Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Pierrot Lunaire et les DVDs Fennique

I turned on the tv briefly to see what the Arts channel was playing -- in our tiny portion allotted, it is possible to find silent film productions of the Ring cycle or Howard Keel singing on old kinescope telecasts. I saw a couple of minutes of a fascinating video of a work I did not know.

Don't you just love the internet? In seconds I had found out (from the lines "moonbeam for a rudder, waterlily for a boat" that the work was Schoenburg's "Pierrot Lunaire" which one can hear in its entirety on-line, and that the video with Christine Schaefer is available for purchase. Wow.

Last night we watched the rather impressionistic video I bought in Finland that has beautiful natural shots of the countryside accompanied by cello and kantele. It's quite lovely, if a little soporific in th evening. But it also has two short documentaries on the kantele, so it was well worth the price (after all, it was a markdown at Sokos!). The night before we watched all the Aki Kaurismaki shorts on Total Balalaika Show which I bought in the duty free shop.

Ever the bargain hunter!

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