Horowitz – Chopin Waltz op. 64 n°2
Alternate version:
Artur Rubinstein – Chopin, Waltz Op. 64, No. 2
One more of Zuleikha’s horn
Zuleikha considers to change her horn for a smaller one – one more reason for me to take some photos of the current one. For this photo I used two studio strobes, one with the beauty dish as main light, the other from behind and above the black background. Taken at an aperture of f/8:
Model 702 horn, by Meister (master) Hans Hoyer. Olympus E-PL5 with M.Zuiko 45mm/1.8 lens at f/8. Two studio strobes at 1/8 and 1/32 power.
Thanks for viewing.
P.S.: while thinking about what I could show you as an example of good music made with wonderful instruments like this one, of course Maurice Ravel’s Bolero came to my mind first. The best interpretation I ever heard (and I bought the CD and gave it as a present to our aunt) is the one with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. Sadly, the video on Youtube doesn’t play here in Germany, most probably due to a legal problem with Gema I suppose. So consider listening to a version conducted by the wonderful Daniel Barenboim instead – his isn’t really worse than Ozawa’s, just different of course, and it’s always a pleasure to see that maestro perform. There’s a short moment where you’ll see a hornist with a double horn, and later you see them as a group – but all the other instruments and performers are also playing so good.
If you want to see Seiji Ozawa instead – I didn’t know until today that he even performed the also very beautiful Polovtsian Dances from Borodin, together with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, open air. And also with this one, you’ll see that Ozawa is the one in classics who really understands rhythm – the man lives and breathes it. But watching Barenboim is even more interesting, at least in the Bolero above. Here’s one who’s conducting with ever so slight movements, and still it works out very beautifully. Highly recommended listening. And both pieces are wonderful.
Some photos for Zuleikha
Zuleikha got her instrument from / for school yesterday, and I took some photos for her so that she can write about it on her blog. That’s why I only show one of them here which I took using the “PanaLeica” 25mm lens, and with the camera set to black & white. So this is a kind of a “teaser” image while waiting for her to show the ones in colour:
French Horn
Thanks for viewing.
Some auxiliary equipment
Zuleikha was supposed to get a musical instrument from school today – but it still has to go through maintenance first, so she’ll get it on Tuesday.
She got some utensils already, and as you can probably guess, it will be a brass instrument:
Fine Wind Instruments
I cannot photograph it on Tuesday, because I’ll be off to a parents’ gathering in the evening. But maybe Zuleikha will write about it on her blog? We’ll see.
Thanks for viewing.
Under a blue light…
How cool is that?
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that we have a new stereo system since a while. I started with speakers, knowing pretty well what I wanted, and lately we also added a new receiver to drive them. It’s a network receiver, but I didn’t connect and configure its network yet – no free port on our router, and because I didn’t want to buy an additional WLAN adapter and block the receiver’s only USB port with it, there’s no network yet. Or so I thought.
Today I remembered that our TV set does in fact have network, wireless even. So on my Debian PC I installed minidlna and configured it quick & dirty like described in Linux Magazine. Then I started both the TV and the receiver, et voilà:
Network via TV
And that minidlna server is so slim and cool that I could even start a virtual Windows7 image which takes away half of my 8GB main memory to work on this photo, and later use RawTherapee on it, and then upload it to Flickr – all without the slightest hiccup or interruption of the music playing.
Now if that isn’t cool I don’t know what is. No more fumbling around with my small USB stick sneakernet-style…
Thanks for reading.
Not there yet…
I’m not writing that much at the moment. And the reason is that I’m listening to the best CDs I have – since I followed my brother’s advice and got a new set of speakers.
Now I know how bad the rest of our system is 😉 So it’s a question of time until we also need a new amp or receiver. Meanwhile, I was listening to this:
I’m Lester the nightfly… with a new set of speakers
So give me a little time. There will be more photographs.
Thanks for visiting and for reading.