2007 August » Love is the most excellent way

August 25 recital performances

Aug 292007

Ben and Esther played in a violin recital last Saturday. Ben played the cadenza and fourth movement of Shostakovich’s first violin concerto. Esther played an excerpt of the first movement of Barber’s violin concerto.

Steve recorded their performances (audio only):

Esther: Esther
Ben: Ben

I also videoed clips on my camera. They don’t sound great but it’s fun to see what the playing looks like. Ben played the cadenza again in a masterclass last night. The camera clips of him are from last night. I was turning pages on Saturday, so I couldn’t take any clips then. I think it went better last night but the sound from Saturday’s recording will be way better. (There are four clips – click ‘read the rest’ to get to all of them from my home page) Continue reading »

Storms

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Aug 242007

We had an amazingly violent storm go through here yesterday afternoon. I think it probably didn’t qualify as a tornado but there certainly was a tornado watch on for while and it was the most violent weather I’ve ever seen here. The worst part only lasted a few minutes but once it had passed, tree branches and even whole trees were down everywhere. The photo is of a tree one block away from us. We were fortunate not to lose power. Some parts of our village did and have been told it will take three days to restore it.

Poor Ben was walking home when it hit. He headed for some stores since he still was a number of blocks from home. Some kind people at Prudential beckoned him and some other people in and took them down to the basement since it was safest in case of a tornado. He dried out but now all his textbooks are crinkly along the bottom. Apart from that high school is going well so far.

High school

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Aug 192007

Ben starts high school on Wednesday. Ben took one course at the high school last year (math), so he already has some familiarity with it. I won’t say he’d rather be at school than on vacation, but apart from that he seems to be looking forward to it.

Esther goes back a little later; she will begin 7th grade (same school as last year) the following Tuesday.

There’s a violin recital on Saturday in which Ben is playing some of Shostakovich’s 1st violin concerto (cadenza & 4th movement) and Esther is playing some of the 1st movement of Barber’s Violin Concerto. They are both going to play these for competitions later this year or early next year.

Towns in Tuscany

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Aug 072007

We visited a few interesting historic towns while we were there. The famous one we didn’t make it to was Florence. We intended to go there but decided smaller places worked better for our group. Since we enjoyed Tuscany so much I’m hoping we’ll go back again and make to Florence the next time.

Siena

Siena was quite crowded and very impressive. It’s built on steep hills which made it even more more fun and interesting.

The Piazza del Campo was way bigger than any other Piazza I saw in Italy (except perhaps the Piazza Navona in Rome, very long and thin because it was based on the ground plan of a Roman stadium). The Square itself was on a slope which made me feel like I was in some weird perspective-distorting machine, even though I wasn’t.

We found a pizza place on the Piazza del Campo where all 25 of us could have lunch together – I was very pleased that worked out.

We tried to go up the tower in the Piazza del Campo but the line was too long and slow-moving for our group. We did get to go around the Cathedral, which was spectacular. I’ve never seen a stripy cathedral before and the library wall and ceiling paintings were awesome. Continue reading »