Of course, there’s no “China Wall” between my activities of listening and reviewing, and the “real world”. Yesterday waking up I learned of Trump’s election. The night before it seemed so improbable – but I should have known: everything with Trump has seemed improbable until now – that I didn’t even think of checking in the morning, a friend called me, and the sepulchral voice said it all before the news even hit me.
After that, it was a little hard to concentrate on listening and reviewing, it suddenly seemed pretty vain.
But what do you do then? Sure, you start looking on the Internet at prices for bunkers in the middle of nowhere, very far from the capital cities where the atom bombs are likely to strike first (improbable? Sure, everything has seemed improbable with Trump until now…). Do you despair and prepare for the end of the world? Or do you go on, blindly, with your vain activities, as if you weren’t tip-toeing at the edge of the abyss? When you are tiptoeing at the edge of the abyss, the only way not to be sucked in and fall is not to look down…
So this morning I’ve finished and posted my review of Hendrik Andriessen: Symphonic Works volume 1 (Symphony No. 1, Ballet Suite, Symphonic Etudes, Kuhnau Variations). Netherlands SO, David Porcelijn, Cpo 777 721-2 (2012). Louis Andriessen’s father, very popular in the Netherlands from the 1930s to 1970s, and if you had asked back then to a music connoisseur about “Andriessen”, he would have responded “oh, yeah, sure: Hendrik”. And now the memory of Hendrik has been almost completely obliterated by his son, a new case of Oedipus felling Laius! But Hendrik’s music is worth not being entirerly forgotten. I have much more that I’m hoping to listen and review in the next few days.
In fact I was sent off my Isang Yun track in other directions, as it always happens, and one of those was 20th century Dutch music. But the secret plan, I think, is to finish reviewing all the As in my collection, from Abel to Ayres. I can’t think of a more appopriate starting point.