Oh Yeah

Boy oh boy, today looks good. A gentle rain went on for hours this morning - enough to cool things down fabulously, but not enough to wake me up. Plus, it being the first of my off days, I sneaked in a little extra sleep, but not enough to make me feel like I was having a hangover from oversleep. To top it off, the additional quartet rehearsal is cancelled, leaving me extra time to practice, which is exactly what I need. And as a bonus, I got a call this morning (at just the right time to get me out of bed) with an unofficial invitation to play with the Bangkok Symphony before I leave Thailand - will have to wait and see whether it pans out, but still, a good sign.

As I type, I'm listening to the 12th recording of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra, which I bought last week. Perhaps Nathaniel was right in calling me a "Symphonie Concertante freak!", heh heh. It's with David and Igor Oistrakh - of which I have a previous recording, but this one was done ten years later, and this time the orchestra (the Berlin Phil) has David Oistrakh as leader as well, rather than a conductor.

Something admittedly corny born of a conversation with Sneexe last night (of which you can view the original at her blog):

Customer: Waiter! There's something in my soup!
Waiter: Sir, you ordered Campbells's alphabet soup.
Customer: So what? What's this in my soup?
Waiter: That sir, is an umlaut. Welcome to Germany.

I spent some time yesterday clearing up the hastily scribbed markings on my Marchenbilder (Fairytale Pictures) score. In addition to the regular bowings, fingerings, articulatory and interpretation markings, I decided to look for some additional imagery from Shakespeare's own fairies and other magical creatures. I couldn't help but add in this editor's notes to the 3rd of the Marchenbilder songs, which is notoriously fast, tricky, and tonally crazy to top it off:



Gonna get finish off getting those double stops in tune today, baby, yeah. If today I can get my roasted chicken for dinner, perfection, oh yeeeeah.