the best ...
Aug. 2nd, 2007 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacof work experienced recently.
Film: Testimony: The Story of Shostakovich, directed by Tony Palmer
I came across reference to this film in a rather pretentious interchange here. At first I thought the film must be a hoax. Was it possible that a full-length feature film about Shostakovich had been made a full twenty years ago, starring Ben Kingsley of all people, and that in all the thousands of words I'd read about Shostakovich in all those years, I had never heard of it?
It was. I found a DVD at a public library. Of course as it takes its title from Solomon Volkov's book, this is Volkov's imagined Shostakovich, but accept that and it's an eerily effective film, hallucinogenically mixing realistic and symbolic footage, and conveying the character's fear and frustrations. Kingsley doesn't look like Shostakovich even in a wig and glasses, but he's a great actor. The flaws - it's hard to follow if you don't already know the story; the extensive music rarely includes the pieces they're talking about; his personal life is scanted and his duel with Stalin oversold - are small in context.
Book: Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt
This is the book I've been looking for. I haven't seen anything else in book form laying out clearly the events leading to and comprising the fall of the Soviet Empire. It's in here, neatly told country by country. So's a lot of other stuff, also well told. Much politics and world strategy, of course, but Judt's special interest is economic history, which he writes very well indeed. Not boring, it's the plans of rational actors with their own interests on all sides. Most contemporary histories written during the Cold War treated Eastern Bloc governments as mysterious, unpredictable black boxes. Not here. Short peeks into cultural history are mostly about film. Not always as detailed as I'd like, but enjoyable and insightful.
CD: Bells for Stokowski, Jerry Junkin, University of Texas Wind Ensemble
The title piece by Michael Daugherty is at the end of the CD, but I've rarely gotten that far. I keep getting waylaid by the opening work, a suite of Susato dances arranged for concert band by Patrick Dunnigan. Renaissance dance music - Susato, Praetorius, Playford - is one of my secret loves, and I like it played big, loud, and plain. And wow, here's a whole concert band. Even better than a consort of crumhorns and sackbuts. Up till now my favorite recording of Susato has been David Munrow's Pleasures of the Court - whose selection Dunnigan follows closely - but I've played this more often in the last month than any other recording in a year.
Film: Testimony: The Story of Shostakovich, directed by Tony Palmer
I came across reference to this film in a rather pretentious interchange here. At first I thought the film must be a hoax. Was it possible that a full-length feature film about Shostakovich had been made a full twenty years ago, starring Ben Kingsley of all people, and that in all the thousands of words I'd read about Shostakovich in all those years, I had never heard of it?
It was. I found a DVD at a public library. Of course as it takes its title from Solomon Volkov's book, this is Volkov's imagined Shostakovich, but accept that and it's an eerily effective film, hallucinogenically mixing realistic and symbolic footage, and conveying the character's fear and frustrations. Kingsley doesn't look like Shostakovich even in a wig and glasses, but he's a great actor. The flaws - it's hard to follow if you don't already know the story; the extensive music rarely includes the pieces they're talking about; his personal life is scanted and his duel with Stalin oversold - are small in context.
Book: Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt
This is the book I've been looking for. I haven't seen anything else in book form laying out clearly the events leading to and comprising the fall of the Soviet Empire. It's in here, neatly told country by country. So's a lot of other stuff, also well told. Much politics and world strategy, of course, but Judt's special interest is economic history, which he writes very well indeed. Not boring, it's the plans of rational actors with their own interests on all sides. Most contemporary histories written during the Cold War treated Eastern Bloc governments as mysterious, unpredictable black boxes. Not here. Short peeks into cultural history are mostly about film. Not always as detailed as I'd like, but enjoyable and insightful.
CD: Bells for Stokowski, Jerry Junkin, University of Texas Wind Ensemble
The title piece by Michael Daugherty is at the end of the CD, but I've rarely gotten that far. I keep getting waylaid by the opening work, a suite of Susato dances arranged for concert band by Patrick Dunnigan. Renaissance dance music - Susato, Praetorius, Playford - is one of my secret loves, and I like it played big, loud, and plain. And wow, here's a whole concert band. Even better than a consort of crumhorns and sackbuts. Up till now my favorite recording of Susato has been David Munrow's Pleasures of the Court - whose selection Dunnigan follows closely - but I've played this more often in the last month than any other recording in a year.
