one play, no concert

My business duties on my trip completed, I drove to an outlying town and went to a play. A local but professional theater company was putting on The Odd Couple. I'm not sure I'd ever seen the original play on stage before. Everybody was good. Oscar, who was played by the director of the company, was bullish and lumpen. Felix, a noted acting teacher who recently retired to devote more time to being on-stage himself, bore a strong resemblance to Woody Allen, the more so due to his pronounced shortness. He was shorter than either of his Pigeon sisters.

The theater was very tiny, with five rows of steeply raked seats around three sides. About 80% of them were filled with older people who'd all gotten off the same large bus. The rest were also occupied; what I'd ordered on the phone last week was, they told me at the time, the last free seat for the performance.

After the matinee, a large phalanx of the remaining 20% walked around the corner to the same locally-noted restaurant, and I followed them. Fortunately it's a pretty large place. I had whitefish, a freshwater fish that's ubiquitous in the Midwest but unknown where I come from. Though the parmesan crust was thick and heavy, the total effect was light and tender, an amazing culinary achievement. Alas for what it rested on, a bed of rice mixed with powerfully evil-smelling mushrooms too repellent to touch, plus lumps of lobster rubbery and slimy, enacting all the bad stereotypes about seafood in the Midwest. I wish I'd had the nerve to say more than praising the fish when they asked me how the food was: they're going to be mighty pissed when they read my Yelp review.

Back in the city, I'd seen a listing for a small-venue concert of piano-and-electronics music by Subotnick, Dodge, and some other composers I hadn't heard of. When I wandered over there in search of a ticket, the box office wasn't open yet, but the sound-check was still going on. This was so loud that I decided not to come back.

concert review: Beethoven

So this local pianist named Tamami Honma is preparing for a recording of a cycle of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas, and has decided to rehearse by playing them all in public. Roughly every two weeks from now until June, at a Methodist church right down the street from us, familiar to me because I've voted there.

Unfortunately, I missed the first concert (the Op. 2 set), but tonight's was Op. 7 and the first two from Op. 10. I went, and will get to as many more as I can. Honma is a solid pianist, though a few of the more epic gestures in Op. 7 seemed to require her to take a mental breath before leaping. She's very good at finding the seeds of the rough, turbulent Beethoven to come in these early, more genteel works. The proto-Schubertian trio section of Op. 7 was particularly fine. She also does lovely slow movements (Op. 10 No. 1), but is less native to Beethoven's light and whimsical side (of which Op. 10 No. 2 - my favorite unnamed early Beethoven sonata - has a lot).

This was rewarding as well as easy to get to. I'm looking forward to more.