Cleveland Orchestra: Adams to Beethoven

 Last weekend we went to the Cleveland Orchestra and I reviewed it.
 The short version: Emanuel Ax played Haydn and Stravinsky with elegance; the orchestra played a wonderful meaty piece by John Adams; and they ended with a Beethoven 8th that was not terribly well rehearsed.

Bernard Greenhouse (1916-2011)

The cellist Bernard Greenhouse died this week at the age of 95. You know him from his years with the Beaux Arts Trio, perhaps. A direct link with the great Catalonian master Pablo Casals (he studied with Casals right after World War II), he was a founding member of the Beaux Arts Trio, the group that showed how piano trios can be as interesting and profound as string quartets.

Source Code

For this blog, I'm working with my grandson Jordan Meek. He lives in Illinois and he loves to go to the movies. So this weekend we went to the movie called Source Code. It was kind of hard to understand at the beginning. It right away took you into the train where a bombing happened. Sean Fentriss is the hero, and he is a history teacher and he suddenly is in this alternate world where somehow, a Captain Goodwin, is making him find out who the bomber is.

The best part was in the middle when he was beginning to ask people what they were doing because he thought they looked suspicious. Capt. Goodwin gave him clues as to where to look, and how to look at people.

He finds the bomb, but the mission was really not to find the bomb but to find the bomber. We're not going to tell you what happened, but we give it 4 stars (Nick) and 4.5 stars (Jordan).

We're going to find a good snapshot of this thriller. If you like trains, by the way, with a little twist, you'll like this movie.

The gulbenkian collection

In Lisbon, there is a wonderful art museum founded by oil magnate Calouste Gulbenkian, who if I remember right, opened up the Baku oil fields and then moved to Paris and started to collect art, seriously.

Since Lisbon welcomed him during the war, and London saw him as a suspicious character, the National Gallery lost out. portugal's gain, for sure.

The museum is beautiful, but the collection is even better. (except perhaps that he went overboard on 18th century French furniture and Corots)

What I especially liked about the collection was how it gave a sense of the man who bought all this art. Judging from the art he was a man who loved beautiful, vital, character-filled people and who bought art that had those kinds of qualities.

How wonderful is this Ghirlandaio portrait?





Or this St. Catherine and St. Joseph? Thoughtful, human...







And this? What faces, expressions!