OK. Things aren't quite so bleak as yesterday made out, I guess ( = if you're my mother, stop panicking, I'm OK), but today was pretty grim - feeling very down - but the mean reds as opposed to the blues - and work was just unbearable with the incessant pop music played on our floor (although, to give the discmeisters their due, it's a very varied diet of pop music - everything from Oasis to the Benny Hill theme) and I found it pretty much impossible to concentrate on anything. So I achieved absolutely nothing and fled the scene at four o'clock. I think I should have done it several hours earlier. Hmm. Oh well, definitely feeling somewhat improved - I bought myself a Marks & Spencer instant low-fat (but very yummy) lasagne, a packet of pre-peeled carrots and some a little pot of chocolate mousse for dinner (oh this IS the life, isn't it :-) because the boy's away overnight for a far-away job interview. I collected my newly taken-up black corduroy trousers from the dry cleaners and have spent the evening playing with photos, listening to an assortment of the more avant-garde corners of my collection (not hugely avant-garde, but...) and occasionally delving into Samuel Z. Solomon's How to write for percussion when I could do so without smearing it with either lasagne or chocolate mousse. Thinking that a temporary solution to the composition problem may be to write for untuned percussion...

Anyway, the point of this posting is that I have finally had another listen to Kancheli's Styx which I heard at the Opera House sometime last year, was completely blown away by but hadn't had the courage to listen to the CD I bought for fear I would be really disappointed. I can safely say a hearty "definitely not!". The disc comes with Sofia Gubaidalina's viola concerto on it too, and I'm also very much enjoying hearing that for the first time - will be back for more and likely to see what else of hers I can hunt down in the near future.

I've also been browsing a couple of UK sites which are equivalent to our Australian Trading Post in a quest for affordable decent keyboards. Oh how I wish we had space - all the Roland/Korg keyboards I could see were generally £500-odd, but there were about 4 upright pianos going free to good homes - *sob!*

Anyway, back to Kancheli and Gubaidalina for me...

# posted by minim @ 9:22 PM