Concerts at the National Arts Centre, Ottawa

We have season tickets with the National Arts Centre Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Pinchas Zukerman. For several years we have been subscribing first in Rome at the Accademia Santa Cecilia to the symphonic season at the Auditorium del Parco della Musica off Via Flaminia, now back in Ottawa we continue with our attendance at concerts.

This past Thursday 26 April, the night of game 7 between the Ottawa Senators and the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden, we went to the concert. It was presented by Eric Friesen, who has been a host of several musical programs on the CBC. Eric has one of those melodious voices of the classical radio announcers of years gone by and is a very good interviewer and an elegant presenter. On stage with Maestro Zukerman, he interviewed him asking about the pieces we were about to hear. Zukerman did a wonderful job of speaking about the pieces and what to look for in each one. It made the experience all the more interesting. We heard, a first for the Orchestra, Franz Joseph Haydn, Symphony no.70 in D major, followed by Mozart, Piano Concerto no.9 Jeune Homme played by Garrick Ohlsson. During the short interview by Friesen of Ohlsson, the pianist explained that the titled Jeune Homme is not correct, apparently Mozart wrote this piece for a lady who was probably Hungarian and whose family name was spelled something like Gynomie and it became with time Jeune Homme.

Finally we had Mozart's symphony no. 36 Linz which was composed in 3 days. A letter written from  Linz by Mozart to his father in Salzburg explains that since he had no symphony music with him, he decided on the spur of the moment to simply compose this symphony in four movements and present it to Count Thun at a concert a few days later in November 1783. According to Maestro Zukerman, this was a novelty at the time and showed how Mozart was a forward thinker, probably 100 years ahead of his time.

We plan to also get Ballet and theatre season tickets for the Fall. So we should be quite busy all around.
But this is what you have to do here in Ottawa. We are also members now of the 3 big museums, The National Gallery, The Museum of Civilizations, The War Museum.  

Quiet

This lovely piece of music by Erik Satie always reminds me of a radio afternoon show on the CBC long ago cancelled after decades on the air, the host was Bob Kerr who died not long after he retired from broadcasting. He was one of the legendary fixtures of CBC Radio. What pleasure it was to hear him, he knew so much about the music he played.



Gymnopedie no.3 by Erik Satie

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Well I finally found a barber, at least one I like. IMPERIAL is a men's barber shop in the old style, where you can get a shave with hot lather and a straight razor, hot towels etc... The decor is the way barber shops use to look like before 1960, before they became confused in style and feminized. In Ottawa the first IMPERIAL barber shop opened about 20 years ago at the corner of Sparks street and Elgin street by the National War Memorial. At first they caterer to the Canadian Military, it was not uncommon to go in and find officers waiting for a haircut, never saw enlisted men there. So I think I will continue with them. See www.ImperialBarberShop.com

I have now taken to walking up Cartier street and at the Old Teacher's College I continue on Elgin street towards the National Cenotaph at Confederation Square, then turning unto Laurier street to my building.
A nice walk as long as you watch out for the legion of bad drivers on their cel phones in this city. In Ottawa a car is a weapon to be used against people who walk. In the last two months I read about five stories of fatal hit and run, it looks like an epidemic in this city.

I also stopped listening to the CBC in general, CBC radio use to be the best radio station for its music, news, commentary and simply for the hosts they had on the air. Nowadays every morning they have these long, sad, boring stories about some cause like Charitable drop boxes for 3 days running who are in fact for profit and not free and how they should be regulated with stiff penalties. Another favourite topic on Ottawa morning is about some feminist group who think that being pregnant is unnatural for women or the feminist cause is under constant attack from all men who we are told are violent psychopath, etc..

The other morning they had a special appeal from the SPCA no less, looking for foster families to adopt baby squirrels, considering that they belong to the same family as the common rat, one wonders.

The CBC being a public, government funded broadcaster appears to delight in leftist politics, sometimes verging on the extreme left or just plain bizarre. In other words if you are a weirdo with a cause you can be sure they will put you on at CBC Ottawa in the morning before the 8 o'clock news. It's not terribly pleasant for listeners.

Now the CBC is the English public radio broadcaster, if you listen to Radio-Canada, the French public broadcaster they have an entirely different approach, lighthearted, engaging, speaking to a large public, cultured and interesting. They certainly do not preach like their English colleagues and have kept to a programming which is well known and well liked.

To give ourselves diversity we now have at home a device called Airport Express which allows us to listen to 2075 radio stations from around the world. So we can enjoy a more enlighten approach to our radio listening. It is my understanding that CBC Radio might be on the way out come the next budget, maybe it is time to say goodbye. What we have now has nothing to do with what the CBC use to be, how very sad.

A recent business survey revealed that 75% of Canadians are peeved at others in the Office for not taking responsibility for their actions, no wonder in this Nanny State country, it's always someone else fault. Also 58% of women in the Canadian workplace are annoyed at clothes that are too revealing. Strange too much competition ladies? After all most offices today in Canada have a majority of women working. But there is much more, it would appear according to statistics in the workplace that women also complain about scents of any kind, what other people eat at lunch, peanut free zones, sunlight (too much of it), cel phone ringtones. That is a lot and shows in my opinion poor social skills.

The one country who has no pet peeves or little ITALY!!!! I am not surprised, Italians are not the sort to get fazed by others. I found them to be very tolerant in general.