Happy New Year 2014: Christmas

Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Christmas Vacation 2013 - Coolum Beach

I love our week's vacation every year. There's no doubt it will always be at the beach. I had every single holiday at the beach as a child (and as an adult for most of the time) and I'm pretty sure my kids love it too. Probably comes with the territory and the fact that we live in a wonderful part of the world. One such place is just over an hour north of where we live on the Sunshine Coast called Coolum Beach. That's where we headed this year.

It's always a pretty stressful time for me as a single Mum to make sure I've got everything packed, food organised (I ordered groceries online and collected just near our destination), and all the other things that need to be organised before we go away but off we went. I was so, so tired emptying the house in readiness for the floors to be polished while we were away so I really wanted to get there and relax.

We rented a beautiful little pet friendly house about 5 minutes walk from the beach with a pool and nicely decorated in resort style furniture. It had all the modern creature comforts of home and just what we needed for our week away.

The kids hit the pool as soon as we got there and I was happy to sit and watch. Our days were made up of swimming in the pool daily and just being lazy.

We'd wake every morning and go to the beach before it got too hot. The kids played in the sand while I went for a run.

Coolum Beach is one of my most favourite beaches and brings back fond memories of my childhood when we would camp at the nearby Lutheran camp site with our church. The beaches are unspoilt and up until recently, was free of fast food chains. (Thanks for nothing McDonalds.)

Every afternoon we took our dogs to the area designated for dogs at Stumers Creek, a couple hundred metres north of the main part of Coolum Beach. A beautiful fresh water creek for the dogs to splash around in, poop bags, water bowl and hose for the dogs plus toilets and a park for the humans as well. I've had our Mini Pinscher, Willy for 10 years since he was 9 months old and I don't recall ever taking him to the beach before. He absolutely loved it.

The boy and his dog.

On our second last night, I treated us all to dinner out at the Coolum Beach Surf Life Saving Club and it just so happened to coincide with the grand opening of a new bar and new renovations. There were Christmas parties galore so the place was really pumping. Who wouldn't want to dine with the sea breeze blowing and that view to look at.

I had a pasta dish with Moreton Bay bugs (similar to lobster) and prawns with garlic and chilli. The kids had a kid's meal and enjoyed time in the kid's club while I had a little break and enjoyed the view.

As we wandered back to the car, the Friday night craft markets were on with lots of beautiful jewellry and things to look at. It was a beautiful evening and nice just to browse.

We finished the evening with an ice cream and headed home. The next day, our last, we relaxed by the pool before we headed home on the Sunday morning and back to preparations for Christmas. I'd love to live at Coolum Beach one day but in the mean time I can dream and think about where we will go next year.

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Dresdener Kreuzchor Weihnachtszyklus 1945

Rudolf Mauersberger's Weihnachtszyklus first performed 15th December 1944.with the Dresdener Kreuzchor. Two months later, Dresden would be destroyed by British and American firebombs, flattening the historic old quarter of the city, one of the treasures of German culture. Coventry doesn't compare. The boys of the Kreuzchor hid for shelter in a dark cellar nearby, not knowing what was going on outside, or if their families were safe. Mauersberger, their choirmaster, calmed them down by making them sing songs of faith. Can hymns have been quite so fervent, out of the mouths of children?

Mauersberger's Weihnachtszyklus is beautiful bercause it celebrates Christmas from the perspective of children. It's not yet another telling of the Bible story, which the choristers sang about all year round. Instead, it describes the Dresden Striezelmarkt, or Christmas fair, and the simple folk toys that children marvelled at before Christmas was commercialized. We can hear bells, cuckoo calls, and rhythms suggesting the movement of mechanical toys. The choristers sing with real enthusiasm, all the more touching because many of these boys, one of whom is Peter Schreier, had been huddled together as the bombs fell around them four years earlier.

Perhaps Mauerberger's Weihnachtszyklus fell out of favour in the DDR because it was a raw reminder of the war, and of lost innocence, but I think that is exactly why it should become part of the Christmas repertoire not only in Germany but elsewhere. Do watch the video, published by a Dresdener Kreuzchor source, because it includes photos from their archives, not seen otherwise. Every British youth choir "needs" to hear this

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Christmas in Vienna 2013 viewing link

Angelika Kirchschlager, Ursula Langmayr (replacing Anna Prohaska), Luca Pisaroni and Joel Prieto in this year's Wiener Konzerthaus "Christmas in Vienna" broadcast (link here). This annual concert is a treasure because it's a complete antithesis to the formal stodge we normally get at Xmas, and also refreshingly different to the famous Neujahrskonzerts at the Goldenersaal at the Musikverein. You can also tell, by the number of women and blacks on the platform that it's the ORF Radio Symphonieorchester Wien not the Wiener Philharmoniker. The audience turns up in normal clothes, just as the shepherds turned up at the stable in Bethlehem.

The opening shots show the soloists and conductor Erwin Ortner put gifts under a simple Xmas tree, while the boys of the Wiener Sängerknaben pretend to snatch them away. Of course it's staged - but it's good humoured and full of charm. Musical values, though, are extremely strong. Bright trumpets announce Adeste Fidelis, soloists, choir and orchestra celebrating together.

Angelika Kirchschlager is in her element. She always sings beautifully, but here she seems much more relaxed and spontaneous than she might be in a more pressurized recital. Maybe her children are listening, and she knows it. When she and Luca Pisaroni sang Englebert Humperdinck Weihnachten, they gave the simple song the human, personal warmth it needs. The voices of the Wiener Sängerknaben rang out like angels as they stood in the golden balcony above the choir and orchestra.

Glorious Bach, of course, (nice trumpet) but also Ariel Ramirez "Gloria" from Missa Criolla (12964) which combines South American folk instruments with conventional orchestra and singers. The folk musicians wear red ponchos - quite a showpiece - and Prieto sang with them in the small upper stage balcony. The piece suited Prieto well, and he sang with concentrated focus. Pisaroni and Kirchschlager showed the comic side of their talents with "Baby, it's cold outside". They were classy, and stylish. Prieto and Langmayr duetted with "Let it snow". Neither can sing in English, but it didn't matter, they conveyed the mood. Then, Vienna's own contribution to the Christmas repertoire, Franz Xaver Gruber's Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht. Magical ! Watch it again HERE.

Earlier today on Arte TV, a version of Monteverdi Poppea. Not the full Monty, but Rock Baroque. The very fact that European rockers can engage with Monteverdi is quite something. Anglo rednecks, I suspect, would sneer at the very thought. It wasn't my thing but it was good to hear that these musicians were prepared to engage with new/old ideas and create anew. More than can be said for many who think they know better. Later tonight, Marc Minkowski conducts Berlioz - should worth staying up for.

photo : ORF Ali Schafler (not 2013)

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Weimar animation - The Star of Bethlehem

Strikingly modern image - but it's from 1921 It comes from Lotte Reiniger's film The Star of Bethlehem originally made in Germany but best known in the version below, produced in 1953, using the Glyndebourne chorus, though they aren't listed in the credits. In the early days of film, artists were experimenting with many new techniques, from short stop animations (Meliés, Segundo do Chomo ) to posed shots of insects (Wladyslaw Starewicz), light shows (Walther Ruttmann) and sophisticated fantasy (René Clair) so it was perhaps natural that Reiniger, who worked in avant garde film circles, should turn to the German art of Scherenschnitte which had thrived in the 18th and 19th century, before photography took hold.

Silhouettes and puppets bridge folk art and sophisticated commercial performance. As a child, Goethe had an elaborate toy theatre where he acted out dramas of his own creation. Silhouettes, puppets and street theatre have roots not only in German culture but also in Turkish, Chinese and Indonesian Wayang. Thus Reiniger's use of Scherenschnitte fuses tradition and modernity, folk tradition and high tech art. .

Lotte Reiniger's Scherenschitte are beautifully executed - look at the lace tracery on the angel's wings - but she adapts the form so the figures move, and can be posed like puppets, and animated for film. The figures are black, so you see only the outlines: you fill in the magic with your imagination. Early 20th century audiences would have connected the images in this film with silhouettes they'd known from their own childhoods and responded to the magic of memory. Twenty-first century audiences, bombarded with a multiplicity of styles, would do well to ponder the simplicity of Reiniger's art, which uses naive form in a highly sophisticated, non-naive way to recreate a sense of mystery and wonder.

Reiniger and her husband, Carl Koch, were both closely involved with Weimar left wing circles. In 1933, they left Grermany, settling first in France, reaching England in 1949. Reiniger left her archive to the British Film Institute which has released a 2 DVD set of her fairy films. Read more here about how they've been restoring the original The Star of Bethlehem, painstakingly removing the desiccated cellotape that held the cardboard joints in place while filming took place. They are also replacing the long sequence of flying devils which were "considered so scary that they were cut from the American release". Some things, alas, don't change. From the stills in the article quoted above, those demons seem a crucial part of the whole. So perhaps the version below will be replaced by something less sanitized. Also recommended, a documentary made about Reiniger in1970, which is well worth the rental price of £1.

Merry Christmas 2013

To all of my lovely followers, guests and best buddies, just wanted to take time out to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous and Happy 2014! You've all been such great support to me over the years. After the last two years, I'm certainly looking forward to 2014. It will be the best year of my life.

Thanks again for always popping in to say 'gidday'. Merry Christmas from Anne, Emelia and Ben. xxx

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Vintage Christmas Card Bunting

I'm a little behind in anything relating to Christmas this year. I decided not to stress myself out this Christmas and just go with the flow. You might just see quite a lot of Christmas related blog posts from me right up until about March I think!

It just goes to show that sometimes hanging on to things of sentimental value might just be of value to someone later on down the track. Going through my Mum's things this year, I came across all of her Christmas cards she got before she was married. There were also all of my birth greeting cards (I'm the eldest) plus engagement, kitchen tea and birthday greeting cards all from the 1950's and 1960's.

I couldn't stand parting with them but knew it would be too much to hold onto all of them. I gave some away to Facebook friends and then made myself and my two sisters each their own Christmas card bunting. It will be a great thing to bring out each Christmas to remind us of Mum and her remember her value of sentiment. The cards are so cute and were in perfect condition. Most of them still had a lot of glitter on them. I just used some vintage bias binding, also from her collection to hold them all together and sewn on the sewing machine.

A simple easy decorative item with sentimental value and it won't take up much room in the Christmas decorations box.

PS. Not that my photos were ever much good but my phone is in being fixed and that's what I use for most of my photos these days. I'm using my son's iPod at the moment.

A THRiFTY Christmas - Week 4

Well, this is it folks. The last round up of Christmas blog posts from this week's Thriving on Thursday linky party. Only 3 days until Christmas. I hope you're organised and if not, I'm sure you'll find some last inspiration in this lot.

FOOD