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| I really missed those late-night webcasts and the thrill of listening to live music currently taking shape in another corner of the world. Watching four almost-consecutive renditions of Liszt PC #1 is no joke, though, and so was the stamina required to sit through and savour the relentless tide of concerti and solo recitals in these last five days of the Van Cliburn competition. Much planning went into ensuring I would be able to tune in to the last three performances of the finals without compromise to my work commitments the following day. This included going to sleep at a much earlier timing, and setting multiple alarms to get up in time to catch the performances as well as the announcement of the results.
There's something special about watching live concert webcasts in the middle of the night. There's no distracting noise from the television to compete, just the silence and calm of the world at rest. Though I consequently dare not turn the volume up too high. But in the quiet of the night, I hear details, I am spared from the rushedness of the daily routine. Magic often happens during the witching hours.
Unfortunately, I did not manage to successfully catch the last two concerti, due to the choppiness of the transmission. What a pity, when bandwidth load is obviously low at such a time of the day. And the awards ceremony, which should have been underway, had not begun even an hour after the scheduled time. I was rather disappointed that I had to leave for work before the results were announced, although also glad the jury was really taking effort and time to deliberate. Drowning in morosity, I was excited to be able to check the results at about midday. I could scarcely believe my eyes at the results. Dream finish - and with the two pianists whom I though most promising from their semifinal showings. It also hit me that here, history was being rewritten. The significance of the results and the delightful surprise (I had seen a dozen other predictions being bandied about) hit me solid and I desperately wanted to show my joy by either jumping up and down or pumping my fists. Of course, as I was currently on duty, I currently had a duty to not behave outrageously, and so restrained myself, although I had a semi-permanent smile affixed in my heart for the rest of the day.
I still want to catch the rest of the performances, but have limited time until Thursday, and dearly hope the kind people at the Cliburn Foundation keep the webcast up for at least the week after the competition. *hopes and prays*
p.s., CTL has been commenting very occasionally on the Cliburn blog, and his recent contribution hints at his dislike of a certain LL...
p.p.s., 
Notice any familiar names in the 2005 Chopin competition? Tsujii was only 16 then. Wow. List courtesy of webarchive, these are the semifinalists.
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| Nice. The third movement cadenza is still looping in my head at this hour. For once, I was free in the morning to catch the webcast, and it was actually quite stable. I might continue to do live audio recordings from the webcast stream instead of the internet radio stream, which seems to require lots of buffering. Plus it's absolutely destructive to hear the stream suddenly jump forward, as if the performer had a spasm or something (not to discount the possibility, though - after all it's an audio stream, so we can't see for ourselves).
However, it was rather saddening to see the blog discussion degenerate into an issue of disabilities and expectations, and that this exceeding of expectations was a significant contributor to the popularity of the crowd favourite. Earlier in the competition I was already feeling disturbed by the constant references to the disability and the general amazement that certain passages were actually even possible for such a person. Once is alright. But it's been once too many. People need to hear him for his music, and not have their ears/eyes coloured by how he's different from everyone else. It just shows, as one comment put it, how "we are still uncomfortable with disability and with difference". Guys, we've got to move on from there, and see him as a contender on equal footing with the rest of the competition. I trust the jury is also doing the same.
Meanwhile, a memento of this morning's broadcast. Earworm, yes, but nice earworm  . Sleeping now so I can catch the next possible earworm (Chopin #2) tomorrow morning. | | |
| Another "it's been ages since I posted" and all that. Sorry, but any philosophical thoughts have been extremely fleeting for this imitation goldfish brain. I've started another "blog" on the side, though, to keep track of upcoming piano-related concerts: http://pianoconcert.livejournal.com
For my reference, and whomever finds it useful. Hopefully, no more "what concerts are there to watch this year?".
I'm almost finishing that Sudoku puzzle magazine (Number Place(ナンバープレース)) that I received as a birthday present from my tour guide in Japan (how nice of him). But I'm left with the monster ones (25-by-25 puzzle, anyone?) which will still take eons to complete. I like this magazine much better than the standard Sudoku books around, because there're many variants inside so you can never get bored of solving the same 9-by-9. Is there anywhere I can get it in Singapore, I wonder. Unfortunately, Kinokuniya doesn't seem to stock it =( | | |
| Does it help to explain that I was only doing either of 2 things during the holidays?
Namely, (1) be overseas, and (2) fall sick.
In fact, I think I lost an astonishing amount of weight the second time (2) happened. But as they say, initial weight loss is temporary. Especially when it's due to loss of water. And I've gained all that weight back, (hopefully). Because I had this bug that caused me to have much diarrhoea and vomiting. And I've only just fully recovered from the diarrhoea part yesterday.
And something else totally random: This morning, while sitting outside under the glow of the street lamps, I saw a cat mewing away as it lay contentedly beneath the bumper of a parked car.
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| At about 2 am on Friday night, I chanced upon a rather large spider outside the toilet. It was most likely doing what all good spiders do at night, which is to be soundly asleep. Unfortunately, its choice of sleeping place was rather unsatisfactory as some half-awake human being could very easily stumble upon or even squash it while on a trip to the toilet. Since the spider did not take well to my attempts to chase it to a place with slightly less potential human traffic, I was left with no choice. Feeling slightly regretful for what I was about to do, I took an unwanted flyer and rolled it up, and gave the peaceful creature a sound whack. With nary a struggle, it conformed to the force applied and yellow matter oozed from its body, which I cleaned up with some tissue before disposing of it unceremoniously into the bin. Although, I was actually half-wondering whether it'd start squirming when I picked it up. Since cockroaches do. Luckily it didn't, and I felt at peace for having given the poor unfortunate thing a hasty death.
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