A visit to Mozart

Another thing I did the other day on the funky bike path was, I stopped and said hi to Mozart in Delaware Park.

There is one thing especially I love about where I live and that is that the closest musician memorial to me is Mozart, whose music I love more than anyone's. By the way that bust of Mozart is Buffalo's oldest piece of public art. I like that about Buffalo, that when it came to putting up statues, Mozart was the No. 1 priority. He went up before George Washington did!

As I have pointed out before, Mozart looks a little like Babe Ruth. Well, so what? Maybe they did look alike.

Anyway, there is a website that told me Mozart was the closest to me. And this is also cool: The second-closest musician is ....

..... Who?

... . Hint, he is on Hertel Avenue.

Give up?

It is Jerry Garcia! Another musician I love. Garcia's mural is at Terrapin Station.

Anyway, that is magical about where I live. But Mozart, I usually see him from the expressway. I always give him a smile. The German word for statue is "denkmal," sort of translating to "think a minute." You think for a moment of that person.

I think of Mozart.

And it is a treat to get up close because I do not usually do that.

I took a picture from the funky bike path (actually not so funky when it wends past Mozart):

... and then approached with deference.

Now I have succeeded in emulating those cooking weblogs I hate, that give you a million photos that look almost exactly alike.

But I am sorry, that made my ride on the funky bike path well worth it.

Get close to genius!

Mozart and 'The Shawshank Redemption'

It is thrilling that Lou Michel, my colleague at The Buffalo News, is on CNN discussing that spectacular prison break that happened at Clinton Correctional Facility.

Yesterday parallels were being drawn here and there to the movie "The Shawshank Redemption." Not to say anyone is admiring these murderers who made their escape. We are not admiring them! Nobody is. It is just that the intricate escape makes you think of other intricate escapes.

It seems the right time to revisit the greatest scene from "The Shawshank Redemption," where the entire prison is all of a sudden mysteriously listening to Mozart.



SO beautiful! To tell you the truth it is all I remember specifically about "The Shawshank Redemption" other than that Morgan Freeman has my birthday.

The music they are listening to is the Letter Duet from Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro." Nickel City Opera is doing "The Marriage of Figaro" in a couple of weeks -- on June 26 and 28 -- and I cannot wait. What a magical opera.

Here is the great Kiri Te Kanawa singing the Letter Duet with the great Ileana Cortrubas so you can see what it is about. The Countess is dictating a letter. Well, they are collaborating on what is going to go into this letter and that is why their voices are weaving and intertwining this way and that. Mozart could always put life into music!



There is another YouTube clip with Renee Fleming but whoever posted the video cut it off too abruptly at the end and ruined it.

Anyway. Life's lessons learned.

On this Web log everything leads back to Leonard Pennario.

In the bigger world, everything leads back to Mozart!

It might as well be spring

I was just looking again at that weird sun yesterday. It looked like an eclipse!

Helped along by the smoke from that smokestack at the fire station.

With all that excitement I forgot this news flash: Not to disappoint people but I finally took down my Christmas tree. Sunday was, ahem, Septuagesima Sunday, which heralds the dawn of Lent. In the Traditional Calendar it is as if we start Lent early. Thanks a heap, Traditional Calendar! Although last year it began a lot earlier than this year. Last year Septuagesima Sunday fell on Mozart's birthday.

The way it works is Septuagesima means 70 days, then Sexagesima, 60 days, then Quinquegesima, 50 days. Then  you hit Ash Wednesday at the 40-day mark and bang, you are into Lent.

These are approximate numbers of course. But you get the idea. Thinking of all this brings back my time in California with Leonard. I was new to the Latin traditional Mass and Pennario and I used to discuss it and he used to explain things to me sometimes. And yes, we giggled about Sexagesima Sunday. How can you not?

"Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa," Pennario used to say, with that smile of his.

If you are new to Latin that means, "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault." It is part of the Public Confession you make of all your sins. See all the drama you miss not going to the traditional Mass. It is far more poetic and thrilling.

Anyway there is your trip down the Latin memory lane! Now the tree is packed away -- carelessly, I might have to go and re-pack it, but still. The space is cleared, and the sunlight is pouring in. I love winter and I hate to see it go. But from now on, as far as I am concerned, it is spring. It is early spring.

It is time to start checking for the daffodils!

Thank you, Elton John ...

.... for this morning's problem!

Don't you hate it when you have a song on your brain ... and you don't know the words?

This is a problem with Zumba class because there are these Zumba numbers running through your head and a lot of the time, even in class hearing the thing, you can't catch most of the words. So you have just a shard of it stuck in your mind.

"Yo, I'm standin' here with chocolate meltin' on my hands ..."

"The following is not a test, DEEJAY!"

Enough already!

On the other end of the spectrum this sort of problem also occurs with classical songs or opera arias. One day I hope to learn all the words to Mozart's "Non So Piu ..."

...

from "The Marriage of Figaro," but I do not know much Italian and after the first line or so I am stuck.

Anyway, this morning I wake up, I am loading up the coffee percolator, and for some reason there is one song in me and it has to come out and it is Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road."

I think the reason it was on my mind was the other night when I had to Tweet about the Emmy Awards, I was hoping old Elton, in his Liberace tribute, would at least come up with a good song. He does not have the piano chops but at least you expect a good song. Which we did not get. And this was my subconscious dealing with the situation, going, "Well, Elton John has written some songs I like."

The trouble is, I have heard them a million times but I don't know the words. I guess I have never listened that carefully. So this is me singing "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road":

"So goodbye la la la la la
Where the la la la la la la la
You can't keep me in your penthouse
I'm going back to my plough.
Back to la la la la la la
La la la la la la la
Because I know my future lies
Beyond the Yellow Brick Whoooooaaaaaaa...."

That was when I almost submerged the percolator in dishwater. I always almost forget that you cannot!

Notice that I spelled plough the British way. It is because Elton John is British! Speaking of the plough, I always like him for that reference to the Roman statesman Cincinnatus. Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus owned a farm and wanted to go back to his plow, and he did, but when Rome needed his service again, he answered the call. In Latin class you always learn the story of Cincinnatus and his plow.

You have to wonder, you know, if you stopped a kid on the street in Cincinnati and asked him or her who the city was named after, if the kid would be able to tell you.

Oh well. All this rumination and I am still stuck with my original problem.

"Back to la la la la la la
Where the la la la la la la la..."

Got to nip this in the bud otherwise this will be a long day. Administer Brahms immediately!

A visit from St. Nick

Today is the feast of St. Nicholas. Happy St. Nicholas Day! That is a picture above of St. Nicholas in his bishop's robes.

The other day in The Buffalo News we published this essay by a kid who has begun celebrating St. Nicholas Day. This was funny, at the end of the essay she was writing that St. Nicholas reminded her of Santa Claus. Both of them show up in the night and leave you presents, etc.

Um, honey, St. Nicholas and Santa Claus are, like, the same person?

No one had ever explained that to her!

I am not blaming her. I am honestly just floored sometimes by the things that are not -- how do you say it -- universally understood. Everyone should understand that Santa Claus is St. Nicholas, you know? As in "A Visit From St. Nicholas."

Just like everyone should know that Leonard Pennario was America's greatest pianist. Well, educating people on that is up to me.

Here is a bit of trivia I bet you did not know about "A Visit From St. Nicholas," the famous poem that begins "'Twas the night before Christmas" and goes back to, yikes, 1823. Can you believe it is that old? It is holding up rather well.



This is a nice reading except the reindeer are supposed to be "Donner and Blitzen," not "Donder and Blitzen." Donner and Blitzen is German for Thunder and Lightning.

But that is not the trivia I was talking about.

Here is what I love: The poem was written by Clement Moore who was a professor at Columbia University. He was friends with Lorenzo da Ponte, who collaborated with Mozart on "Don Giovanni," "The Marriage of Figaro" and "Cosi fan Tutte."

Should your day need jump starting the way mine does, take two minutes to hear the famous Champagne Aria from "Don Giovanni" sung by my favorite singer, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.



Hahahahaa! Is that marvelous or what?

Lorenzo da Ponte was born in the Jewish ghetto of Venice but came to America after Mozart died. That is where he met Clement Moore and my understanding is that the two poets hit it off.

I like playing this "six degrees of separation game." Who knew who.

Probably if we could go back far enough we would only be six degrees away from St. Nicholas.

And maybe Santa Claus too.

Anonymous, anon

Last night I went with my mom to the Steer and to see "Anonymous." My friend Lizzie joined us for the show. "Anonymous" is the movie based on the premise that Shakespeare did not write the Shakespeare plays, that Shakespeare was a poor loser and the plays were in fact written by a nobleman, the Earl of Oxford.

I love that premise!

Everyone was telling me how excellent the movie was. My friend Michelle saw it last weekend. She said, "When it is over you are totally convinced that the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare's plays."

That is the truth! I mean that is how you feel.

Plus, she informed me, "The Earl of Oxford is hot." That is the Earl up above.

Or perhaps she means Young Earl of Oxford, here dancing with Queen Elizabeth.

The movie, which seems to be some kind of British/German collaboration, is wonderful to watch just for its scenes of Elizabethan London. That is why we went to the Steer, you know? Before seeing a movie like this you must go to a tavern with a Shakespearean name.

Er... an Earl of Oxford-ian name.

There is a scene I loved when the great poet Ben Jonson finally tells off the Earl of Oxford's wife, who hates that her husband spends all this time writing.

"Madame," he says, "we, our civilization and even our Queen will be remembered only because we lived in the age when he put ink to paper." It was something like that. See the movie.

The elitist in me loves the idea that only a nobleman could have written Shakespeare's plays. It is funny but it is kind of the same premise behind "Amadeus." How could an ordinary guy have come up with such sublime creations? And Mozart and Shakespeare sit together at the pinnacle of Western civilization's achievements. The two are often likened to each other. Mozart had a book of Shakespeare's works, by the way. When he died he did not leave many books but the Shakespeare was one. Also there was a book by the great German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, grandfather of Felix. It is fascinating to snoop through Mozart's library! One day we must do that thoroughly.

For now, back to "Anonymous." In the movie, Mozart's and Shakespeare's paths cross.

While the Earl of Oxford is getting married the soundtrack played Mozart's Requiem.



The music was not actually written until what, 200 years later? So it was kind of a mistake. On the other hand that stark, powerful music fits strangely with any age. It could be a soundtrack to an Elizabethan movie, or it could be futuristic. It is timeless even though it epitomized its age. Sort of like the piano artistry of Leonard Pennario. I gravitate toward greats!

But talking of Mozart reminds me: As far as I could see, there was no mention of him in the credits!

No fair!

Stark, powerful music composed by ....

Anonymous!

The social whirl

Yesterday I wrote about the Boulevard Mall and someone named Paladino left a comment. And I am wondering if Paladino is my friend Steven. I used to have this friend Steven in San Diego and he has disappeared. My emails go unanswered and I have lost touch with him.

I know Steven's last name and it is not Paladino. But this Paladino's comment -- which he left on the post about Babik and my mom -- mentioned Angola and I thought Steven's family was from out that way. And he talked about San Diego too.

Paladino, are you Steven?

Isn't this crazy? The Internet. We are all losing our minds.

The anonymity on the Internet can turn your life into Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro." It is like that final scene at night in the garden where everyone is wearing everyone else's clothes and nobody knows who anybody is.

I was just writing in my music Web log about this duet in that scene I love.

Here is the scene with Renee Fleming and a translation!

Then there is the ending where everyone finally figures out who everyone else is and the Count Almaviva has to beg his wife's pardon. It is piggish listening to watch that scene by itself because it just might be the most glorious moment in all music. But here it is anyway and I am a pig, I just watched the whole thing.

That is what my life is like now, "The Marriage of Figaro"! Which reminds me, the other day when I was writing on my, ahem, Music Critic Web log about operas that made me cry, I heard from an anonymous "Marriage of Figaro" fan.

"'Figaro' fan, why are you anonymous?" quoth I. "Stand up and be counted!"

And it turned out yesterday it was my friend Panos! Panos is a very handsome Greek physician who lives on the West Coast and goes to operas so it should not have surprised me that it is he. But it did!

These days you do not know.

Remember the mysterious pianist Mr. Idaho? He was one of Leonard Pennario's friends and I have spoken with him for the book. Once I called Mr. Idaho and a woman answered his phone and she was someone who comments on this Web log. She is Mr. Idaho's girlfriend! And I had no idea. Here is a picture of them together.


There is this reality TV show Howard likes to watch late at night where everyone goes by goofy names. There was a mother-daughter team named New York and Sister Patterson. I used to laugh at that. No more!

I have friends on Twitter I know only by Piano Geek and La Valkyrie and Kuhlau. Most of these people post their real names on their profiles but it gets so you can not keep them all straight.

So I will not even try.

Hmmm. I am looking and looking for a nice picture of a masked ball to illustrate my musings. And here is what I am finding: It is difficult to find any picture on the Internet of a masked ball that is not kinky, trashy or Tarot-card creepy.

That is another sign of our times.

Well, luckily we have no such problem in the music department. Admittedly we do not yet have up on YouTube a recording of Pennario playing Schumann's "Carnaval." That is too bad because Pennario's "Carnaval" is magnificent.

But there is always Pennario playing "La Valse" by Ravel. That is the piece he was the first pianist to play and no other pianist even attempted it for something like 20 years.

I am listening to it now. It is stunning.

And appropriate!

Breeches of protocol

Wow, those Tea Parties! I did not go to the one in Buffalo and now I think I should have. What fun!

Not because I would like to have joined the protest. I have gotten to the point where I think it is useless to protest anything. I tried to protest my church closing, and no use, mean Bishop Kmiec closed it. I tried to protest my library closing, and you know what? It closed. Now we have no library at all in North Buffalo because the paltry branch they grudgingly left open closed, too.

I did not want the Aud knocked down and I did not want "Artemis and the Stag" sold and I am not wild about this huge deficit, either. But guess what? Nobody cares what I think. So.

Here is the real reason I wish I was at the Tea Party.

I love men in 18th century clothes!

It goes back to when I was a kid and was in love with Mozart. Certain things were planted into my brain and one is that knee breeches and buckled shoes and tri-cornered hats are appealing. These images ...


...were hard-wired permanently in my mind when I was a teenager and watched the Masterpiece Theatre series "Poldark." Check out that picture at the top of the post. Ha, ha! That did not come from the actual show. There was this one family who held a picnic in Cornwall and they all dressed up as Poldark characters. I guess I am not the only one with a taste for frock coats and ruffled shirts!

I also like those decanters of brandy everyone in British movies keeps handy at all times. I asked Leonard Pennario if those brandy decanters really are everywhere in those grand British houses and he said yes.


That is the kind of thing Pennario and I would be discussing when we should have been talking about Beethoven.

Speaking of which, by the time you associate with Beethoven, which would be the early 1800s, the fashions had slid. Those empire-waist gowns could make you look fat and the guys, Beethoven included, all had those sideburns. That is one reason I could never quite jump on the Jane Austen bandwagon.

People do not know this about Beethoven but before he got old and scruffy he was a clotheshorse and a fashion plate like Mozart. Here is a picture of Beethoven with his 'burns.


What about Robert Burns? He was from the same time so he had them too.


I could talk about this all day! But alas.

Speaking of fashions going to pot, my morning is going to pot. I must go and take my daily constitutional.

No empire-waisted gowns for me!

Sunday in the Park With Wolfgang

Every morning on my way to work I pass the statue of Mozart in Delaware Park and I get such a big kick out of it. I love his Heinie face. That is a word I am allowed to use, Heinie, because I am German American.

You know who else had a great Heinie face? Babe Ruth. I have often sat at that jam session at Bobby McGee's staring at a poster of him and thinking that.


Wow, look at Babe Ruth and then look at Mozart! They have the same heavy, grave look. They could be twins!


I took the pictures of Mozart just now while I was out for a walk. The light is not that good but I could not fuss with it because it is actually very cold today and my hands were freezing! That is a beautiful blue sky though. You have to give me that.

The Mozart statue was put up in 1894 by the Buffalo Liedertafel as you can see on the plaque. "Liedertafel" is German for "song table," or "song circle."


People in Buffalo love to fix things that are not broke, and a few years ago there was talk about moving Mozart to Kleinhans Music Hall to sit out front with Chopin and Verdi. I didn't want that. They would make a strange trio, those three. Plus I like Mozart where he is. The German word for statue is "Denkmal" which means, more or less, "think for a moment." When you glimpse Mozart from the Scajaquada you think of him for a moment. I think he must like that. If you were at Kleinhans you would be thinking of him anyway.

Probably the reasoning for the proposed move was that these three would represent three of our big immigrant groups, the Germans, the Polish and the Italians. That is what I am guessing.

But what about the Irish? We would need a statue of John Field.


Also I think the Italians would be better represented by a statue of Leonard Pennario.

Do click on that link and savor a few more of Pennario's Chopin preludes. I am so grateful to the Pennario fan who just posted these performances on You Tube! I have already made friends with him. His name is Larry.

Pennario's Chopin, it is magnificent.

Phones, emails and Jocko, oh my

Here is an awkward situation: I think I am having problems with my email. I do not think I am getting people's email. It is awkward because it reminds me of being a teenager and waiting for some guy to call and the phone does not ring so you get all your friends to call you, just to make sure the phone works. Yep, the phone works!

Today is typical. All I get is an acre of spam. Watch, I'll find out that "sgt. joey jones," Alhaje Danco and Herve Konate were all close friends of Leonard Pennario, trying desperately to get in touch to share their memories of him for my book. But I doubt it!

And a few people have told me they tried to email me, and I never got it. Anyway, if anyone out there has been trying to email me and I never got it, the trick is to sign yourself Alhaje Danco and the message will get through. Or say you're from the British Lottery Board. That seems to work.

You know those days when you just run, run, run? I had one of those yesterday. I went to work, then to my tote-that-barge, lift-that-bale Body Sculpt class, then to the farmers' market (can't stay away) then back to work, then to UB for that lecture Robert Levin was giving, then I went to the airport with Robert Levin, which, my friend Phil was taking him there and invited me along, so I couldn't say no. We got to talk to Robert Levin about Mozart the entire drive. When his cell phone rang it rang with the last movement of K. 466! How funny is that?

When he got off the phone I said, "K. 466, on your cell phone."

And he explained how he programmed it and stuff. He is so much in his own world -- the Mozartean world -- that he takes it for granted that everyone talks in Kochel numbers. For anyone out there in Blog-o-Land new to Mozart, every piece of music that Mozart wrote is assigned a Kochel number. Ludwig Kochel was the researcher in the 19th century who catalogued all Mozart's works.

When we got Robert Levin to Jet Blue he still sat in the car and talked about Mozart. He was letting us in on secrets involving K. 175, one of Mozart's early piano concertos. I had just listened to K. 175 a few hours before. What are the odds? Anyway, I wished the ride to the airport could have been longer. The Buffalo Niagara International Airport is just too darned convenient.

After that adventure I went to cook dinner for my mom, then to .... Jackie Jocko! The glass of wine at the end of the rainbow!

When I walked into E.B. Green's it was great to know everyone in the lounge. Paul was there, which you always need because Paul sort of anchors us all, sitting by Jocko with his arms folded and a beer in front of him, talking about the great songs. Erna Eaton was there and I gave her a hug and a kiss. My friend Toni from work brought her dad. Toni's dad used to go hear Jocko years ago. He had not known Jocko was still playing. The jazz singer Diane Armesto was there with her boyfriend, Larry. Also Gary was there, and the great boogie pianist Annie Philippone. Groups like this are great. You just pull up a chair.

We were laughing about Robert Levin and how his cell phone played K. 466. I began thinking that Levin would be fascinating to write more about sometime.

But then I kept contrasting him with Leonard Pennario, and I realize it's too early for me even to think about dating again.

Talk that talk

Thanks, Jen14221 and Story Teller, for your soothing comments on my spooky dreams the other night! Lastnight was not as bad. I dreamed I had to cook a dinner for 30 people in this soup kitchen and I had only an hour to do it, but that is not as bad as dreaming about hobgoblins. So things are looking up.

Speaking of which, today I am going over to UB to hear Robert Levin, that pianist from Harvard I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, give a lecture.

His lecture is called: "Improvisation and Embellishment in Mozart."

I wouldn't dream of missing it! It reminds me of once when I was a UB student, living in an off-campus apartment. One night, I was in my room listening to a Mozart quartet. I have been addicted to Mozart since I was a teen-ager. He is like a drug to me. If I don't give him a good listen about once a week, I go through withdrawal symptoms. I get unfocused and agitated.

Anyway, I am in my room, listening to this quartet, and one of my roommates comes in to alert me to the fact that everyone else is in the other room watching some John Belushi comedy and I should come out. "What are you listening to this for?" he said. "You don't have to listen to this."

God, that guy was funny. He cracked me up. And of course I went out and watched the Belushi movie. I think it was "Neighbors." That was in the apartment I had on LaSalle, the apartment which, until a few months ago, I forgot where it was, remember? How is that for a sentence? Well, I'm not at work.

This lecture, anyway, reminds me of that incident. I don't have to be there. But I must!

Robert Levin is the only pianist since Leonard Pennario I have had fun writing about. I went to two concerts he gave and both of them were fascinating. He gives such life to the music. You get the idea he really loves what he is doing. And on the phone Levin was one of the all-time great talkers I have encountered, so I like him for that. My mom went with me to the concert he and his wife gave on Saturday. Mom liked Levin, too. She said he looked like Howard. Which he does, sort of. And that is high praise.

I get to go back to LaSalle Avenue this weekend, about four doors down from my old apartment, to go see my friend Gary, because here it is September and we must make wine. Gary called me to tell me the juice is in at James Desiderio's and on Saturday bright and early we are going to make our selection. I say, go for the Barbera again. That stuff we made last year was pretty good.

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to that that lecture today. "Improvisation and Embellishment in Mozart." 4 p.m., 250 Baird Hall.

Who says there's no excitement here in Buffalo?