Cool water

Cool water
Originally uploaded by jhhymas

The son I mentioned yesterday built this backyard waterfall for his wife. Their black labrador, being a water dog, likes it too. Perhaps a little too much. We are listening as Daniel Barenboim plays the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Israel Philharmonic on PBS. I love that theme the horn plays repeatedly in the Adagio movement. This is an exquisite performance, Great variation in volume and tempi, very beautiful. Just swell!
The New Year's hardly begun, and already I am behind in demonstrated achievements, but I did just finish putting together a rolling printer cart/file cabinet from Office Max by Sharper Image. I want to recommend that you think thrice before buying one. It took me hours of terrifying work. Dowels and glue, countless screws of four different kinds, cam locks, dreadful pressed wood which was difficult to screw. The cam screws were made of some kind of pot metal which failed after about four turns of the Phillips screwdriver and had to be competed with a wrench! Many of the pieces could have been easily shipped assembled. Absolutely nothing was put together except the guides were on the sides of the drawers, for which I suppose I should be VERY thankful.
I will quit now and pay attention to the concert which is very soft and beautiful at this moment just before the Allegro Non Troppo.
Now I'm back. The concert is over and at the end, an announcer told us that the first two movements of the Brahms were written out of Brahms' sadness over the death of his mentor, Robert Schumann. The work was felt at that time to be too dark, but I must say that now, it is just about right for me! The story of Brahms and his friendship with Clara and Robert Schumann is a beautiful one. The music of both of the Schumanns is among my most favored, as is that of Brahms. I like especially his German Requiem, along with this concerto.
Looking up something musical this evening I ran across the blog of Wendell Rider, who used to play so beautifully the horn solo in this concerto in concert with the late lamented San Jose Symphony. He has a blog, too, and is also a photographer. Good night!