Polish Vodka?

Na zdrowie! Mark!

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
Na zdrowie! Mark!

And to you George! I need my bed...........sweet dreams,,,,,Goodnight and God Bless

Mark

I have just arranged to borrow a particular double bass, which will be suitable, for a last effort at playing six years after the last time!

The bass itself was made immediately after my five stringer by the sam maker, and has an identical stop length [length of open string] as mine, though a less full shaped body. It belongs to a man who was, at the time, a pupil of mine! He is bending my arm to take the instrument up again, just for fun! We shall see. If it does not flair my left hand up at this Swan-song, perhaps I will consider it - just for fun!

George

My ex-pupil now has three double basses. A small nineteenth century French chamber bass which is quite nice, the bass made by the maker of mine, and an old Czech plywood one. I borrowed this last one, as I feel the responsibility of borrowing a very expensive instrument. Plus the Czech bass is rather nice of its type!

Spent the last hour peeving my neighbours, no doubt about that!

The consensus among our household is that I should start again, and perhaps I might!

George

A nice couple of photos:

One of my housemates, Łukasz, showing that there is an alternative style used by bass guitarists!


And one of something more conventional:


Notice in the top picture, old Elgar looking down from the wall!

The concert went nicely.

There is a salon orchestra, which meets weekly for fun, so I have agreed to play for them. Ironically the newly appointed conductor is the lady whose 70th birthday the concert was given for! It was nice to see so many of the old children's training orchestra, though I only recognised a few! One who used to slip of for a pint before gigs did the same again along with me! {Abbot Ale]. Almost like old times! Great fun, and some quite good playing, especially considering we rehearsed for less time than we actually played!

George

Well, though I am still lucid, I might report a rather fine Polish Part in my own house this evening!

As in the absolute majority of cases, the atmosphetre only improved as things went on!

Dobre noc, Gregorcz! [or Giorgio, or even Georgevate as I am variously called!]

PS: I have fixed my bike up, ready for the summer. Forget the waste and expense of petrol. Get a bike and get to work early, before the rush! You would be surprised what a pleasure it can be! Try it!

Glad to hear you're having fun George!

quote:

The Poles leaving Britain will be missed more than has yet been realised. I am already missing one or two ...

We will back ...as a turist

Dear Robert! Good!

But I think I might tell tale of a fine time, this eveing, in an English pub at the request of Polish friends! I was reluctant and very late! But I did not account for the relaxed liceninsing laws!

A most wonderful time, and the last time I was in an Enlish pub with Poles was more than two years ago. In fact in the [now rather Polish] pub which my Polish friends were barred from for being well ... Polish! So we went then went to the Austrian pub instead, which is quite funny looking back! We had started in a really English pub drinking Bombardier, those two years ago!

George

quote:

Originally posted by Robert Woj:
I don't know if photos are nice, but the place definitely is - Gdynia in Poland, this is where I live
greetings.

Dear Robert!

Gdynia looks nice to me! There are some quite nice photos earlier in this thread from my visits to Poland last year and the year before.

Most of the well composed ones are from my time staying in Warsaw, and there is a very sad one taken in Lublin here.

I have a very fond feeling towards Poland, and have some very good Polish friends, and know one good English friend [with whom I stayed in Warsaw] who has the most lovely Polish wife.

Not least my potential for my response to Poland and the Polish was fuelled by my old Norwegian grandfather, who had a very high opinion of the Polish, and my first really good History teacher at school, who one day came in and simply wrote on the blackboard in chalk:

"WARSAW"

She then said that the way to remember how to spell it was to think, "Saw War." I think you can imagine that the lesson was a surprise to little children expecting to be taught about Alfred the Great! I never forgot these things and as the Poles came to Britain, I came to know several very well. This has proved to be a real privelege.

All the best from George

Today is National Day in Norway.

God Save the King!

George

Dear Frank,

That is such a famous view! I recognise it even from a line drawing done for escaping POWs who managed to board a Swedish freighter at Gdansk [Dansig in the book of a Wartime story of course]. It was a reproduction the actual line drawing they used to find the docks in the dark!

The Book is called "Stolen Journey," by Oliver Philpots. Eric Williams, who wrote the Book, "THe Wooden Horse," was one of the three who escaped on this venture, but Oliver Philpots went to my prep school and was taught English by the father of the man who taught it to me. I had a first edition of "Stolen Journey," but gave it to my Norwegian grandfather for his sevenieth. Unfortunately it was subsequently given to the Norwegian Red Cross after my grandmother died some years after he did.

When the boys [escaped POWs] got to Stockholm, they joyfully found the Nazi Military Lagate and gave the British salute and reported their names and serial numbers, while in the care of the British Military Lagation! It must have been a comic moment, though one that got them into hot water as the Diplomats wanted no Jerry-baiting rumpus on Neutral ground!

Happy childhood memories are stirred by that picture!

George

Wednesday evening saw a very pleasant evening passed with the couple who invited me to their wonderful wedding in Poland last August, and who recently had had a lovely little daughter. How quaint that seems these days. Marriage followed at a respectable distance in time by a baby!

In fact it was an altogether fine collection of people present! My friend Paweł and his lovely ladyfriend [next wedding, I expect!] and the happy couple, another friend of all of us, and myself!

I brought a bottle of Wyborowa, and a selection of Lech, Tyskie, and Żyviec. Enough lovely food for a very happy time, and looking through photos and talking.

I was not sure what time I got home, but I do rememebr getting "onto" my old bike. Apparently on auto-pilot, I set the alarm perfectly - today went rather well at work! I was zonked when I got home at tea time, but otherwise no bad effects!

Alpha Plus! George

PS: I shall be at the Christening this weekend!

Work was a grand front loaded programme this week. Huge amounts to do Monday to Thursday, and a light Friday! Home by late lunch time!!!!

So I bought four Tyskie, ready for a pleasant early night!

George

Kubica first ,Podolski score 2 goals against his own Country -damn it, we have all our best profesionals in German teams - isn't it ironic.

Even if I survive not through the night, I can definately say that I had very fine evening in Polish company this evening!

George

PS: It was apparent if not terribly interesting that Sweden won, 2:0, against Grekland, Grecia, Greece.

Well I did get to work fine and dandy this morning, and all things considered it went well enough in spite of a huge programme to complete.

I only called by my friends after a chance meeting riding home from work, as rightly I was supposed to visit another friend after! Some hope, of course. What surprised me was that I rang to apologise - which I have no recollection of - and so spent a second much quieter evening in good conversation earlier as well. I got mightily wet coming home too!

I have these two CDs of Klemperer leading Beethoven even and two [live in 1957] and the Pathetique and Schumann Four. Really there is a parallel here with the astounding quality of Polish Vodka! Clear as day, and no impurities to leave you ill next day. And of the highest Octane rating! I read some fascinating and highly illuminating words written by Klemperer on the subject of the music of Tchaikowsky: He maintained [rightly in my view] that the great Russian composer was the author of music which is completely from the heart and should go directly to the heart. Heartfelt music of the first quality, honest, and direct, passionate, but definitely not hysterical or in bad taste. Klemperer noted with wisdom I think, that one only need inspect the nature of Tchaikowsky's own live to realise that his music could be no other way. Certainly Klemperer completely avoids hysteria in the Pathetique, but it is clear, full of life [faster than usual in the sense that it keeps to a steady and quick basic set of tempi] and has incredible power and momentum, but completely avoids being loud for the sake of it, or driven into impossible climaxes which were in Klemperer's view a tradition that only stated in the twentieth century. I think it might be obs3erved that Klemperer's reading is above all and honest approach to the written notes, rather than a nod in the direction of any performing tradition known at the time or even today. The performance is about as wonderful as any I know in any music! A unique and in my view unrivalled recording of the work. Certainly in any understanding a deeply respectful one in terms of evaluating and understanding the composer's intention, and then obtaining a performance from a great orchestra that is as lucid and full of usually lost detail as it is intense and intensely beautiful as well as trenchant at the crucial architectural climaxes!

The Beethoven performance from the same orchestra's Beethoven Festival Concerts of 1957 are head and shoulders better than any of the two works concerned [including Klemperer’s studio recordings] that I have encountered.

Interesting that Klemperer was labelled a Beethoven expert. He intensely disliked this notion. His view was that either a musician is musical or not, and there is no such thing as specialism. To listen to Beethoven and Tchaikowsky one after the other like is to be confrointed with the realisation that Klemperer was right about specialising!

When you consider his range from Bach to Kurt Weill, and consider he had the respect of his contemporary composers, who were glad of a Klemperer performance, and yet a musician who could turn to the Baroque, the Classics, the Romantics, and even the Moderns with equal command, then one can see why Klemperer, himself was quite frustrated by the opinion held, that he a was a Beethoven expert! As he, without any false modesty, put it one day: "I am a music expert!"

On the showing of these recording, of that there is no doubt at all!

George

Vodka is now outstripping Scotch as the national tipple in UK!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2119735/Vodka-ov...r-Polish-influx.html

George

Found this rather enjoyable film on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQJxY9HlQLQ&NR=1

Nice and steady does it!

George

Just watched this while listening to my favourite music on my Exposure gear

3:13 to 7:15 in the linked video is a thing of beauty.

Thanks so much George,

Jim

Dear Jim,

I still have a gut wrenching wish to go and live there. I have some very dear Polish friends and as they return to their country, some opportunity may actually arrise. I have no wish to be rich, but merely more or less content!

The mentality of these people is stoical heroic determination, and I can deal with their integrity/stubborness. I have a streak of that myself.

It is a lovely film though!

Mind you some of their electric trains don't go much faster!

ATB from George

"...their integrity/stubborness"

As the Grandson of a Yorkshireman I can relate. I have always wanted to live elsewhere but continue to put it off. I have been doing so for 12 years and am now 40.

What keeps us from that? Does Brahms hint at it? I wonder....

Jim

Brahms more than hints at missed opportunity in his music. Not in his musical missed opportunity of course, but the sadness of never marrying, as the woman he loved was married to his friend Schumann. And so I never understood why he did not marry Clara when Robert died, but then perhaps the times were in his own mind wrong, and so his circumspection is painfully apparent in his music, and not just in the Fourth Symphony!

But his music is stoic and strong, not hysterical or angry. Passionate to a degree bordering on anger [with his own circumspection], but not railing at life, so much as made aware of the tragedy of shyness. I understand that all too well.

George

Hardyesque then, perhaps in melancholy and backbone?

"Make due with your lot." I will, but I still miss what I could have had.

Dear Jim,

Hardyesque then, perhaps in melancholy and backbone?

"Make due with your lot." I will, but I still miss what I could have had.

Haydn was both the kindest man, [and my equal favourite composer with the lovely familly man JS Bach], and married to a woman he never loved. He married the sister of the woman he loved, and she chided him for three quarters of a lifetime to get a proper job as a wheel-maker, which was his father's trade. How much that made a man of integrity and backbone know also sadness, and he was no womaniser, and turned down ladies in London on his visits. That takes a certain mindset, I think!

George

PS: As we have turned a page, I reckon I should put the Youtube back up as it is lovely but lost at the bottom of the last page!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQJxY9HlQLQ&NR=1