Gotham Diary:
Crunch
8 February 2013
This will be brief. I had a very big day yesterday, on the go almost every minute. In the late afternoon, after a round of errands, I cleared some furniture out of the way for an evening session with Jason, the omnicompetent tech manager. Although I had a laundry list of niggling computer problems, each and every one of which he solved, I’d really asked Jason to come help me move the stereo amplifier (and its wires) from one side of the blue room to the other. In another room, I might do the job myself, but the blue room is where the cable and the router and, ipso facto, my connection to the rest of the world are hooked up, and I don’t mess with wires in here without adult supervision. I asked Ray Soleil to be on hand as well. “Do you really need me?” he asked. I really did, in the event, but I told him to think of himself as the anaethesiologist. (To complete this analogy, Jason would of course be the surgeon, the blue room the patient, and I the tumor.)
Jason even managed to get the Ion Tape Express to work. What this little device does is to tranform the contents of old cassette tapes into iTunes files. I have held on to more than fifty cassettes from the old days, all of it stuff that hasn’t been replaced on CD. For example: Janet Baker singing four Strauss songs, Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody, and Wagner’s Wesendonck lieder. The recording was made in 1971, when Baker was an established artist in England seeking to widen her audience. Within a few years, she would be recording a lot of Berlioz with Colin Davis, and of course the English music that was finally beginning to gain an international audience. It’s no wonder that her recording of three German chestnuts was never reissued (in toto) on CD. But I have never in my life heard a more ecstatic, luxuriant Traüme. The tape is old and the pitch a bit wobbly, but the beauty of the performance still shines through. I’m thrilled to have it again.
That was the second tape to be transcribed; I oversaw it after dinner with Ray. The first tape, which I chose for my iunsuccessful attempt to get the Ion Express going, was “Renaissance Dances,” a collection of pieces ranging from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries, and one of the very first Odyssey releases. Odyssey was Columbia’s budget classical label; it was used for unusual European recordings, many from behind the Iron Curtain. The dances were recorded by the Ancient Instrument Ensemble of Zürich. I ought to remember the year in which it came out, but the best I can do is “circa 1970.” The recording itself is of course a few years older, dating probably from 1960-1965, when the “original instrument” movement was getting serious, but still a bit style-free. The sound of an ancient estampie tootling out on a distinctly unsonorous portatif organ, with the wobbly pitch of old tape, nearly turned Jason green. I chuckled; that’s exactly how most of the people I knew responded to the recording forty-odd years ago. I never played that side of the LP much myself (yes, of course I had this record on LP first, and then on cassette), but I was in love with the pavanes on the second side. Now they sound rather naive — much as stews made from recipes of that time taste almost unseasoned.
***
So today, I was good for nothing but the movies, and I went to see Side Effects, which is dandy but totally undiscussable; I won’t say a word! Except that I seem to remember recognizing Polly Draper, who plays Rooney Mara’s boss, by the sound of her voice, before I even saw her. That may not have been the case (because it may not have been possible). If you’ve seen the trailer — I’d seen it a few times — you’ll have a pretty good idea of what happens in the movie, but not why. Steven Soderbergh has made such a frightfully elegant movie that it’s conceivable that people will one day speak of his work as they speak of Hitchcock’s.  The supporting cast includes such delights as Mamie Gummer and Laila Robins, and also an actor new to me, but cresting with authority, Michael Nathanson. Celia Tapia is also someone to watch for. The three-and-a-half principals are incredibly engaging.
There’s an interesting moment, early on, when Jude Law’s profile is dwelt on in shadow, almost a silhouette. It’s jarring — it doesn’t look like him. But then nothing in Side Effects is what it seems.