Over and above!

Horror of horrors!  I came into school for an early start and then realized that it was a normal start, but an early finish!  It was Wednesday not Thursday.  I actually did some marking before 8.00 am before I realized that I didn’t need to be here!

It will take me the whole of the day to recover from such an excess of grovelling professionalism.  I have had to have a medicinal cup of tea to take away the sting of giving extra to an institution that doesn’t pay for what it gets anyway.

I am in the staff room of building 4 which seems to amplify the voices of naturally loud speaking Spaniards and I have resorted to I-tunes to escape from the incessant chatter.  Incessant chatter, I might add, about school and the pupils.  One can have too much of a “good thing” and wall-to-wall education is a little wearing.

I would much rather talk about the proposed Chocolate Week where each member of the English Department makes some sort of chocolate confection on an appointed day to be shared with all the other members of the Department than discuss the limited progress of some pampered madam in the 3ESO

Meanwhile extracts from Khovanshchina fill my ears.  This is music which I first discovered as a result of my mother going to Bristol for a day’s shopping and coming back with a present for me of a Music for Pleasure LP with a splendid cover of a detail of one of the more apocalyptic paintings of Hieronomous Bosch 

and the record itself filled with famous and not so famous (as I thought then) music of Mussorgsky.  There was one piece where you could distinctly hear a music stand fall over and in subsequent performances of the same thing I missed (and still do) the satisfying clunk from the disc that introduced the music to me!

The other notable example of extraneous sounds on a disc that I used (ah, where are all my LPs now!) to own was the Heifetz String Quartet where there was the distant sound of flocks of birds and the explanation on the record cover which stated that they tried everything to get rid of the birds from the environs of the hall where they were recording and failed, but felt that the performances were worth listening to even with the birds – and they were right!

I also enjoyed a disc (mfp) of the Concierto de Aranjuez where as the music faded in one of the movements you could hear the soloist/conductor humming the melody.  In string quartets it is almost mandatory for the first violin to draw in a huge, audible, nasal, hoover-like breath before the start of one of the more taxing fiddle passages.

I have never owned discs of the grandfather of extraneous noise Glenn Gould – but I am sure that I could get to like his interposed grunts, groans and hums!

I suppose I ought to say that there is something sterile about the perfect recordings that we now get devoid of hiss, scratches and duff notes – but I love them.  One only has to listen to some of the re-mastered AAD discs to remember the bad old days of poor reproduction to turn to DDD with relief and delight.

I do miss some of my LPs, but rather in the way that I miss my old Grays wooden badminton racquet: they were fine at the time but technology moves on and the Kelvar racquets I played with eventually were immeasurably superior to the heavy old wooden clubs that I used to use!  So with CDs performances are much cleaner and easier to listen to than the performances on LPs.

Some of my favourite LPs did not make it to a CD release and those I do miss: especially one LP which was a compilation of music by Gluck and Grétry.  This selection of music was so insanely jolly that I used to play it continuously when I had to pack up in University before the vacations.  Packing was, is and ever will be anathema to me and I miss the music which helped me get through those dark afternoons of the soul that packing produced!

As I recall the front cover had a line drawing by some artist like Tiepolo or similar.  If anyone knows of it do contact me.  A drug more powerful that aspirin that can be taken aurally!

 

I underestimated the power of the Internet.  I found the cover!  The recording I am looking for is Gluck and Grétry – Ballet Suites, played by the New Symphony Orchestra of London conducted by Robert Irving and first issued on Ace of Clubs.  Amazon does not come up trumps with information about a current recording.  But at least I have something to go on now! 

Someone somewhere will have transferred this recording into a digital form – all I have to do is now find that person.