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13.6.10

In Brief: Cameron Edition


For the Chopin Year: Cameron Carpenter's tasteful arrangement 
of the Revolutionary Etude
Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.
  • How does Cameron Carpenter come off sounding like such a jerk in his 20 Questions interview? He seems like such a profound person in his performances. [Playbill Arts]

  • The Maison de Victor Hugo has opened an exhibit of artwork related to Hugo's collection of exotic poetry Les Orientales. One of the poems in that book inspired Franck's Les Djinns, reviewed recently in a new release by Bertrand Chamayou. [Le Monde]

  • Matthew Guerrieri has an appreciation of Robert Schumann in honor of the composer's 200th birthday. [The Faster Times]

  • With hat tip to ArtsJournal for the news, Spain is going to reopen the Altamira Cave, the first site where prehistoric paintings were discovered, for limited public viewing, after being closed for several years after the discovery of mold growing in the cave. As much as I would dearly love to view those paintings in person, this sounds like a bad idea in terms of the ultimate preservation of the artwork. [Associated Press]

  • Who doesn't love a puzzle? Great Britain's National Trust has restored a painting it acquired years ago: under all the layers of varnish and dirt was a precious work by Tintoretto. By tradition it was called Apollo and the Muses, but the authorities working on the restoration are not really sure who most of the figures in the painting are and are asking authorities of various disciplines to help identify them. Classicists, iconographers, historians, pick up your phone, but please no one tell Dan Brown. To see the actual thing, you have to go to Kingston Lacy, a 17th-century mansion in Dorset, but the digital image with the article is pretty good for now. [The Daily Mail]

9 comments:

amosbray said...

I included him as an alternate in my op. 10 post: http://tumblr.com/xqn9pl6sa

Charles T. Downey said...

For the record, "profound" and "tasteful" were meant ironically.

Anonymous said...

Charles, your comment was uncalled-for! Who do you think we are?

Charles T. Downey said...

You mean you knew that I was being ironic?

Anonymous said...

I would have said "sardonic" because, you know, some of us might have thought you meant "Ionic!" This would leave us in the dark as to whether you meant the columns, or the gases. Us Ionarts readers are a dense bunch.

Charles T. Downey said...

I love it.

jfl said...

Over on WETA, which you may have read:

"...Perhaps that will one day happen with the Swarovski-encrusted organist Cameron Carpenter, depicted to look like the lovechild between Pee-wee Herman and a ca. 2008 Liza Minelli. Telarc will release a CD/DVD smorgasbord set of organ transcriptions and Bach Preludes & Fugues with undertones of Siegfried & Roy on June 1st. Not really a keeper, that live recording, but not without promise, either."

He sounds just as bad in the paid-for Fanfare interview. A case of "A little bit of an education is a terrible thing", me thinks.

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