For those of you who watched Mr Bean, the ultimate disaster movie (the first one, not the crap close to child abduction second one - a literal disaster), you may well recall that at some point seeing one of the world's great paintaings - Whistler's Mother (or at least a copy thereof) defaced, with a horendous cartoon face inserted instead. An image all the more jarring combining the best of art, with the pure awfulness of Mr Bean's attempted fix.
It was, alas, this very image that came to mind whilst listening to Brahms' second piano concerto, with Viktoria Postinikova as soloist, and her aging husband (Gennady Rozhdestvensky) as conductor. You see the trouble with classical music is that it can be completely ruined when in the wrong hands, and leave mental scarring due to the nature of the abuse.
Splitting a note in the opening horn solo could have been an omen, but even that was nothing to prepare what was to come. Extended to a monstrous hour long effort (sometimes a 33% bonus of time really is not beneficial) this performance was slow. The music that can skip along became clumsy. Actually, it was all rather clumsy come to that - split notes all over, with the pedalling seemingly chosen primarily to disguise pianistic innacuracy rather than for musical purpose. Oh my.
The second half of Brahms' Second Symphony was also ponderous, if not as offensively slow as the concerto, and there were some nice patches with the strings making a good rich tone. Overall though. Oh my oh my.
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I don't really love Jakarta. In fact, many Indonesians don't really love Jakarta - I sit next to one in Singapore, and she refuses to go anywhere near her capital city - but then she is from Bali. Although I've never actually been, I think most places would probably come in a second preference against Bali.
The troubles are multiple. I find the traffic a tad frustrating - Jakarta in particular is constantly jammed up - in fact they don't report traffic jams on the traffic news, but rather areas where there is little. Whilst I accept that I've not really looked around Jakarta (it's hard when it takes a long time to get, oh I don't know, 2 miles) what I've seen is not all that endearing - a lot of modern buildings with very limited character. the old ones, similarly uninspiring. The poverty is still pretty open.
The last two trips have been dire. The first one I worked all day in Jakarta, then stayed in the grottiest hotel I've ever not had to pay for (probably joint with a Premier inn a stone's throw from the Forth Bridge in Scotland). Then woke up at 5am to make Bandung, meetings there all day, then a 3 hour delay to my flight home. Bad would be better.
The second one I decided to get to Bandung the night before, but still worked in Jarkarta for the whole day after a 6am flight. Then the car taking me to Bandung left with someone else. The traffic meant it was 2 hours before a replacement reached me. we then got lost in Bandung. I hit the sack at midnight after a 19 hour day, with a meeting at 730 the next morning. I'm sure that eventually I will get around to seeing some of the nicer parts, and I do like the Hyatt in Bandung, which itself seems less claustrophobic and nuts than Jakarta.
We'll find out more soon - am back there from Sunday.
