Category: Uncategorized

Melbourne sparkles even when the weather doesn’t

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The anticipation was exhilarating…….

from the orchestra through the entire centre.

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The concentration…….

No words to describe this

Two comprehensive encores

Surely more than 10 minutes solid applause 👏

She is so engaged with the orchestra, with the conductor, with the audience- she takes you along with her

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So fortunate

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But who is She, that I am raving about?

Anne Sophie Mutter.

Ten years younger than me.   I remember the talk about this amazing musician, throughout the years while I was still trying to learn the basic Fur Elize on the piano,    she was wowing the world with her artistry and at 13 was invited by Herbert Van Karajan to play with the Berlin Philharmonic !!!!!!

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She owns 2 Stradivari’s – I do not know which one she used when I saw her.

Oh and she only wears Galliano outfits when she plays for comfort 🙂

And that, dear friends, was just another Friday morning in my Melbourne.

Special City : Special Experience

 

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This is the second concert I have been to of a totally unfamiliar genre/work.

Not something I usually do – I always play safe when I book my concerts.

Apparently not this season.

And I am So glad I did.

This work is Sublime – tears down the cheeks kind of sublime – (and not from the $13 a glass of wine)

Rather from the juxtaposition of death and creation. The poem, Dream of Gerontious is stunning, I won’t quote, but so worth a read

And the music, Elgar at his most sublime.

He said ” I wrote it out of my insidest out” “This is the best of me”

And then the singing – soaring praises, exquisite phrasing

and such comfort after the journey to death :

“Softly and gently, dearly ransomed soul. In my loving arms I now enfold thee”

Special city;

Special experience

Friends in Strange Places

And there we were,

lost in the wonder of the amazing vistas,

the silence

and above all

the solitude.

Apart from a jackal, a springbok and a beetle

we had seen nothing and no one all day.

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 I happened to look ‘up’ the coast and where the dunes meet the sea

something didn’t ‘feel’ right.

Watching  carefully the something not quite right morphed into –

hang gliders.

Yup, in the middle of nowhere,

3 hang gliders weaving alongside the dunes, over the waves, towards us.

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We waved, They waved,

We marvelled and it turns out they did too (they had seen no one all day)

And being good hosts, we held out a beer,

more as a joke than anything else as they appeared

very committed to riding the thermals.

Young, agile and fit men (French or Belgium) that they were,

they were not about to turn down such an offer.

So without missing a beat they flew towards us, or at least one did,

landed or rather hovered just long enough to say ‘hi,

they have been flying for 5 hours and seen no one,

and thank  you for the beer’.

Then off again-

back on their adventure as we turned our back

and proceeded on ours.

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Our ‘visitor’
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Leaving us, beer in hand – the photo does no justice to the height we are at
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Away he went to join his friends