Working on presentation

Not much left of the old year now with halloween and that gone and temperatures dropping a little which you notice if you are out a fair bit as I am, working on my fitness which has never been exactly great

Sissy gurls really need to embrace soft satin knickers with lace which need not be particularly wide to really take us out of cotton "y front" briefs and everything associated with them especially when we are in skirts and dresses.

These are some I wear that also come with a small pretty bow on the waist band.

Age Dysphoria works its way into things with me such as presenting more as junior child than any adult so things that fit into it are clip on ties if dressing more as them at a social function or as a school child is a part of it.

That cuts across any short trousers as much as pinafore dresses or skirts with blouses.

Aaron Copland redux

For as long as I recall classical music played a major part in my life from handed down records, broadcasts listened to an concerts attended that over the decades has lead to collection of favourites by various composers.

Parts of this have been mentioned on this blog over the years as I moved from buying performances on lp records and cassettes to now standard Compact Disc and High Definition download

Chunks of my collection are in one respect time periods where I picked what I could as my interests were piqued remaining without being reassessed in the light of newer recordings and improved mastering of older ones.

Aaron Copland is one of America's greatest composers, period, someone who had the art of getting a lot in without losing touch with American home spun idioms and relative simplicity.

It was around Nineteen-Ninety that got to hear across a weekday broadcasting slot the majority of his compositions in an excellent BBC Radio Three "This Mornings Composer" series of programs much of which served as my 'template' for collecting recordings of them around that era.

The mainstays in that era were Copland's own recordings for Columbia (now Sony Classical) records that in 1991 were compiled into three cd box sets.

I bought two at the time as they had the bulk of the works I wanted even if the early sixties sound left a little to be desired but that other set sounded poor so I never got it or its content

Following getting the Super Audio Player  I started this process of reassessment as its reproduction of regular cds  exceeded my previous players looking replacing by better sounding and sometimes played versions of which last months Mozart entry was one example.

There precious few recordings of Copland's Clarinet concerto or of Dance Panels and I had formed the view for my purposes, the two Sony Classical boxes I bought in the early nineteen-nineties would benefit from being replaced and this would be a good start point adding two works and replacing my original of 1925's "Music for the Theatre"

Leonard Slatkin is one the best leading conductors and advocates of Copland's music and he recorded for RCA a series of works featuring the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra well compiled of which this adds the not often heard Organ Symphony with Simon Preston and two other symphonies in modern wide ranging digital sound.

Copland mastered the art of writing film music that both didn't get in the way of the screen action and equally wasn't just soundtrack fodder, capable of being appreciated in its own right.

This disc featured the Red Pony, Music for Movies a arrangement of film music in the forms of a suite, Our Town and seldom recorded Prairie Journal (Music for Radio)which was broadcast on the radio.

This disc featured his Third Symphony and Music for a Great City which benefits from a modern recording.

Naxos had an excellent series of discs covering American Composers and I own most of the Samuel Barber titles but this one appealed as these main two works were in the third box I never bought although I've always loved The Tender Land suite written around life on a Southern Farm during the nineteen-thirties, his Piano Concerto and two collections of American Songs originally intended for piano and voice but transcribed here for orchestra and chorus.

I just love singing along to "I Bought Me a Cat".

A batch of Classical Super Audio cds

We are cycling towards the end of the month so I thought I'd post an update on my collection of classical music Super Audio cds which all can be played on regular cd players too.

One thing you have to recognize is because the format is so much capable of more natural sound doesn't mean you'll ditch any or all your existing recordings as there always two elements involved: the performance and the sound.

Ever since the days of the lp record that elusive balance of the two is what as collectors of recordings we've looking for and there exists from those early mono taped performances from the early nineteen-fifties to the turn of this decade many excellent performances that may not be on sacd and some where for technical reasons they may be little point in issuing them.

This said there are increasing numbers of  excellent recordings from the analogue tape era being freshly mastered and new recordings critically acclaimed so you may be able to 'upgrade' which is where we start.

For a good while I had been looking for a great fairly modern recording of Bartok's ground breaking Concerto For Orchestra which I remember well as a handed down Mercury mono lp record when I was in my early teens where I spied this.

It's reissue of the original Quadraphonic (surround sound) lps from the Deutsche Grammophon catalogue of the nineteen-seventies that only got issued in Japan but whose stereo mixes were issued in North America and Europe that were much admired.

 Arriving only toward the end of last week is a acclaimed recording of Schubert's String Quintet in C Major D 956 from 2011 by the much loved Tokyo String Quartet who have performed in North America and Europe.

Schubert's "The Trout" quintet has been a favourite of mine for a long while and recently I bought this excellent modern recording which will go with my regular cd sets of string quartets and symphonies by him.

This one can be filed under 'filling a hole' as in the years of building my classical music collection I hadn't gotten around to getting a complete set of Beethoven's String Quartets and this set of recordings from 2005 through 2008 is one of the best recorded.

I was able to get this 8 sacd set in stone mint condition used for half the regular price which made it quite bargain.

Mozart and I got back a long time, to the period I often borrowed pre-recorded tapes from the municipal library and most of my Mozart collection goes back to around 1991 on cd buying the many discs in the Mozart Masterpieces set.

Included in that was the debut recording of a then 14 year old Anne-Sophie Mutter with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra with its then larger than life conductor, Herbert von Karajan of the 3rd and 5th Violin Concertos to which I had added two slightly later recordings on EMI by her of numbers 1, 2 and 4.

This set recorded in 2011 by PentaTone records is widely regarded as one of the finest coming with the very best sound available and even features a dvd where you see Julia rehearsing.
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"This is what you need!"

 

When you aren't as able as most, you are more dependent on other people for things or completing them which isn't just an irritant that can cause you to lash out in frustration in itself but also a cause of tension between you.

What isn't said I think needs to be is inevitably it does alter the relating dynamic by virtue they have what you need and can't do that they can use as lever and equally you may feel you have leverage because they're your means of getting something done so it is easy to form an abusive relating pattern.

But it's not just that it's also how that person slots into the role helping you realize the idea you had that can become a point of contention too.

Speaking as a person whose always been disabled, our normal expectation is in discussing it with someone, they work with us to do it the way we wish unless that's not possible in which instance we'd expect them to talk though other suggestions reaching agreement on the way forward.

What can happen though is the person runs with what they feel is what you need, taking control not just of the help but also of the very idea itself imposing their ideas in place of yours  then threatening to walk off leaving with an uncompleted job if you even question such attitude as the one looking for help.

It's as if at that point you just became invisible no longer permitted to have any say about some things in your lives and that easily leads to tensions that others soon pick up on.

I think if you spot this early on you need to bring this up as it can easily cause issues.

A little rant

 

I don't know how others feel but I am tired of hearing boys can't do this or wear that.

  Boys can too wear dresses and skirts.

  Boys can too wear panties and slips.

  Boys can too be allowed to express their feelings.

Today Girls are allowed to do all of the above and they are allowed to dress completely as boys, ie pants, shirts, and boxers yet still today boys are discriminated against if they wish to wear a dress or skirt.  

The boys who do are called a whole host of names that are not only degrading to the boys but females as well. IT is like being a girl is something that should be considered less then their male counterparts. 

Just like the "N" word for blacks is no longer in dictionaries the term "SISSY"* or "FAG" should be taken out of the dictionaries.  

To me WE need to make the use of what a gender wears not be included as to that person but see him or her as another human who just has and expresses their gender in a way that makes sense to them.

* Sissy as an insult should be removed, sissy gurl as a gender idenity being too feminine for a girl and insufficient masculine by a wide margin to be any kind of boy I feel should stay.