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Showing posts from 2003

Listening to Rafal-Alexandre Luszczewski

I went for a concert on September 11 that was held to commemorate 50 years of Indo-Polish diplomatic relations, and 70 years of the establishment of the Polish Consulate in Bombay.I don’t often go for concerts like this one but I’m glad that I did go for this one. The concert, which was to help promote Indo-Polish ties, was by a pianist called Rafal-Alexandre Luszczewski who made debut in the international area at the age of 16 with the Tokyo Symphony. Apart from being one of the best-structured concerts I’ve gone for in a long time, Luszczewski’s playing was brilliant. He’s exceptionally talented, and the evening turned out to be one of the best I’ve had in the recent past.In the first part of the programme, he took the audience on a Journey through Europe. Luszczewski began with a Prelude, Fugue and variation in B minor (Op. 18) by Cesar Franck (1822 – 1890), a Belgian composer who spent a large amount of time at Paris.A fugue is a piece which is structured in a subject-answer form,

The Women in Agamemnon’s Life

Agamemnon was the leader of the Greek forces at Troy. According to Homer he was the king of Mycenae but other sources say that he was the king of Argos. What's most fascinating about him isn’t quite so much the warrior himself but the stories of the women who played a part in his life: in particular, his first wife, Clytemnestra, whose name means ‘praiseworthy wooing’, two of his daughters: Electra and Iphigenia, and his war prize, the doomed prophetess Cassandra whose name means ’she who entangles men’. While sailing for Troy, the Greeks somehow managed to offend the Goddess of the Hunt: Artemis (or Diana as she is also known). In her anger, Artemis kept the Greek fleet in the bay of Aulis and prevented it from sailing to Troy, and so, in order to appease her, the prophet Calchas advised Agamemnon to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to the Goddess. Agamemnon followed the advice but he was not honest about his intention to sacrifice Iphigenia: he told both his daughter and

The Address Book

Rita held an old address book with a marbled beige and maroon border and the impression of pressed wild flowers on its front cover in her hands. She had found it while cleaning up a loft where she'd stored the belongings she no longer used in cardboard boxes. Initially, she'd used beer boxes that she'd got from a shop she often went to but when she began to be asked where she'd got them, she decided that it would be safer to start using other boxes instead, even if it was just to avoid the questions. The Middle Ages may have been long over, but that didn't stop wagging tongues from drawing uncomfortable inferences and she saw no reason to give them any more room for speculation than was necessary; not because she was intent on conforming to social rules but simply because she knew from experience that it was tiring to have to keep listening to what people thought if one didn't conform to them. She hadn't seen the address book for years. The corners had fraye