don’t shoot the pianist
he is doing the best he can

When retrieving a cloak of magic resistance from a nymph, remember to put it back on. Or at least do so before casting sleep at a monster in front of a wall.

Has anybody seen this headline floating around the news lately?

• Gosselin marriage is ‘irretrievably broken’

I don’t get why this story refuses to leave the headlines. Actually, I don’t understand how it ended up there in the first place. Am I supposed to know these people or something?

Here’s the really alarming stat:

Monday night’s show, in which the couple announced their separation and divorce, drew a record audience of 10.6 million viewers.

Translation: one in every thirty American residents is a brainless idiot. I’ve never been one to use the phrase “this is what’s wrong with America today”, but let’s see: Iran is murdering its own people, North Korea is actively provoking everybody within range, and the United States has ten million people concerned about the impending divorce of some reality TV couple.

I believe I speak for the other 290 million when I say—I really don’t give a damn.

Phoenix Coyotes operating losses, 1996—2009: $300 million

Phoenix Coyotes valuation by Forbes, October 2008: $142 million

Jim Balsillie, conditional offer to purchase Phoenix Coyotes: $212.5 million

Gary Bettman’s ego … well, we all know how the template goes.

On a related note, did anybody catch Bettman’s subtle reference to the Coyotes saga during the presentation of the Stanley Cup on Friday night when he thanked Mario Lemieux for “saving” the Pittsburgh Penguins? Nice try, Gary, but that’s a terrible attempt at equivocating. At the time of their financial upheaval, the Penguins had been an established part of the Pittsburgh sports market for over three decades and won two Stanley Cups. Even if the fan base dipped slightly mid-decade, the market was never the problem so much as stable ownership was. That’s something that can’t be said about Phoenix.

Obviously, Bettman was never in real estate; he still doesn’t seem to get that the success of the Coyotes franchise depends entirely on location, location, and … location. Or, in this case, relocation.

Gold medal: e.a. Nobuyuki Tsujii (Japan) and Zhang Haochen (China)
Silver medal: Son Yeol Eum (Korea)
Crystal award: n.p.

Finalists: Evgeni Bozhanov (Bulgaria)
        Mariangela Vacatello (Italy)
        Wu Di (China)

I have to say that I suspected the tie as soon as I saw two silver trophies on the table. The no prize for the crystal confirmed my suspicions (the crystal is only to be awarded if there is a single gold medalist and a single silver medalist).

The jury had choices ranging from the eccentric—Bozhanov, who imposed his personality onto the music to the point where he reportedly incensed maestro James Conlon with his “with me or against me” attitude in the concerti—to the conservative: pick the pianist who didn’t miss more than a handful of notes during the entire competition. The selection of Zhang—who, at the ripe old age of nineteen years and four days, becomes the youngest gold medalist in Cliburn history—falls solidly on the latter end of that scale.

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James Fallow for the Atlantic with an excellent summary:

I have spent a lot of time over the past three years with Chinese university students. They know a lot about the world, and about American history, and about certain periods in their own country’s past. Virtually everyone can recite chapter and verse of the Japanese cruelties in China from the 1930s onward, or the 100 Years of Humiliation, or the long background of Chinese engagement with Tibet. Through their own family’s experiences, many have heard of the trauma of the Cultural Revolution years and the starvation and hardship of the Great Leap Forward. But you can’t assume they will ever have heard of what happened in Tiananmen Square twenty years ago. For a minority of people in China, the upcoming date of June 4 has tremendous significance. For most young people, it’s just another day.

47. Pianos that have signs saying “PLEASE DO NOT PLAY THE PIANO”. If the piano’s not meant to be played, then why the hell is it there?

The Saudis have beheaded and crucified a man convicted of double homicide:

Crucifying the headless body in a public place is a way to set an example, according to the kingdom’s strict interpretation of Islam. Normally those convicted of rape, murder and drug trafficking in Saudi Arabia are just beheaded.

You know, I’m not sure these guys get the point. The idea behind crucifixion as an execution method was to cause an agonizing, prolonged suffering before death. It’s where we get our English word excruciating from. So, beheading the man first and then crucifying the body—well, that just defeats the purpose entirely, doesn’t it?

(Interesting but completely random language quirk: the headline on the linked story contains four consecutive words that can be used as verbs.)

Cliburn announcer Steve Cummings is much too polite to say this, but I need to rant for a little bit. Namely, on “turn your cell phones off”. What on earth is so incomprehensible about those five words? (I’m looking at you, person sitting in orchestra left, row H this afternoon.)

It doesn’t require a literary degree to understand—it’s not like there’s a whole lot of subtlety contained in that sentence. If this is still somehow unclear, allow me to please explain: the first word, “TURN”, is used in this context to indicate a change of state, namely, that of the “CELL PHONE” (words #3 and #4) to the state “OFF” (word #5) in which the cell phone is rendered temporarily inoperable.

That said, here’s a better idea: leave the cell phone in the car, or at home. Exactly what call are you waiting for that’s so important you can’t return the call in a couple of hours? And if it really is that important, what are you doing attending the Cliburn?

It’s really a shame that cell jamming technology is prohibited in the United States. I wonder why—since cell jammers, at the most basic level, simply broadcast a competing signal—it’s not possible to permit their operation, with the proper broadcasting licenses.

Here’s an idea that’s much too sensible ever to become law: grant licenses for the operation of local signal blocking devices for appropriate buildings such as churches, theatres, and concert halls. Applications would state the radius for which the jammer remains active, and approvals would be granted contingent on the jamming device being connected to fire alarms in a way that disables the jammer automatically in the event of an emergency.

The status quo inspires nothing but aggravation. As things stand, if I hear another phone at the Cliburn, there might be a justifiable homicide.

I flew into Fort Worth yesterday evening for the Cliburn semifinals, which kicked off this afternoon with Mariangela Vacatello’s solo recital. My seats for the semifinals happen to be fantastic: first row, mezzanine right.

If there’s one thing about being in the hall that can’t be said about the Cliburn webcast, it’s the added dimension of depth. It’s not audibly obvious over the Internet, for example, when a pianist projects sound only to the second row, as opposed to the last row of the gallery.

Anyways, to Vacatello. She started off the semifinals with the Liszt B minor sonata (gee, where have we heard that before?), which carried some beautiful singing melodies in the slow sections but was occasionally shaky as she fought a little too hard to coax a bigger sound out of the instrument.

Vacatello’s commissioned work was Daron Hagen’s Suite for Piano, which she performed from memory. Unusual at most music competitions, but not for her: if memory serves (pardon the pun) she also performed the compulsory work at the Queen Elisabeth competition from memory two years ago.

The highlight of Vacatello’s programme by far was Scriabin’s Nocturne for the Left Hand, which was simply gorgeous. As she finished, I heard someone whisper nearby: “Exquisite.” It was, indeed, very exquisite. The Sonata No. 3 in F-sharp minor by the same composer finished Vacatello’s programme.

The second solo recital of the day came by way of Bulgaria’s Evgeni Bozhanov, who gave a superb interpretation of sonatas by Beethoven and Schubert, with Mason Bates’ White Lies for Lomax, by far the most popular of the commissioned works among the semifinalists, sandwiched in between. I won’t say too much except that Bozhanov did an excellent job on a piece—Schubert’s—that has always struck me as a bit on the lengthy side.

The only recital in the evening session was that of Andrea Lam, whose preliminary round recital I had enjoyed immensely. Her semifinal recital, however, while decent, was clearly not of the same quality. It started out exceptionally well—Brahms’s Intermezzo Op. 118 No. 2 being a particular delight—but she lost me during Stravinsky’s Op. 7 Études and never quite presented anything afterwards that really caught my attention again.

Switching gears to the Queen Elisabeth finals this afternoon.

The first performer of the evening was Latvian violinist Vineta Sareika. I didn’t tune in early enough to hear her Janáček sonata, nor the international premiere of the compulsory final round work, but I did hear an Elgar concerto that, while starting out rather nervously, featured some very touching moments of beauty.

The real story of the day, however, was Choi Ye-Eun in the Shostakovich first.

Perhaps a harbinger of things to come was on display in the scherzo second movement, which was played with zest, much vitality, and a tempo that was dangerously fast yet always felt under control. Still, Choi’s technical brilliance wasn’t the only thing on display; also evident in her performance were the emotional suffering and anguish that marks much of the Shostakovich oeuvre.

And then it happened. The Burlesque began at breakneck tempo, and it was only a matter of time before someone actually ended up with a broken neck. Shortly before the first orchestral tutti, the orchestra began to fall behind the soloist; by the time the tutti actually rolled around, there was no orchestra left to play it. Soloist, orchestra and conductor restarted the finale.

It was more drama than I’m sure any of them would have preferred, even for a work as dramatic as the Shostakovich first.

Update: I’ve since listened to the Shostakovich again; as Les points out quite correctly in the comments, Choi skipped ahead of the orchestra about a minute into the Burlesque and never recovered. It happened too quickly the first time for me to process immediately.