I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: RACHEL BARTON PINE-Tiny Desk Concert #555 (August 5, 2016).

I’ll let the blurb do the introduction:

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine began playing Bach in church at age 4. Ever since, she’s been mastering and re-mastering Bach’s set of six Sonatas and Partitas—more than two hours of solo violin music that looms like a proverbial Mount Everest for any serious fiddler. The trick is getting the details down. Bach left us with the notes but not much else. Pine recently analyzed every measure of these works, and prepared a new edition of the music with her own dynamic markings, phrasing indications, bowings and fingerings.

For this performance, Pine chose three contrasting movements from the set and plays them on her Guarneri del Gesu violin, which was built in 1742 — eight years before Bach died. She highlights the spirit of the dance in the “Tempo di Borea” (a Bourée from the First Partita). She unfolds a serene melody, just lightly accompanied, in the “Largo” (from the Third Sonata), and she closes with the intertwining “Fuga” (from the First Sonata), which sounds like three violinists in deep discussion.

And the music is gorgeous (Bach is truly sublime) and Pine’s violin playing is stunning.

She plays three pieces:

• J.S. Bach: “Tempo di Borea” (from Partita No. 1)
• J.S. Bach: “Largo” (from Sonata No. 3)
• J.S. Bach: “Fuga” (from Sonata No. 1)

The first she describes as dance music.  She says that even though this was not created for the dance, you can sense the implicit choreography.

She describes the second piece as the sorbet course in between the exciting stuff.  It is in the key of F major, which historically is an intimate key.  This piece is calm and peaceful with the sparest of accompaniments.

For the final piece she says she will finish by playing the most complex of violin pieces.  Bach wrote it as a fugue for solo instrument.  She describes a fugue as a musical pattern that the voices toss around in conversation with each other.  So this little four string violin sounds like a full string ensemble.  And it absolutely does.  The opening melody is followed by the same melody on a lower string (while the first string is playing something else at the same time).  And then that riff is continued on the next string while the other two continue.  It is amazing.  And then near the end, she plays some incredibly fast dervishes of flying fingers and that crescendo is not even the end.

You might say that Bach was cruel, except it sounds so amazing, it’s worth it.

[READ: June 13, 2016] Lunch Lady and the League of Librarians

Librarians don’t really like when librarians are portrayed as villainous–unless they are done well.  And these librarians are pretty evil.

I enjoyed how this book also started out with a short clip of Lunch Lady stopping some bad guys before we even get to the story proper.

This book sees the Breakfast Bunch split between wanting to play video games (Hector is excited about the new X-Station 5000) while Dee is excited for the Read-a-thon contest.  Of course when they go to check out the Book Fair, the librarians insist that it starts tomorrow, not today.

Things seems calm and quiet for Lunch Lady.  In the meantime, Betty has come up with a new gadget: taco-vision night goggles.

Meanwhile the Book Fair is now underway and we see a large cutout of a bunny because the author of the Flippy Bunny books is coming to the school!.  But when Hector asks if there are any books about video games, the librarian gets really mad at him and tells him to get lost (there’s a very funny moment where the librarians meet in secret and Jane Shelver says she prefers the term “media specialist”).

The kids overhear their plot (which I won’t give away) and they go tell Lunch Lady and Betty.  But they are at work and do their best to ignore the kids. Lunch Lady wants to keep her identity secret (she doesn’t think the kids know) but the kids assume they need to fight the librarians themselves.  So they take her gadgets and go after the baddies.

Turns out the librarians want to get rid of all of the X-Station 5000s. And their weapons are books–when they open them a character comes out of the book and attacks.

The solution to the fiendish librarians in a good one and one that most librarians are cool with, I’m sure.