Took another trip to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for the last show of the 2007-2008 subscription season. I’ve gone pretty often recently; if it keeps up, I’ll have to stop blogging about it as it transitions from the unusual to the mundane!
Unfortunately, I arrived very late, missing the headline piece, a piano concerto of George Gershwin’s making. Too bad; during the intermission interview with the pianist, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, the piece was described as “the classiest broadway musical you’ll ever hear,” and it was suggested that Gershwin’s music was very much under-appreciated in North America.
At least I caught the second half, which was composed of excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. Enjoyable, and probably best recognized by this distinctive segment (listen to the 1’40″ mark):
I have an aging Dell 1700 (not 1700n) laser printer, that I make network accessible via an equally geriatric SMB7004 ABR router (it has a parallel port for the printer and exposes network printer service).
Owing to a recent desktop upgrade, I found myself trying to remember how to get it work with Ubuntu and CUPS. I distinctly remember downloading the Dell Windows drivers and extracting the PPD file out to give to CUPS, with successful results.
Not this time.
Using the Dell drivers (1700 PS3) resulted in the printer flashing error briefly, then resetting; useless. I tired some of the generic drivers that come with CUPS (e.g. PCL5). They worked for 8.5×11 sheets, but would also print envelope sizes (which are supposed to manually fed) on those same 8.5×11 sheets. Nearly any reasonable driver seems to work for 8.5×11, but would also assume that size for other page sizes.
Eventually, I found a discussion thread about the Dell 1700 laser printer on Linux. It turns out that the driver I wanted was the generic PCL 6/PCL XL Printer Foomatic/pxlmono, which comes with CUPS. Finally! The irony of spending hours debugging a computer problem so that I could avoid handwriting an address on an envelope was not lost on me.
The TSO’s concertmaster, Jacques Israelievitch, put on one more show as a farewell, starting with Bach’s Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins, bridged with a newly composed piece by Kelly-Marie Murphy, and ending with the very enjoyable Violin Concerto in D Major by Tchaikovsky.
Bach’s piece reminded me strongly of the old world ballroom music, men with white wigs enjoying fine music and wine. I guess this is what one calls chamber music? Despite the plethora of violins, I didn’t enjoy it much.
The next piece, Dallaire, was specially commissioned for this event, so that Mr. Israelievitch, a violinist, could play alongside his son, a percussionists. An unusual pairing, the piece had its moments. Strangely, the moments I liked and disliked were right next to each other. I didn’t enjoy the percussion solos; they were louder than when the entire orchestra was playing and made the resumption of the orchestra seem weak in comparison. However, once the orchestra resumed, the percussion added power to the violin’s solemn song. The overall piece was dark and solemn, punctured with intervals of drama. The composer spoke before the music started playing, and made allusions to the concept of a conversation. If so, then this piece sounded like very serious discourse, punctuated with a sharp word or two.
The last piece, Violin Concerto in D Major by Tchaikovsky, was a pleasure. I enjoyed the music of the first half a great deal, particularly in the first few minutes where a crescendo of lively music segues into a violin solo. The only downer was that there was a 10 year old kid on the left, and a sniffle nosed senior on the right. It pains me to sound like a snob, but it made it hard to really get into the music, particularly during the solos.
