What do you say, Percy? I am thinking of sitting out on the sand to watch the moon rise. It’s full tonight. So we go
and the moon rises, so beautiful it makes me shudder, makes me think about time and space, makes me take measure of myself: one iota pondering heaven. Thus we sit, myself
thinking how grateful I am for the moon’s perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile, leans against me and gazes up into my face. As though I were just as wonderful as the perfect moon.
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Moonlight Sonata arranged and performed by Marcin (from the 1st and 3rd movements)
Può darsi che proprio quando non sappiamo più cosa fare siamo arrivati alla nostra vera opera, e che quando non sappiamo più dove andare siamo arrivati al nostro vero viaggio. La mente non perplessa non si adopera. Il torrente ostacolato è quello che canta.
(Traduzione di Paolo Severini)
Our Real Work
It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.
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Die Moldau – Remy van Kesteren (Night of the Proms 2012 – Antwerp, Belgium)
Nel tentativo di proteggere l’innocenza degli studenti disse loro che l’Era glaciale in verità era solo l’Età del freddo, un periodo di un milione d’anni in cui tutti dovevano portare il maglione.
E l’Età della pietra divenne l’Età della ghiaia, nome ripreso dai lunghi vialetti di casa di quel tempo.
L’Inquisizione spagnola non fu altro che una valanga di domande come “Che distanza c’è da qui a Madrid?” “Come si chiama il cappello di un matador?”.
La Guerra delle Rose ebbe luogo in un giardino e l’Enola Gay sganciò un piccolo atomo sul Giappone.
I bambini lasciavano la sua classe per il campo giochi, per tormentare lì i più deboli e i più bravi, arruffandone i capelli o spaccandogli gli occhiali,
mentre lui raccoglieva gli appunti e s’incamminava verso casa oltre le aiuole di fiori e le bianche staccionate, chiedendosi se avrebbero creduto che i soldati nella Guerra dei Boeri sparavano cioccolatini in modo da addolcire i nemici.
(Traduzione di Franco Nasi)
The History Teacher
Trying to protect his students’ innocence he told them the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age, a period of a million years when everyone had to wear sweaters.
And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age, named after the long driveways of the time.
The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more than an outbreak of questions such as “How far is it from here to Madrid?” “What do you call the matador’s hat?”
The War of the Roses took place in a garden, and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.
The children would leave his classroom for the playground to torment the weak and the smart, mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,
while he gathered up his notes and walked home past flower beds and white picket fences, wondering if they would believe that soldiers in the Boer War told long, rambling stories designed to make the enemy nod off.
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Jarrod Radnich Game of Thrones Medley — Virtuosic Piano Solo
Se esistono gli angeli, probabilmente non leggono i nostri romanzi sulle speranze deluse.
E neppure – temo – le nostre poesie risentite con il mondo.
Gli strilli e gli strazi delle nostre pièces teatrali devono – sospetto – spazientirli.
Liberi da occupazioni angeliche, cioè non umane, guardano piuttosto le nostre commediole dell’epoca del cinema muto.
Ai lamentatori funebri, a chi si strappa le vesti e a chi digrigna i denti preferiscono – suppongo – quel poveraccio che afferra per la parrucca uno che annega o affamato divora i propri lacci.
Dalla cintola in su le ambizioni e lo sparato, e sotto, nella gamba dei pantaloni, un topo impaurito. Oh, questo sì deve divertirli parecchio.
L’inseguimento in circolo si trasforma in una fuga davanti al fuggitivo. La luce nel tunnel si rivela l’occhio d’una tigre. Cento catastrofi sono cento divertenti capriole su cento abissi.
Se esistono gli angeli, dovrebbe convincerli – spero – questa allegria sull’altalena dell’orrore, che non grida neppure aiuto, aiuto, perché tutto avviene in silenzio.
Oso supporre che applaudano con le ali e che dai loro occhi colino lacrime almeno di riso.
(Traduzione di Pietro Marchesani)
The Silent Movies
If there are angels they probably don’t read our novels about disappointed hopes.
I’m afraid — unfortunately — that they don’t read our poems, either, which are full of grudges toward the world.
The shrieks and twitches of our plays must — I suspect — bore them.
In their breaks from angel-work, or rather non-human work they prefer to watch our comedians from the age of the silent movies.
More than the lamenters who tear their clothes and gnash their teeth they appreciate, I think, the poor wretch who grabs the drowning man by his toupé or who eats his own shoelace out of starvation.
From the waist up: breasts and aspirations and below a frightened mouse in his pant leg. Oh, yes this must heartily amuse them.
Ring-around-the-rosies transforms into running from the pursued. The light in the tunnel turns out to be the eye of a tiger. A hundred catastrophies are a hundred amusing sommersaults above a hundred abysses.
If there are angels, they should be convinced, I hope, by merriment swinging above terror, not even calling “help, help” because all this happens in silence.
I dare suppose that they are clapping their wings and that tears are flooding their eyes, especially tears of laughter.
(Translated by Walter Whipple)
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Khatia Buniatishvili and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Zubin Mehta) – Beethoven: Concerto No. 1 in C Major, Op. 15: III. Rondo
From the complications of loving you I think there is no end or return. No answer, no coming out of it. Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?
This isn’t a play ground, this is earth, our heaven, for a while. Therefore I have given precedence to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world. And I say to my body: grow thinner still. And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song. And I say to my heart: rave on.
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David Garrett, Gábor Takács-Nagy and the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra perform Beethoven, Violin Concerto Op 61
Each day I live I want to be A day to give The best of me I’m only one But not alone My finest day Is yet unknown
I broke my heart Fought every gain To taste the sweet I face the pain I rise and fall Yet through it all This much remains
I want one moment in time When I’m more than I thought I could be When all of my dreams are a heartbeat away And the answers are all up to me Give me one moment in time When I’m racing with destiny Then in that one moment of time I will feel I will feel eternity
I’ve lived to be The very best I want it all No time for less I’ve laid the plans Now lay the chance Here in my hands
Give me one moment in time When I’m more than I thought I could be When all of my dreams are a heartbeat away And the answers are all up to me Give me one moment in time When I’m racing with destiny Then in that one moment of time I will feel I will feel eternity
You’re a winner for a lifetime If you seize that one moment in time Make it shine
Give me one moment in time When I’m more than I thought I could be When all of my dreams are a heartbeat away And the answers are all up to me Give me one moment in time When I’m racing with destiny Then in that one moment of time I will be I will be free…
“One Moment in Time” è una ballata della cantante americana Whitney Houston e scritta da Albert Hammond e John Bettis, prodotta da Narada Michael Walden per le Olimpiadi estive del 1988 tenutesi a Seoul, in Corea del Sud.
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David Garrett – One moment in time (St. Petersburg 14.12.2016)
Come lascia la trama luminosa con le stelle intessuta la rugiada disseminando gemme senza posa su pascoli e steccati, e lenta si dirada –
come all’arida erba rilucente l’alba lascia fra sterpi aggrovigliati una goccia d’arcobaleno ardente su ciascuno dei semi rischiarati
così il tuo amore, una limpida aurora, ha di me fatto strada iridescente per continuare il viaggio ancora e ancora
e trasformare al mio sguardo ogni cosa – albero o pietra delicatamente in immagine nitida e radiosa.
(Traduzione di Silvio Raffo)
Dew
As dew leaves the cobweb lightly Threaded with stars, Scattering jewels on the fence And the pasture bars; As dawn leaves the dry grass bright And the tangled weeds Bearing a rainbow gem On each of their seeds; So has your love, my lover, Fresh as the dawn, Made me a shining road To travel on, Set every common sight Of tree or stone Delicately alight For me alone.
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Yuja Wang – Tea for Two (encore) – Vicenza, 19 feb 2015
