Hallelujah!

 

Hallelujah, the year is coming to an end. This seemed a suitably festive poster for the occasion - a beautiful jazz age poster for the 1929 movie directed by King Vidor. 

 

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The Undivided Five by A Winged Victory for the Sullen

 

 

The Undivided Five is the third studio album by the American ambient neo-classical music duo A Winged Victory for the Sullen, released in 2019. The album was produced in eight different recording studios across Europe. I found their debut very good, and the second album OK. The third is a marked improvement over the first two, and got the 'essential' stamp of approval from me. No favourite tracks, as with many of these albums it has to be listened to from start to finish.

 

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Vogue Winter Perfume

 

 

A wonderful vintage Art Deco German poster for Vogue's Winter perfume from 1927. Appropriate for the time of year. The design is by Jupp Wiertz.

 

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La Mode illustrée (September 1923)

Here we have a great cover of La Mode illustrée (Illustrated fashion). This French fashion magazine appeared from 1860 until 1937. No information about the illustrator.

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Speak Low: Kurt Weill Songs by Anne-Sofie von Otter

 

 

A Deutsche Grammophon CD with works by Kurt Weill (1900-1950) sung by Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, accompanied by the NDR Sinfonieorchester under John Eliot Gardiner. Thirteen songs, including evergreens like My Ship, Surabaya-Johnny and I'm A Stranger Here Myself, as well as the complete The Seven Deadly Sins. If I could keep just one Kurt Weill CD, it would be this one. The cover photograph, depicting a scene that could have been taken in a Berlin nightclub in the 1920's, is by Denise Grünstein - a fabulous example of Chiaroscuro.

 

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Klimtesque

 

 

I came across this beauty in a side street in Prague way back in 2009. Just a stone wall, where time left its mark in beautiful shapes and colours (which I pushed in post-processing in Picasa). The result is an abstract that reminds me of Klimt in its colour settings.

 

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Merry Christmas Everybody!

 

We wish everyone a Merry Christmas! This photograph was taken by my wife in front of our house (and first art gallery) during the recent Christmas in Old Kampen festival.

Copyright statement: image copyright Lu Schaper.

Kites by Simon Dupree and the Big Sound

 

 

About the band: Simon Dupree and the Big Sound were a British psychedelic band formed in 1966, and dissolved in 1969, after which the core members formed the prog band Gentle Giant. They released only one studio album, and their only big hit Kites was not included on it.

About the song: Kites is the only sixties' one-hit-wonder that has stood the test of time. The band hated it, but their manager loved it, as its psychedelic sound was exactly right for the time. The colourful tones of the mellotron create a distinctly Asian atmosphere, enhanced by the images of the lyrics (the white kite flying in the sun, with a message of love on it), and topped off by the recitation of an Asian sounding poem by actress Jacqui Chan, who apparently reproduced phonetics taught to her by her grandmother with the result that no-one knows what she is saying or even what language it is in. 

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Composition No. 18 by Jacoba van Heemskerck

 

A souvenir of our visit to the City Museum of The Hague a few years ago. I had never heard of Dutch artist Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876-1923), but several of her paintings were shown in the museum, and I quite liked them. This is my favourite of the lot, made around 1910. 

 
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At the Exhibition

 

An illustration for a fashion magazine that could have been a great painting. It was created in 1919 by George Paul Gaston Leonnec (French illustrator, 1881-1940).

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Knoxville: Summer of 1915 by Samuel Barber

 

Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is a work for voice and orchestra (or chamber orchestra) from 1947 by American composer Samuel Barber (1910 - 1981). The text is from a 1938 short prose piece by James Agee. Although the piece is traditionally sung by a soprano, it may also be sung by tenor. This beautiful piece is a poetic evocation of life in a hot summer as seen from the perspective of a small boy. The work is in one movement, and is described in detail in its Wikipedia entry. I came across this gem when exploring Dawn Upshaw's discography in the early nineties after attending a recital by her in Chicago. It was my first encounter with Barber other than his famous Adagio for strings - many more compositions followed though. The version shown above is by Dawn Upshaw and the Orchestra of St. Luke's under David Zinman on a Nonesuch CD.

 

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The Dark Knight

 

The Dark Knight (2008)

Christopher Nolan's 2008 Batman flick, starring Christian Bale, Heather Ledger and Gary Oldman, is far better than anything I've seen in the genre - Heather Ledger was absolutely superb as the Joker. There were several posters for the movie, but this one stands out for me, especially how the bat symbol doubles up as the Joker's make-up/blood smeared mouth. 

 

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Mark Hollis by Mark Hollis

 

 

Mark Hollis is the only studio album by English musician and singer-songwriter Mark Hollis, the former Talk Talk front man, released in 1998. Originally it was meant to be a Talk Talk album, by the name Mountains of the Moon, but in the end it was decided to release it as a solo album. It continues where the final Talk Talk album Laughing Stock left off, atmospheric ambient post-rock with a dash of contemporary classical music. It has been called "the most quiet and intimate record ever made". Not for everyone, but if you are susceptible to this kind of minimal music (like I am) it is an absolute masterpiece. My favourites from the album are Watershed, Inside Looking Out, Westward Bound, and A New Jerusalem.

 

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Kew Gardens

 

 

London is of course a very suitable subject for vintage travel posters, and I selected this one because of the storks - our gallery's name is the mandarin word for stork. It was issued in 1920 as part of a series to promote the London Underground. The artist is Fred Taylor.

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Photoplay (January 1927)

 

 

Photoplay was one of the first American film fan magazines. It was founded in 1911 in Chicago and reached its peak in the 1920s and 1930s. At that time it was considered quite influential within the motion picture industry. The magazine was renowned for its artwork portraits of film stars on the cover by such artists as Earl Christy and Charles Sheldon. With the advancement of color photography, the magazine began using photographs of the stars instead by 1937. The magazine ceased publication in 1980 (from Wikipedia). This cover features movie star Olive Borden, whose career plummeted a few years later due to a reputation for being difficult and her problems to adjust to the new sound films. But she does look lovely behind the wheel of her car. The illustrator is Carl van Buskirk.

 

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Chamber music by Brahms and Dvořák

 

 

This CD has been a long-time favourite of mine. It was one of my first chamber music albums, combining two pieces I still consider in my top 3 for that genre: Johannes Brahms' autumnal Clarinet Quintet and Antonín Dvořák's mercurial 'American" String Quartet (the third being Franz Schubert's String Quintet). The performances by the Delmé String Quartet and Heith Puddy on clarinet are very fine indeed. If I could keep only one chamber music CD, this would be the one.

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Surreal Stairs

 

A dazzling Escheresque abstract image that I encountered in the Aegean shopping mall in Shanghai during our 2018 trip, a combination of reflections and refractions on a decoration piece. One of a series of abstracts I shot in Shanghai's many modern shopping malls.

 

Copyright statement: image copyright Hennie Schaper. Contact me if you like to use it.

Jeder's manchmohl einsam by Wolfgang Niedecken

 

About the artist: Wolfgang Niedecken (1951) is a German singer, musician, and visual artist. He is the founder and lead singer of the rock group BAP. Since 1987 he has also released a handful of solo albums. Niedecken sings his songs in Kölsch, the local dialect of Cologne. 

 
About the song: Jeder's manchmohl einsam is a track from the 1996 album Leopardenfell: seventeen covers of Bob Dylan songs, translated into Kölsch. He achieves the impossible on this album: he makes you forget that these are Dylan songs (even though he takes some of the most famous ones like A hard rain's a gonna fall and Mighty Quinn) and makes them sound like his own work. Absolutely brilliant is his version of It's all over now, baby blue, which translated becomes Jeder's manchmol einsam. Sandwiched between some of the best sax playing this side of Baker Street, this sensitive ballad unfolds to great effect.

 

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Summer night, Inger on the beach by Edvard Munch

 

Edvard Munch (1863 - 1944) was a Norwegian painter, who painted in a rather personal style hovering between post-impressionism and expressionism. His best known work, The Scream (1893), has become an iconic image, but I actually prefer many of his others. There are a few themes that are often recurring in Munch's oeuvre - the beach (with or without people) is one of them. This 1889 painting includes a model, Munch's youngest sister. I first came across this image as a CD cover for songs by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg in the version of Anne Sofie von Otter, soprano, and Bengt Forsberg, piano. 

 

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The Shanghairen

 

 

The Shanghairen is a magazine that does not exist. Wait, what? From their website (link): "The Shanghairen is a collaborative project gathering dozens of emerging and confirmed talents from Shanghai and the rest of the World. It's a tribute to the famous covers of "The New Yorker", "The Parisianer", "The Tokyoiter" and "Le Montrealer". All artists were given full freedom of style and topics to express their vision of the city."  

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Shéhérazade by Maurive Ravel

 

Shéhérazade is a song cycle of three poems for (mezzo) soprano (or tenor) and orchestra (or piano), completed in 1903 by French composer Maurice Ravel (1875 - 1937). The songs are based on the exotic texts of the French poet Tristan Klingsor, and evoke Persia of days gone by. I have a strong preference for the female voice in this work, and an even stronger preference for the orchestral version rather than the piano. The version shown above is by Elly Ameling and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra under Edo de Waart on a Philips CD. 

 

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Memoirs of a geisha

 

Memoirs of a geisha (2005)

 

This 2005 Rob Marshall American epic period drama film about a young girl being forced to become a geisha is one of the most intriguing ones I've seen - only the ending was 'too Hollywood' for my taste. It starred Zhang Ziyi, Ken Watanabe, and Michelle Yeoh.The poster is very attractive as well - it reminds me a bit of the art by Partick Nagel. 

 

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Red Skies over Paradise by Fischer-Z

 

 

Red Skies over Paradise from 1981 is the third studio album by British New Wave group Fischer-Z. The theme of many songs is the Cold War threatening to escalate to World War III - a real threat that was on many people's minds in those years (and unfortunately once again at the moment). The outstanding title track about a nuclear attack on London, and songs like Battalions of Strangers, Berlin, and Cruise Missiles, are some of the striking examples. Other songs worth mentioning are the hit single Marliese, a creepy but great stalking song, and Song And Dance Brigade. For me this album is the highlight of their career, and one of the best albums of the decade.

 

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Carriso Gorge

 

 

The first decades of the twentieth century are a goldmine for beautiful travel posters. I had not seen this one before. The "Southern Pacific" made me wonder where this could be - turns out that this gorge is in Southern California, near San Diego. The poster is by Maurice Logan.

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Pictorial Review (February 1927)

 

 

Pictorial Review was a New York based women's magazine published from 1899 to 1939. By the late 1920s it was one of the largest of the "women's magazines". The Great Depression ended its existence a decade later. No information on the illustrator of this cover portrait.

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Moeran's Concertos

You have never heard of the English composer Ernest John Moeran (1894 - 1950)? I don't blame you - even at classical music discussion sites his name hardly rings a bell with many members. I have loved him ever since I got my first CD of his works (his only symphony) in the 1980s - he is a solid top20 composer to my taste. The CD shown above is a marvel. If I could save only one Moeran CD it would be this one. His Cello Concerto (played by Raphael Wallfisch with the Bournemouth Sinfonietta under Norman Del Mar) is for me the very best ever composed for that instrument (yes, even better than Dvorak and Elgar), and his Violin Concerto (played by Lydia Mordkovitch and the Ulster Orchestra under Vernon Handley) is almost as impressive. The two short orchestral works (Lonely Waters and Whythorne's Shadow, played by the Ulster Orchestra under Vernon Handley) are welcome bonuses. 

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Nanjing Usnisa palace

 

An example of architecture abstractions in photography. About halfway our 2018 Shanghai trip, we took a short organized three day excursion to Nanjing, Yangzhou and Zhenjiang. The first stop was at the Nanjing Usnisa Palace, a formidable complex that houses relics of the Buddha Siddhartha Gautama. The architecture is incredible, and the visit was unforgettable.  Here we have a detail of the roof of the entrance building - a stunning abstraction full of twists and turns. 

 

Copyright statement: image copyright Hennie Schaper. Contact me if you like to use it.

Tequila Sunrise by The Eagles

 

About the band: The Eagles are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1971. They are one of the world's best-selling bands, having sold more than 200 million records, including 100 million albums sold in U.S alone. Their highest popularity was in the seventies, when they released six of their seven studio albums.

 
About the song: the hit single Tequila sunrise from the 1973 album Desperado is a prime example of early Eagles, when their country-rock style still leaned very much toward country rather than rock. A simple melancholy ballad, lyrics that are rather run-of-the-mill, and somehow, some way, this song settles in your mind and you like it forever. The title is a play of words on the sunrise observed after a night of drinking, as well as on a well-known cocktail.

 

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The rag collector by Marianne von Werefkin

 

 

Russian artist Marianne von Werefkin (1860 - 1938) is one of my favourite expressionists. I first encountered her work on the internet, then we saw a few of her paintings in musea before Corona, and a few weeks ago we saw dozens of her works in a fabulous exhibition in nearby Zwolle.

 

This 1917 work, which was also in the exhibition, is just one example of her style. Could this landscape be more menacing? And to top it, we have the figure of the rag collector upfront, collecting rags from the seashore or lakeshore, likely remains from a boating accident. Morbid.

 

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Cherie

 

Covers of sheet music from the twenties are often great pieces of art, but this stylish one from 1921 by Art Phillips may be the most beautiful I've seen so far. And if you wonder what the song sounds like, I found it on YouTube here.

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From Me Flows What You Call Time by Tōru Takemitsu

 

From Me Flows What You Call Time is a concerto for 5 percussionists and orchestra from 1990 by Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu (1930 - 1996). It fits in with the 20th century tradition of writing concertos for unusual instruments. The title is taken from a poem by the Japanese poet Makoto Ooka, titled “Clear Blue Water”. It's a beautiful and evocative piece that deserved to be better known than it is. The version shown above is by percussion group Nexus and  the Pacific Symphony Orchestra under Carl St. Clair on a Sony CD.

 

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