Showing posts with label Carl Orff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carl Orff. Show all posts

Sunday 11 October 2020

Back & Romania


 I'm back from and extremely relaxing holiday in Thirsk , on which I did nothing strenuous, didn't walk very far although I maintained more than five miles a day, but I now feel as though I need another week to recover. Maybe I just don't want to resume work, although I set my alarm for 5:45 AM tomorrow morning, and I am sure that I won't want to get up.

I keep thinking I'm not writing as much , because I'm not listening to as much music, although yesterday while posting off some Discogs orders I listened to "Meddle" by Pink Floyd, and "Echoes" is still my favourite Pink Floyd piece, and today I listened to my new vinyl acquisition , a recording of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" , my favourite classical piece.

I've been watching a lot of streaming shows, all excellent , namely "Better Call Saul" (the "Breaking Bad" prequel) , "Disenchantment" , "Cobra Kai" (forty years later follow up to "The Karate Kid") and working through the "American Horror Story" series that I've not seen , starting with "Murder House", and "Silicon Valley".

A strange coincidence is that three of the last books that I have read and revisited have been partially set in Romania , the firs was "The Lost" by Jonathan Aycliffe , "Spear of Destiny" by his alter ego Daniel Easterman and the lastest is "Coldheart Canyon" by Clive Barker, which I had forgotten where it started. It's not surprising with the Romanian connections with Vlad The Impaler and Dracula.

So at least I have written something, So what music should I share. Tom Robinson is playing "Ice Cream For Crow" so I think that is definitely worth a share as we fall into next week.

Thursday 8 October 2020

Purelax

This is post number 2332 , so a numerical palindrome, there will be a few of these coming up  (every 110 posts) and there's also post number 2345 to look forward to before the end of the year hopefully.

I've done virtually no writing or anything really this week. It's been a purely relaxing week, which I travelled by train plus a lift from Northallerton to Thirsk. This week has been lying in , watching TV and walking a reasonable amount of steps each day.

Thirsk is a relaxing place to be with lots of places to eat , drink and also lots of walks , especially along Cod Beck the waterway that runs through  the place. I was particularly impressed with The Red Bear (the pigeons seem to love the roof) and Bianco's , a nominally Italian restaurant, but it offers so much more, and there's always about ten other things on their menu that you fancy trying.

Like many other similar places the only places you can buy music is the charity shops and Tesco. Although I think my vinyl collection is complete , I picked up a copy of my favourite classical piece "Carmina Burana" by Carl Orff, which I will share with you for this post.

Ray Manzarek of The Doors also made an album of the piece although I have still yet to hear it, but can be listened to here.

As I have said, this week is pure relaxation so the two hundred words in this post will have to do. As I have said, not sure how many people read this these days, as my follower count is just six, but it works for me as a diary.


Thursday 7 November 2019

True Romance


Today has been a quietish day meeting with my dad for lunch and hearing a lot of good music. Some of this reminded me of my favourite film of all time, which I still love watching the Quentin Tarantino scripted Tony Scott directed "True Romance" which in my opinion has everything, cracking soundtrack, amazing cast including Dennis Hopper as a good guy and amazing face off with Christopher Walken's Sicilian gang boss, Gary Oldman as an albino negro drug lord and a Mexican stand off to end it with and all this interwoven with the Christian Slater / Patricia Arquette love story, oh and Val Kilmer as the ghost of Elvis.

I cannot believe that I haven't mentioned much of this film in the blog, but maybe once or twice.

The theme that Hans Zimmer, "You're So Cool", borrowed from Carl Orff's "Gassenhauer" (used in "Badlands") constructed as a children's piece to be played using very basic instruments. It is one of my favourite pieces of music and off course that is what you will get with this post.

There was a lot more good stuff that I heard today but that will be fuel for my next few posts.

The blog has just passed 350K visits so 400K by the end of the year is a distinct possibility, and half a million by the end of March could possibly happen.

It is late and I do have to get back to Newcastle tomorrow, but enjoy the start / end mash from"True Romance" , it still gives me goosebumps.

Saturday 5 May 2018

Hot #TenAlbumsInTenDays #2- #6 - Carl Orff - Carmina Burana


It has been a hot and worrying day today. The weather has been wonderful but I had to get back up the road before they shut Sutton Bank for the Tour De Yorkshire. That was fine but I had ordered a new washing machine from Argos and though I would go for the install and dispose option. I was worried that I would not be able to disconnect it or would end up flooding the kitchen as I don't rate myself with water pipes. Water can also be very insidious, sneaking through the most impossible of gaps sometimes over years.

That is happening tomorrow but they expect you to disconnect the old washing machine. It's been connected for fifteen years or more, and I could not get the hot water tap to move. Then you start thinking is it clockwise or anti clockwise. After a lot of messing it turns out the cold is clockwise and hot is anti clockwise, there's nothing like a bit of conformity (or not) to make life interesting.

Then it was a case of dragging the damned thing into the garage where it is sitting now awaiting a call for them to bring the new one sometime between 7am  and 7pm tomorrow, nothing like a narrow delivery slot and this is nothing like a narrow delivery slot. Still when it is fitted it will be nice to have a washing machine that doesn't sound like it's filled with metal hub caps.

I finished "The Liar" by Stephen Fry an dit's entertaining enough but hardly essential reading and now I am on to "The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ"  by Philip Pullman which is an off kilter trip through the lives of Jesus and Christ and I'm more thatn a third of the may though after a day although it is large pring on small pages with a decent amount of white space, but I expect to finish it before the end of the Bank Holiday

I wasn't going to document my second #TenAlbumsInTenDays stint but todayday I chose my favourite classical piece. I like bits of others but this is something I love listening end to end. It sufferes from the main fault of Classical Music , the extreme dynamic ranges from almost solence to exploding noise. Samples of it have been used and reused and should be a staple of every household although Orff's work was produced under Nazi rule, but this is an amazing piece of music.

The Sand Animation video by Hungarian animator Ferenc Caco is an amazing accompaniment and you can see his work here 

OK I will leave you to enjoy this