From NPR News: A Copper Bedrail Could Cut Back On Infections For Hospital Patients

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haiku – Evidence of passage of time, poetic though by George-B (©The Smudge and Other Poems Page)

Haiku – vidence of passage of time,
(poetic though by George-B)

One after another,

like footsteps on wet beaches,

time levels passage.

©The Smudge and Other Poems  Page

Waves Erasing Footprints on a beach

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Is China’s economy really the largest in the world?

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Sony warns press over hacking leaks

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Pirate Bay ‘copy’ goes online

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Jolie: US must lead against torture

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US court upholds LA condom law

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Liszt Chasse-neige Transcedental Etude #12, Valentina Lisitsa:, great compositions/performances

Liszt Chasse-neige Transcedental Etude #12 Valentina Lisitsa

   ValentinaLisitsa

Liszt has chosen a fitting title- “Chasse-neige” – for his brooding “finale” of 12 Transcendental Etudes. While today this word in French means totally different things ( I had quite amusing conversations with native French speakers about it and i am sure there will be heated arguments here too:)) – it is associated with skiing and actually can mean “a snowplower”, Liszt had other things in mind.
Loosely translated as “Snowstorm”, “Blizzard”, “метель” in Russian – this is a truthful depiction of one of the most fearsome expressions of Mother Nature powers. If anyone could paint with notes, Liszt certainly did. We can literally see and hear the ominous lead-black clouds, snow being driven horizontally by fierce howling winds, everything disappearing under a thick shroud of white snow, muffled cries of help from faceless victims… Even today, with all our modern technology, we are helpless in a face of nature’s fury. Our roads close, our planes unable to fly, our phones do not work, our lights and heat go off…
Thus, an average human being, living a pampered life with indoor plumbing in New York City of 21st century turns out to be just as helpless and vulnerable as our ancestors on villages of middle ages. And the whole “civilization” facade melts away under few dozen inches of rising water or couple of feet of snow. A sobering thought.

more from Valentina Lisitsa HERE , HERE

Liszt Consolation D flat major No.3 (S.172), Valentina Lisitsa: Great compositions/performances

Liszt Consolation D flat major No.3 (S.172) Valentina Lisitsa

   ValentinaLisitsa

Recorded in November 2012 at medieval church in Blumenstein, Switzerland .
Learned in less than an hour at the same church 🙂
What you see and hear is basically my first performance, LOL!
Piano is Boesendorfer Imperial owned by http://www.leclavier.ch/
http://www.piano-suisse.com/contact.php
Free sheet music download is available, as always, at IMSLP library:
http://tinyurl.com/cuenc44

This little piece is the best answer to all those “music critics”, self-proclaimed experts and other snobs who throughout the years and years belittled, ignored or attacked Liszt music as primitive kitsch designed to pander to primitive tastes of gullible public.
What can be closer to perfection than these few pages sparsely “populated” with few notes , easy enough for any amateur to tackle – yet profound and comforting to turn to in the moment of quiet happiness and contemplation – or in the moment of utter hopelessness and despair?

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from Wikipedia: The Unanswered Question

The Unanswered Question

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

This article is about the Charles Ives composition. For Eliot Feld’s 1988 dance, see The Unanswered Question (ballet).

The Unanswered Question is a musical work by American composer Charles Ives. Originally paired with Central Park in the Dark as Two Contemplations in 1908,^[a] The Unanswered Question was revived by Ives in 1930–1935. As with many of Ives’ works, it was largely unknown until much later in his life, and was not performed until 1946.

Against a background of slow, quiet strings representing “The Silence of the Druids“, a solo trumpet poses “The Perennial Question of Existence”, to which a woodwind quartet of “Fighting Answerers” tries vainly to provide an answer, growing more frustrated and dissonant until they give up. The three groups of instruments perform in independent tempos and are placed separately on the stage—the strings offstage.

Composition

The Unanswered Question is scored for three groups: a string ensemble, a solo trumpet, and a woodwind quartet.^[2] The groups’ play in independent tempos^[3] and are placed in such a way that they might not be able to see each other;^[4] the strings play offstage.^[5]

Ives provided a short text by which to interpret the work, giving it a narrative as in program music.^[6] Throughout the piece the strings sustain slow tonal triads that, according to Ives, represent “The Silence of the Druids—who Know, See and Hear Nothing”. Against this background, the trumpet poses a nontonal phrase^[7] seven times^[8]—”The Perennial Question of Existence”—to which the woodwinds “answer” the first six times in an increasingly erratic way. Ives wrote that the woodwinds’ answers represented “Fighting Answerers” who, after a time, “realize a futility and begin to mock ‘The Question'” before finally disappearing, leaving “The Question” to be asked once more before “The Silences” are left to their “Undisturbed Solitude”.^[7]

The strings twice repeat a pianissimo thirteen-bar progression, so slowly it has a static feel. It uses voice leading, passing tones, and ornamental notes in a manner reminiscent of a hymn or chorale. After the repetition, the strings’ part varies in subtle ways that are difficult for the listener to detect. In contrast to this ever-changing but seemingly regular “Silence”, the trumpet repeats the same “Question”,^[9] the first six times each louder than the last;^[8] it is the woodwinds’ atonal answers that change in obvious ways,^[9] growing increasingly agitated and dissonant.^[5] After the woodwinds finally give up, the trumpet poses the question quietly one last time.^[8]

Leonard Bernstein conducts Claude Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun – Boston Symphony Orchestra: make music part of your life series

Debussy Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune

   Ofir Gal

Leonard Bernstein conducts Claude Debussy‘s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun – extract from “The Unanswered Question“, Boston Symphony Orchestra

this pressed to celebrate Monkey Day #euzicasa: National Geographic: Images of Animals, Nature, and Cultures

Our Favorite Monkey Pictures

To celebrate Monkey Day, our photo editors selected heartwarming, illuminating pictures of the primates.

Photography

via National Geographic: Images of Animals, Nature, and Cultures.

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Clamp found in man after 13 years

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Ebola serum supply reaches Liberia

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FROM FRANCE24: New James Bond script stolen in Sony cyber attack

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From France 24: Belgium grinds to a halt as strikers protest austerity

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Homeland Security Chief Opens Largest Immigration Detention Center in U.S. – NYTimes.com

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Navajo tribe buys back sacred masks

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Jolie has chickenpox, will miss premiere

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Northern white rhino dies at San Diego zoo

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German tension over anti-Islam march

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Erdogan pours scorn on EU criticism

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Let’s Facebook it: All we care about is getting you to buy stuff…Because: Life is a commercial!

Let’s Facebook it: All we care about is getting you to buy stuff!

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Critics, defenders clash over US ‘torture report’

http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&ct2=us&usg=AFQjCNGe6Ipl4cfmChDnfKAbmfxEaE9BDg&cnm=0d9a39d0502e51ec486ede7954ca975b&clid=0d9a39d0502e51ec486ede7954ca975b&cid=52778684110285&ei=FyuPVJmwF4bJ8AHy-YGwAg&rid=63ce631a-2792-46c4-8d4f-0d7038a5baee&url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-2873844/Critics-defenders-clash-US-torture-report.html

Paula Selig: Light my Fire (!)

this pressed: A medical student develops an illness she has been studying – The Washington Post

A patient’s worst nightmare

The first two years of medical school, the preclinical years, teach students about disease in the abstract, as testable material. We detach ourselves from reality as we memorize a constellation of symptoms and treatments presented from a podium or a textbook. I have been guilty of occasionally forgetting that what I am studying may be a patient’s worst nightmare.

“We ask patients to take on risks in order to heal,” Cherie Fathy writes, “but we should never forget how overwhelming it is to hear those risks or to play those odds.” (Courtesy of Cherie Fathy)

As students on the wards, we see mere snapshots of our patients’ illnesses. We are there as patients receive a diagnosis in the clinic or a treatment in the hospital. What we don’t see is a patient at home deciding whether that lump is even worth checking on or a mother dreading when to tell her children what she has, or how to even begin telling them.

via A medical student develops an illness she has been studying – The Washington Post.

Luigi Boccherini: Cello Concerto No.5 D major. G 478: great compositions/performances

Luigi Boccherini – Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra No. 9, G. 482

  miljkmi

Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805), Italia

– Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra No. 9 in B flat Major, G. 482
I. Allegro moderato
II. Adagio non troppo
III. Rondo. Allegro

Mat Haimovitz, Violoncello
English Chamber Orchestra
Andrew Davis

**************************************************************

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Luigi Boccherini‘s Cello Concerto No. 9 in B flat Major, G.482 was written in either the late 1760s or early 1770s. Boccherini, a talented cellist, composed twelve concertos for his instrument. German cellist Friedrich Grützmacher chose this concerto to be arranged to fit the style of a Romantic virtuoso concerto, in 1895, and in this form, widely heard, it bears only a tenuous resemblance to the original manuscript.^[1]

The Boccherini Ninth Cello Concerto has long been an integral part of standard cello instruction, because of creeping use of the full 4+ octave range of the cello, rather than large jumps between different finger positions.

Grützmacher merged Boccherini’s Ninth Cello Concerto with other Boccherini Cello Concertos.^[1][2] Besides the extensive cuts in the outer movements, Grützmacher decided to rid the Concerto of its original second movement, replacing it with that of the Seventh Cello Concerto (in G Major, G.480). The Fourth Cello Concerto (In C Major, G.477) makes an appearance in bars 40-46 of the first movement, and in bars 85-96 and 151-163 of the Rondo; borrowing from the respective movements. The arpeggios of the Fifth Cello Concerto’s (in D Major, G478) first movement are featured in their minor form in bars 47-53 of the first movement. Grützmacher also took the liberty of writing his own cadenzas. Despite all the changes, this Concerto holds up as one of Boccherini’s best known works. English cellist Jacqueline du Pré made a recording of this edition of the Concerto.^[3]

Nevertheless, Boccherini’s original work is slowly beginning to resurface. Well-known cellists like Maurice Gendron,^[4] Yo-Yo Ma,^[5] and Raphael Wallfisch^[6] have all made recordings of this long overshadowed work. Nowadays, the two works are distinguished by their origin: Original vs. arr. Grützmacher.

 

Valentina Lisitsa plays Chopin Variations Op 2 (1 and 2): great compositions/performances

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsG_YL-o9ZE[/embed]

Chopin Variations Op 2 (1 and 2) Valentina Lisitsa

  ValentinaLisitsa

Valentina Lisitsa, Black & Pink DVD.”La ci darem la mano”

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Chopin – Variations on “Là ci darem la mano” from Mozart’s Don Giovanni: great compositions/performances

Chopin – Variations on “Là ci darem la mano” from Mozart‘s Don Giovanni

   Fledermaus1990

Frédéric Chopin’s Variations on “Là ci darem la mano” for piano and orchestra, Op. 2, was written in 1827, when he was aged only 17. “Là ci darem la mano” is a duet sung by Don Giovanni and Zerlina, from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. It was one of the earliest manifestations of Chopin’s incipient genius. It inspired Robert Schumann‘s famous exclamation, Hats off, gentlemen! A genius!

The work was premiered on 11 August 1829 at the Vienna Kärntnertortheater, with Chopin as the soloist. It received very positive audience and critical acclaim.

The work is in B-flat major throughout, except for the Adagio of Variation 5, which is in the minor key.

– Introduction: Largo – Poco piu mosso 0:00
– Thema: Allegretto 5:20
– Variation 1: Brillante 6:53
– Variation 2: Veloce, ma accuratamente 7:52
– Variation 3: Sempre sostenuto 8:54
– Variation 4: Con bravura 10:20
– Variation 5: Alla Polacca 11:24

Saint of the Day for Monday, December 15th, 2014: St. Mary Di Rosa

Saint of the Day for Monday, December 15th, 2014

  St. Mary Di Rosa

Saint Mary (Paula) Di Rosa December 15 The pounding on the barricaded door of the military hospital sent every heart thudding in terror. In the middle of the war in Brescia (Italy) in 1848, the … continue reading

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Today’s Holiday: Bill of Rights Day (2014)

Today’s Holiday

Bill of Rights Day (2014) The first 10 amendments to the US Constitution of 1787—referred to collectively as the Bill of Rights—were ratified on December 15, 1791. This landmark document protected American citizens from specific abuses by their government and guaranteed such basic rights as the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt designated December 15 as Bill of Rights Day and called upon Americans to observe it with appropriate patriotic ceremonies. More… Discuss

Quotation: Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact. George Eliot

Quotation of the Day
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.George Eliot (1819-1880) Discuss

Today’s Birthday: Oscar Niemeyer (1907)

Today’s Birthday

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this day in the yesteryear: First Space Rendezvous (1965)

this day in the yesteryear

First Space Rendezvous (1965) Three years after the first manned space flight, NASA launched the Gemini program, a series of two-man space missions aimed, among other things, at developing astronauts‘ ability to maneuver spacecraft. One goal was to achieve orbital rendezvous, and after a failed attempt in June 1965, Gemini had success. Astronaut Wally Schirra maneuvered the Gemini 6 spacecraft to within feet of Gemini 7, close enough to have docked had they been so equipped. When was the first docking achieved? More… Discuss