feldman+Bach or Schumann+Schubert+Schoenberg or Beethoven+Barraqué. Nowadays, this has become normal programming, although I enjoy directing the masterpieces of Xenakis and Bach in addition to playing keyboard instruments.

Xenakis has dedicated three pieces to you –Keqrops(1986);Mistsfor solo piano (1980) andPaille in the Winds(1992). How would you describe Xenakis’ place in the evolution of music?

Despite his own modest hesitations at the beginning of his career and the pejorative comments of his detractors, Xenakis somehow knew that he had inherited the sacred trust to carry the main body of Occidental music into the twenty-first century in the monumental traditions to which he belonged, spanning Josquin to Messiaen.

It would be an understatement to add that he engendered as profound a respect for his loyalty to human rights, as for his dedication to developing experimental achievements in the fields of architecture, mathematics, philosophy and music. He held a profound respect for peace and tolerance and, above all, human rights, which set him apart from others in the field. Takemitsu, and Feldman both shared his lofty spirit as well as Messiaen, who staunchly encouraged him at every turn. Like Bach before him, and despite similar criticism, Xenakis galvanized the essential codes which straddled two ages of thought and in this respect the two giants greet each other across the centuries with prolific outputs in ways that subsequently altered the destiny of western art-music.

Why have you made only two recordings of Xenakis’ music so far – a live performance of Keqrops with Abbado in Vienna and your own direction of Kraanerg with the musicians of the Alpha Centauri Ensemble?

These were recorded because I felt ready to make a statement about them and the composer was extremely pleased with both performances. It has taken me thirty years to feel the same way about his massive solo piano piece entitledMistsand so I find myself only now ready to record it, although I have recorded all his solo piano pieces at one time or another for radio or live concert situations.

The Recording

”Bach is always open. The music is never closed, which is why jazz musicians pick up on Bach. The most intelligent thing a musician has ever said to me is, ‘You can’t play this just by practising it, you must reflect over it because it is philosophy’.”

Woodward has certainly reflected deeply and believes he has recaptured the core of Bach’s musical vision, the legato-cantabile sound – a striking development in Bach’s day.

”It’s getting back to the idea of letting the voices sing,” Woodward says. ”It’s getting back to the ideas Bach enshrined in his teaching. Things should sing, and they should flow, and they should be smooth and even. I’ve done no more than follow what Bach advocated to his students.”

There is little instruction in the score, even of the speed of the music, let alone detailed phrasing.

But ”the infinite beauty of Bach’s simple dances and preparation of their tempi inevitably leads to an examination of the laws of musical movement, inner pulse, details of phrasing, legato and cantabile”.

Woodward has been delighted but surprised at the reception of his recordings and essay. The authoritative Gramophone magazine made it the editor’s choice this month, while German critics have been ecstatic, calling it a new departure.

Roger Woodward says: “The 24 Preludes and Fugues of J.S. Bach’s ‘Well-Tempered Clavier’ from 1722, together with a second book of 24 Preludes and Fugues composed two decades later, in all major and minor keys formed his keyboard masterpiece and were destined to become the Old Testament of the genre. This monumental treasure house of music was subsequently studied and performed by a long line of composers commencing with Johann Sebastian’s sons, Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, and countless other musicians who were inspired by the glories contained throughout the its pages, including Dmitri Shostakovich. In Leipzig, 1950, the 43-year old Russian composer was inspired to compose 24 Preludes and Fugues of his own in all major and minor keys and the two brothers greet each other like across the centuries.”

One reviewer wrote: ”Woodward’s interpretation incorporates the organic structure of counterpoint, the exploitation of bold well-tempered harmonics, and a contemplative concentration on sound along with flashing virtuosity and a clarity of musical lines and orchestral effects.”

The pianist himself, who has worked a great deal with modern composers, says his approach is the same as always.

”I’ve tried to do what I’ve done all my life – consult the composer.”

If you really like the music, you must hear all 48 pairs of preludes and fugues. Just for a taste, I post the first prelude in C Major. Enjoy it.

1-01 The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book

Shiva meets Bach

…These recordings resulted in four-and-a-half stellar hours of the Bach discography. Because Woodward approaches the two cycles fluently and briskly as one unified work, because, as a graduate of the avant-garde he doesn’t need to shy away from any technical challenge, because he knows how to courageously take full advantage of the possibilities of the modern grand piano, because he relies less on interpretation than on fierily incendiary presentation, Woodward removes anything historical, elitist or alienating from this music; he understands Bach as a contemporary of innovators such as Xenakis, Cage, Feldman, and Ligeti. No looking back, no nostalgia, no more educational high-browism, no more old Europe. Never before did Johann Sebastian have such a future ahead of him.
REINHARD J. BREMBECK
Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich
April 17, 2010…

There has been almost as much of a glut of Well-Tempered Claviers recently as commemorative Chopin editions, including interpretations from Daniel Barenboim and Maurizio Pollini; but this 5CD set of both Books I and II by Roger Woodward may well be the most significant since Glenn Gould’s revolutionary completion of the sequence.

The size of the set suggests unusually slow tempi, but Woodward is simply being scrupulously attendant to the demands of the music. Indeed, his thorough sleevenote In Search Of A Performance Practice, analysing the different approaches employed on various cembali, clavichords, organs, etc, may constitute the last word on this subject, as too may his performance. Remarkable.

Andy Gill

The Independent

19 March 2010

Visit to Oreoi, North Evoia, Greece – May 2010

I was fortunate to visit my good cousin Kostas and his family in their summer house in Oreoi, North Evoia.

The fortune is a combination of glorious weather, the aromas of the land and the sea, the wonderful dishes of the late lunch we had together, and the absolute power of the sea to relax the human beings, no matter what state they are in.

As you can see from the photo above, Kostas has prepared a nice garden where he planted tomatoes, zucchini and water melons.

The tomatoes are already visible and I cannot wait to taste them!

In addition to the garden, Kostas has a vineyard in the back. In the photo you see the most grown grape vines, cabernet franc.

The vines are full of fruit. Kostas does not use any chemicals in the vineyard.

It is now time to move to the late lunch. We started with gavros  lightly cured in vinegar with olive oil and parsley. We tasted the gavros with home made tsipouro.

A perfect companion ot the strong tastes of the gavros and tsipouro was a home made cheese pie, prepared by Kostas’ wife, Maria. Sweet and lightly salty, with the fresh eggs giving it the bright yellow color.

Next came the wonderful pork souvlaki, fresh meat with oregano, salt and pepper.

They were grilled to perfection by Kostas. What a treat! the simplest freshest natural food on a natural fire!

After the pork souvlaki came the rabbit cooked “stifado”. This is a stew with a lot of shallots a bit of tomato and herbs. According to Maria, who prepared it, it took only 20 minutes for the rabbit to cook! The rabbit was brought to Kostas as a present for his name day by one of his friends in the area.  I cannot relate too easily to this gesture, as I do not ever recall receiving rabbit as a present.

It was tender, juicy, tasty and light!  And as you can see the bones were coming off with the lightest sea breeze! Well done Maria, thank you!

This concludes my post. the only question that lingers in my mind as I ready to publish it, is when will I be fortunate to visit Oreoi again!!!