Theatre Day in Malmö 07

Theatre day is where you buy a badge for 40 crowns (4£) that gives you entry to various performances and rehearsals.  I met up with Renzo and Åsa at Kafferösteriet at 2:00pm with pretty low expectations.  I had been the year before and it sucked. . . amateur and youth theatre at it's worst.

But this year was another story.  First we saw a dress rehearsal of Ibsen's The Wild Duck at Teater 23.  It's a heavy play and the suicidal/enigmatic ending was flawlessly rendered by the chamber cast.  My favourite line from this play is when Hedwig tells about a book she has seen from London:

-Jag såg döden med en timeglass, och en jungfru (I saw death holding an hourglass, and a virgin)

The laden symbolism got even stronger at the open dress rehearsal of Chekhov's Cherry Orchard by Malmö's Dramatiska Teatern.  To top off a fine day was some edgy scenes from Pinter's American Football.  Loneliness, Disorientation and Interrogation were the strong themes set beside a trombonist and an array of digital efects.

It was all fantastic theatre!  Later that night I introduced Renzo, Åsa and Calle to a little drink I have termed the Gammel Danskini.  Instead of a twist or olive, you use a nip of Gammel Dansk to spice a vodka martini - the perfect end to a magical, and quite political, theatre day.

Danish Dankort

Yesterday, on our merry way home from Copenhagen, Karlsson and I stopped for booze at Tårnby Brugsen.  It had been an exciting day in the hearing industry and we needed something to dull the excitment.  

I picked up a crate of beer and some wine and took i to the checkout to pay for it.  My Visa/Dankort card didn't work.  It kept teling me to use the magnetic stripe instead of the chip.  After half a dozen tries the checkout-chick rang for the manager who came over.  He noticed that I had an accent so asked,

-Er det en almindelig Dansk Dankort? Is this a Danish Dankort?

I thought of replying

-No, this is a Venezuelan Dankort. . .

Provincial views abound even in Copenhagen.

Tchaikovsky, Serenade for Strings Op. 48

If you ever are fortunate enough to study music history with a teacher who is both a scholar and a musician, you will learn that there are many wonderful works created in the last ca. 2500 years.  In a standard university course you would be given a listening list.  As centuries, artistic movements and history fly by, the comitted teacher will also point out other works, of no-less musical significance, but that cannot afford to be considered historically canonical.

One such work that Stephen Emmerson once pointed out to me was Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings Op. 48.  Tchaikovsky generally gets short shrift in Music history mainly on account of the fact that Brahms and Wagner were having a magnificent and drawn out aesthetic dispute over the role of drama and music, when Tchaikovsky was at the peak of his compositional game.  I thought nothing more of this untillast night when I was discussing music at a dinner in Copenhagen with T.S. Anand (Indian entrepreneur and mild mannered Seikh).

TS, in a throw away line admitted that he considered Tchaikovsky' Serenade to 
be the most marvellous piece ever written.  I raced home and bought a recording. . . it doesn't disappoint!