Friday Soirée IX: New Year's Supper
Okay, it clearly isn't a Friday night, but it also isn't the evening of New Year's Day when I was thinking about this program, either. I'm sure our imaginations can handle it.
Hors d'Oeuvres — Astro-Weenie Christmas Tree
If there's a concept that could use re-introducing for 2010, I think it's smart. That's smart as in "what the smart hostess" from the 1950s will be serving for her smart evening's entertainment. No doubt something witty and cunning, something suitable for the space age!
I own an incalculable debt of gratitude to Charles Phoenix for finally bringing to my attention the definitive recipe for Spam Cake. Mr. Phoenix makes his living from his passion for collecting slides of family living from the 1950s and thereabouts. It's retro to the max and one never knows what delights are hidden just around the next slide. Like Spam Cake.
Or the "Astro-Weenie Christmas Tree". I remember when that was slide-of-the-week in the emailing list, and what an amazing sight it was: a shining, space-age cone of enticing appetizers on toothpicks. Very, very, smart.
Let's begin then, with this video demonstration by Mr. Phoenix recreating this smart party-starter.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Entrée — Ravel : La Valse
Waltzes on New Year's Day make a traditional celebration, but I was as I often am in the mood for something a little non-traditional, so our waltz this time is The Waltz by Maurice Ravel, a favorite of mine. Here is an excerpt from Phillip Huscher's notes for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra:
La valse is not the piece Ravel planned to write. In 1906 he began to sketch Wien (Vienna), a tribute to Johann Strauss, Jr. and “. . . a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, with which is mingled in my mind the idea of the fantastic whirl of destiny.” This is still true of the music Ravel finally composed in 1919, at the request of the impresario Sergei Diaghilev. But fate now made the waltz a bitter reminder of a vanished era and newsreels showed that Vienna was no longer a city in its glory.
Certainly the bittersweet irony is strongly evident, but I also hear a lot of humor in it even if the humor is a bit macabre. Diaghilev didn't much care for the piece when he heard it, we're told. I like this quotation, attributed to Francis Poulenc (source):
Ravel, c'est un chef-d'oeuvre, mais ce n'est pas un ballet. C'est la peinture d'un ballet.
[Ravel, it's a masterpiece but it's not a ballet. It's the painting of a ballet.]
Here's the scenario as Ravel published it in the score (source):
Through whirling clouds, waltzing couples may be faintly distinguished. The clouds gradually scatter: one sees at letter A an immense hall peopled with a whirling crowd. The scene is gradually illuminated. The light of the chandeliers bursts forth at the fortissimo letter B. Set in an imperial court, about 1855.
I am always enchanted by the way the first waltz tune seems to appear ever so gradually out of the whirling mists.
We're accustomed to hearing the work in the gorgeous orchestration (by Ravel), but for tonight I thought something a bit more unusual and intimate.* This is a performance of an arrangement for two pianos, played by "twin sisters" whose names are given nowhere I can find them.‡ The piece is slightly over 10 minutes long, so it's given in two parts.
[YouTube link (part 1, part 2) for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Dessert — "Cherpumple"
This is another very, very cunning dish prepared by Mr. Phoenix. It's a pie/cake concoction that he calls the "dessert version of the turducken". I think that's probably ample introduction to get going with.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
Digestif — Debussy : Danses Sacrée et Profane
Well, it's not exactly keeping with the waltz theme although the middle section is vaguely waltz-like. However, this gorgeous work by Debussy is sure to aid the digestion — something quite welcome after a big slice of that cherpumple. Besides, much of it is so achingly beautiful that it really needs no excuse to be heard.
This is a work for harp and strings (in this version). Originally written on a commission as a demonstration for a chromatic harp, it's always played on the pedal harp (since the chromatic harp disappeared rather quickly):
In 1904 Pleyel, the famous Parisian firm of instrument manufacturers, approached Debussy with a commission for a new test piece for chromatic harp, intended for use in the diploma examinations at the Brussels Conservatoire. Pleyel had introduced and patented the chromatic harp in 1897. Unlike the conventional concert harp, which is tuned according to the notes of the diatonic major scale, and has seven foot pedals, each of which corresponds to a single scale degree and its chromatic alterations (i.e. natural, sharp, and flat), Pleyel's instrument had no pedals. Instead, a separate string was provided for each chromatic note throughout its range. [source]
This performance (on pedal harp) is from 2007 by Ensemble Instrumental de Corse,
Marielle Nordmann, harp.
[YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.]
———-
*If you want an orchestral version, here, in two parts, is a fine performance by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic: Part I, Part II.
‡ [Added a day later:] A friend writes with the information that the "twin sisters" are Susan and Sarah Wang. Thanks for the information, Richard.
In: All, Food Stuff, Friday Soirée, Music & Art
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on Sunday, 10 January 2010 at 12.51
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That was wonderful! I am now a Charles Phoenix fan — those clips certainly gave me much amusement, thanks :)