Manhattan, Circled

Ada and Andrew were visiting with us in New York at Christmas, and as we were looking to do things that did not involve the midtown Manhattan Christmas madness, we decided to take the Circle Line boat which goes all the way around Manhattan island.   I have memories of doing this at some point in my life, but most likely in prehistoric times.    It was a grey and frigid day, with dark threatening clouds and winds whipping up the Hudson river.  Only a hardy few people stayed on the outdoor deck for the entire two and a half hour trip.  It's a fascinating trip, not only for seeing the expected landmarks, but also for discovering all the diversity of the shoreline, which ranges from densely cluttered high rises to industrial waterfront to wasteland.   And, for me, a major feature was the chance to see all twenty-one of the bridges which connect Manhattan to the rest of the world.   And, of course I took photos.   The boat starts at midtown, heads south on the Hudson River, then around lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.   It then heads north on the East River and Harlem River, around the northern tip of Manhattan and back down the Hudson to midtown.  The pictures appear in that order.  The pictures are not intended to give anyone a sense of what you see when you do the trip; they are just pictures of things that intrigued me.


I liked these protective screens at the Chelsea piers:

The Erie Lackawanna ferry terminal.   My father used to take the train here and took the ferry across to lower Manhattan where he worked.

In lower Manhattan, the buildings are all squished together:

Walls of glass:

This is the old New Jersey Central railroad terminal, where trains would arrive and the passengers would transfer to ferries for New York.   It is a ruin which has luckily been preserved.  I plan on visiting soon!

A forlorn lady:

Looking closer, perhaps for signs of dismay towards a certain politician's attitudes towards immigration:

And Ellis Island:

New York is a harbor, and I like these colorful cranes in Red Hook:

The Brooklyn Bridge, with the Manhattan Bridge in the background>

The base of the Manhattan Bridge, with Dumbo condos and condos-to-be in the background.

Not all the waterfront in Brooklyn has been turned into condos yet.  There are still  industrial parts.   There are extended electrical facilities:

New condos seen through the Williamsburg bridge:

The old Domino sugar factory, a ruin which will somehow be turned into condos or something like that:

A closer look:

The smokestacks of a Con-Ed electric plant on the East Side of Manhattan:

Flashy architecture.   Would you want to live in a crooked building?

The UN, another institution under siege:

Gothic ruins on Roosevelt Island:

The Queensboro Bridge as it enters Manhattan:

I have always liked the Queensboro Bridge structure.  When you take pictures of it, it's impossible to figure out what's going on, structure-wise.

Underneath the bridge, with Roosevelt Island tennis courts:

A passing barge, with the bridge and the Roosevelt Island tramway in the back.

I have never been sure what this rollercoaster-like structure is:

Modern facade:

A drawbridge:

More old industrial buildings with faded old signs:

The Triboro Bridge, with the Hell Gate railroad bridge in the background:

Here are red, yellow, blue pictures of a sort:

An orange abandoned building:

Mixed use:

The Macombs Dam bridge:

 with great little towers on top:

I have no idea why there appears to be a lighthouse on top of this building:

I love bridges:

Made with an Erector Set?

I don't know what this is.

Subway guys in the subway yards in upper Manhattan:

More industrial clutter by the river:

Another drawbridge tower:

The George Washington Bridge:

And the famous little red lighthouse underneath it:

(The lighthouse was featured in the 1940's noir "Force of Evil"):

I like the four layers of subway and roads here on the Upper West Side:

Grant's Tomb and Riverside Church:

When you get back towards midtown, we are back in the world of wall to wall high rises:

These condos are colorful for the moment, but will soon become more anodyne glass boxes:

Glimpses towards the "Billionaire's Row" high rises, with the old IRT generating plant and the triangular VIA 57 building in the foreground:

From a slightly different angle:

And yet another angle:

So ends my version of the around the Manhattan tour.   I must say that, despite the cold numbing my fingers, I was very happy to do this on a grey winter day, rather than suffering in a hot sun in the summer tourist season.   I did get a greater appreciation for the extraordinary variety of the urban landscape of Manhattan.  Vera, Ada, and Andrew seemed to enjoy it, though some eventually retreated to the warmth of the interior of the boat.

Synagogues in New York, Part 1

After visiting many interesting and beautiful synagogues in Bucharest and Budapest, I realized that I had never looked at any in New York.   So I began to plan to visit them.
My first stop was what is now called the Eldridge Street Museum.   It was built as a synagogue in the 1880's in the Lower East Side of New York, on Eldridge Street, when the neighborhood was the center of Eastern European Jewish immigration.    It was, at the time, a big deal, though gradually as the neighborhood changed over the years, it fell out of use, and was at the point of collapse in the late 20th century.   Luckily, it has been saved and totally restored, and is both a landmark and a museum.  The area around it now is all Chinatown (though, as New York changes, it may be something else in another 20 years). The interior and exterior are remarkable, done in the same wonderfully eclectic style as the synagogues we saw in Europe.   Though not as lavish, of course; the community that built it was not a rich one.   The building has a wonderful patina of age inside; you somehow can really sense how it might have looked and felt over a hundred years ago.   The building also contains various artifacts and exhibits relating to its history as well as exhibits showing the state of decay the building was in before it was restored.

Many pictures:

My second synagogue was the Temple Emanu-El, located at Fifth Avenue and 65th Street.  It's one of the largest synagogues around, built in the 1920's, and, as evidenced by its location, one of the more prosperous synagogues around.   I have walked by it many, many times, but had never been inside.   The synagogue is not exactly visitor friendly; you enter through a side door, through security, and then are personally escorted by a guard to the main part of the synagogue.  As a visitor you are restricted to a small area of the synagogue.   But this also means there are no crowds; there were virtually no other visitors while I was there.   It is a magnificent space, beautifully decorated with mosaics and stain glass windows.   The mosaics were designed by Hildreth Meière.  It is fascinating when you compare this synagogue with its neighbor down the street, the tourist mobbed St. Patrick's Cathedral.    This synagogue would surely deserve as much visitor interest as its neighbor, but I doubt they would want it.


Pictures:

Concerts and More Concerts

Sometimes in New York there are suddenly many days in a row with "must hear" concerts, and then I begin to fall behind in writing about what I have heard.   November has been that kind of month; and I can't seem to find the time to adequately write about what I have heard and do all the other things that I want to do.  
For example, here is a recent sequence of concerts we went to (Vera skipped the last one).

Tuesday:   The Emerson String Quartet playing late Beethoven
Wednesday:  A Cabaret performance by Sanda Wiegl and Doug Fitch
Thursday:  No concert
Friday: A concert of 1960's and 1970's modernist music by Luciano Berio
Saturday: A jazz performance by the Scott Robinson Quartet
Sunday:  Schoenberg's expressionist monodrama "Erwartung"
Monday:  Debussy's "La Mer" and Ravel's opera "L'Enfant et les Sortilèges"

I would happily write a few paragraphs or more about each of these events!  All had memorable moments.

And, in the preceding weeks, there was Varese's "Ameriques", the Tetzlaff Quartet performing Schubert's late G Major String Quartet, and William Kentridge doing Schwitter's "Ursonate".   And there were others we might have gone to if there were not conflicts with other concerts or activities.   So people ask, "So you are in New York, do you go to the theater a lot?"  Well, no, because we go to too many concerts.

As should be obvious from what I have just written, I really enjoy hearing live music, despite my aging and less than perfect hearing.   I rarely listen to recordings these days, because the sound of a live performance (in a proper venue!) is so much more engaging.  A live performance makes a lasting impression in my memory; recordings don't do that for me these days.  And in an age where a recording of everything that ever existed seems to be available instantly in the internet, there is something refreshing about having to make the effort to go to a particular place at a particular time to hear what you want to hear.    That said, you are at the same time at the mercy of whoever is making the programming decisions for any particular venue or group.    I recently realized that I have been to five orchestral concerts this fall, and that all of them have been by student orchestras.   The New York Philharmonic and many of the visiting orchestras have been in their very traditional ruts these days; the lack of imagination and fear of economic calamities have made the orchestras exceptionally timid in their programming; they would never dare to put on a program of unfamiliar work, because they assume no one will come.  Which is indeed the case, for the most part.   But organizations, if they put their mind to it, can make it work.  The Met Opera's last performance of "The Exterminating Angel" was sold out.  The Met, with the help of the NY Times, put a great deal of effort into promoting the work, and the effort clearly paid off.
But this is turning into a rant, so I will stop.   And in a subsequent post I will try to comment on some of the concerts I have heard, before I forget!


 

Thomas Adès and the Exterminating Angel

One of the biggest events of the fall season have been the Metropolitan Opera's performances of Thomas Adès's opera "The Exterminating Angel", based on the eponymous Bunuel film.   We went with a Vancouver crowd, David M, Michael T, and with Molly and Fenimore.  (It was Molly and Fenimore's first live opera!).   I went back for a second performance, as well, and Vera went to the HD cinema broadcast.
The opera is simply one of the best contemporary operas I have ever heard.  The libretto of the opera is very close to the film.   At first glance, it seems like a problematic enterprise; the film is about went some guests who find themselves unable to leave a dinner party.   Bunuel, when asked why the guests could not leave, said that there is simply no explanation.   It's a kind of surrealistic film, but done in Bunuel's particular kind of deadpan way.   For example, the scene in the opening part of the film where the guests arrive is simply repeated; with no apparent logic.  (Apparently in some DVD editions, overzealous editors eliminated the repeat, think it was an error.)  There are no exaggerated, expressionistic camera angles or things like that.   Thus turning the film into opera, which among other things is about music which heightens the emotional intensity of any given moment, would seem to be crazy idea.   But Adès makes it all work, and the opera is gripping from beginning to end, and you quickly forget the film.   The opera is what Adès calls a "symphony opera"; that is, a lot of what is important to the drama is what goes on in the orchestra.   And what an orchestra!   Ades has few equals in his ability to make an orchestra sound new and different.  The orchestra included an early electronic instrument the ondes martinet, 8 toy violins, and mostly like truckloads of percussion instruments.   And Adès also alludes frequently to all kinds of genres of music; there are lots of dances, etc.   And there are guitar solos, piano solos, and many eccentric groupings of instruments.
And yes, there are singers.   Unusually for an opera, there are about 15 singers who are on stage almost the entire time, and who are more or less equally the focus of dramatic attention.   The first time I heard the opera, it was quite disconcerting when all 15 characters arrive and start singing, virtually all at the same time.   If you are trying to figure who is who, forget it.   The second time, I was less anxious and then subsequently was dazzled by the polyphony.     Ades and his librettist do include several important interpolations into the film's scenario; these are aria like moments, when the characters do what opera characters do, and sing a extended aria that reflects the emotion of the moment.  These are among the most striking moments in the opera.
Oh, and there were sheep.   Live ones appear on the stage before the opera starts, and mercifully, a fake one during the opera.  If you've seen the film, you know what happens to them.   And a bear (a costumed human); in the film there is a real bear.

The truth of the matter is that I could happily write a whole paper about the opera (and indeed people already have done that), but I don't have the time and the energy to do that.
But I can't wait to see it again.

A few pictures from websites...

We did the full Adès experience.   Juilliard had a nice evening where they played several chamber works that had inspired him, and then several chamber works of his.   All of this sandwiched around a chat with him, which was both informative and entertaining.   Among other things, we found out that he taught himself how to play the piano at a very young age, and apparently his parents would indulge him and have him perform for their guests, until a musician appeared and convinced his parents that he should actually have lessons and learn how to play the piano properly.    And that his first "composition" that he wrote down turned out to be the intact melody of the middle section of a Chopin polonaise.   And that he was a "truly terrible six year old".     We also heard Adès conducting the Juilliard Orchestra on another night.   The program included two minor but fascinating Adès works for orchestra and Stravinsky's "Symphony in Three Movements".  In the friendly confines of Alice Tully Hall and with a large orchestra of Juilliard students, this was a great performance of the Stravinsky.   Adès is an enthusiastic and very competent conductor.   Unfortunately, the program also included the Elgar Cello Concerto, which I could have happily lived without.   My reception of the piece was not helped by the performance of the soloist, who belonged to the school of cellists who insist on no matter what, the cello must make a big and beautiful sound.  Otherwise known as "every note must emote".  So intense vibrato was virtually constant, and contrast of tone was virtually non-existent.   I don't blame the young soloist; there are many big name famous cellists who play like that, too.