By the time I returned home from work yesterday, I was completely exhausted from a week of burning the candle at both ends and the middle. So I napped most of the morning, did some running around in the afternoon, and watched a couple of my backlog of TV shows. Then I took a Klonopin a customer had given me and two over the counter sleep aids and slept for about 10 or 11 hours. I awoke fairly refreshed and ready for today. Of course, it is Friday and truck night, but I can do one 10 hour shift standing on my head because I have the whole weekend to recover.
I put the weekly shopping of until tomorrow morning, then I plan a video marathon in the afternoon and evening . Hopefully I will be able to clear my backlog of TV episodes I have not seen yet this season. I keep track of what I have and have not watched with a site called TVMaze which is and interactive TV guide and social media site that makes keeping up with what you have missed easy and gives you an outlet to discuss you favorite shows with the TVMaze community. Will turned me on to this site and it has been a wonderful tool to keep the video portion of my life organized. Then on Sunday it is an NFL marathon. So I should have fun this weekend
After nearly a week on the new computer, I continue to be amazed at the ease and speed with which I can accomplish things. The HD video is absolutely stunning on the new monitor, and posting to my blog and tumblr is really a snap. The only thing I can think of tho improve my computing platform would be new, larger faster HDDs, like the 1TB 7200 RPM Western Digital ones I put on my Newegg.com Wish List. But there are a couple of other priorities that will come before that purchase. However, it will all come in good time with the appropriate diligence and patience as Will and I work toward our goals.
Now, I have some great Music lined up for your listening pleasure today as well as a few visual delights to feed your over active imaginations. Today's featured composer is Edvard Grieg (1843-1907). Grieg produced only one complete mature string quartet, the String
Quartet in g minor, Op. 27 dating from 1878 when he was 35. The
historical record indicates that it was a challenge for Grieg, a
composer who was perhaps more accustomed to writing in smaller forms
such as his celebrated art songs and Romantic piano miniatures. Yet his
remains one of the most original and influential string quartets of the
late 19th century, approximately contemporaneous with the first
important quartets from Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Borodin and Dvořák. It was
written in the same year as César Franck's piano quartet with which it
shares some prominent elements of innovative cyclic design. Grieg's
quartet even managed to impress the aloof Debussy who, fifteen years
later wrote his only quartet in the same key, with more than a few
striking similarities.
Like many composers (notably Schubert, Mendelsohn and Shostakovich), Grieg borrows from his own music for the main theme of the quartet: a portion of his somber song Spillamæd (Minstrels). The icy theme is announced in unison by the quartet right at the beginning, the emphatic slow introductory andante before the bristling allegro. Almost all of the musical material in the first movement is derived from it including several creative variations of the full theme itself in a wide range of expression and affect. There are at least eight clear permutations for the listener's delightful discovery. But like the cyclic designs of Franck and, later, Debussy, the theme extends beyond the bounds of the first movement to obliquely influence the second, reappear in the third and frame the fourth including a nearly literal restatement of the quartet's beginning just before the final conclusion. Though the complete work comprises a four-movement design with a great variety of music, it is fused together with a rare artistic unity. Today's performance was recorded in the 1960 by the Copenhagen String Quartet.
Over on my tumblr, I have Grieg's Piano Concerto In A Minor, Opus 16 which was initially panned in the reviews at the time, but has gone on to become one of the most often performed Concerti in the modern Classical repertoire. That performance is by the Danmarks Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Thomas Dausgaard with Alice Sara Ott as you Piano Soloist.
As for the visual delights to feed your imaginations, I have an eclectic collection of handsome hunks ranging from the innocence of youth and young love to the more mature and somewhat more intriguing flights of fancy in this week's edition of Fantasy Fuel posted down below. Over on my tumblr Sasha Kosmos, Your Hottie of the Day!, seeks to entice you into his bed for what would surely be one intense encounter. Thanks for the visit, see you again on Sunday for the Morning Concert. Until next time as always, Enjoy!
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