Multi-coloured: Weekly Travel Theme – Wellington

This week’s travel theme is multi-coloured, and the first thing I thought of was the beautiful multi-coloured Edwardian and Art-Deco buildings in the city of Wellington (and Miramar). Unfortunately, the weather was mostly overcast when I took most of these photos, so the colouring isn’t brilliant, but the pastel hues are still lovely.

Bonus: These multi-coloured fellows can be found in Wellington Zoo.

All photos taken February 2012.

Caramel Walnut Slice

This slice isn’t far off being the perfect sweet, chewy, old-fashioned-style slice. The recipe is also highly convenient, as while the base is part-cooking, you can make the topping.

Recipe from The Australian Woman’s Weekly cookbook The Big Book of Beautiful Biscuits.

Base:

1/2 cupself-raising flour
1/2 cup coconut
1/4 cup castor sugar
60g (2 oz) butter

Topping:

2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup coconut
90g (3 oz) walnut pieces
1 1/2 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Base:

Sift the flour into a bowl, add sugar and coconut, mix well. Melt the butter, add to the dry ingredients, mix well. Pressed the mixture into a greased/lined tin (28cm x 18cm according to the recipe, I used a 23cm x 23cm tin). Bake in the oven at 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4 for 15 minutes.

Topping:

Lightly beat the eggs and vanilla with a fork. Add coconut, chopped walnuts, brown sugar and baking powder, mix well. Spread the mixture over the partly-cooked base, return to moderate oven and bake for a further 25-30 minutes, or until the topping is cooked. Cool in the tin; cut into squares or slices.

This week’s sunsets

This week the sun was setting more or less exactly when I came out of the office, creating a great display. The photos arn’t great, given iPhones arn’t the best at taking this sort of shot, they don’t like the exposure (Lightroom can only fix things up so much!), etc, but it’s interesting to see the same place at the same time of day for the a whole week.

Tuesday: probably the best sunset of the week

Wednesday: looking stormy

Thursday: whispy clouds

Friday: not nearly as spectacular on account of the cloud cover

 

Pip in the sun

Though it’s been a bit cooler this week (and quite cold today!), Pippa has been enjoying the sunshine. Though she’s still too scared to go outside, she loves lying in an open doorway or on an open window sill, letting the breeze in, not to mention all the smells and noises.

Also, Pip turned 1 last week (according to her RSPCA records), so happy first birthday Pippa! You can be assured, she was most spoilt on the occasion – much as she is every day.

Last Night of the Proms Review

“Good evening and welcome to the party!”

So here we are, Prom 75: The Last Night of the Proms (LNOP). The BBC Symphony Orchestra, along with the BBC Symphony Chorus, soloists Nigel Kennedy, Joyce DiDonato and Iestyn Davies, conducted by Marin Alsop, the first woman to conduct Last Night, all took to the stage in this marathon concert, with a running time of over three hours. It’s challenging enough to listen to via iPlayer, which you can pause whenever you please for food/toilet breaks, so it is an amazing feat for the Prommers to stay in such incredibily high spirits that whole time. The audience in the Royal Albert Hall were in high spirits from the very beginning and completely mad by the end.

“It is not just an end-of-term party, it is also a wonderful celebration” and that it is, with LNOP featuring pieces from birthday boys Wagner, Verdi and Britten, violinist Nigel Kennedy, who also performed in Prom 34, and world and British premiere pieces.

Be warned, there will be superlatives by the bucketful!

Act 1:

1. LNOP began with the final world premiere for the season, Anna Clyne’s party piece Masquerade. It sounds quite like something out if a film soundtrack and makes full use of the big orchestra. A great piece to start LNOP, and one of my favourite world premieres this season.
2. Bicentenary man Richard Wagner’s The Mastersingers of Nuremberg – overture. Overtures like this almost seem tailor made for Last Night, both musically, and in this case, titularly (though it’s more of a case of the Mastersingers of the BBCSC!). Excellent.
3. The stage then was reset for Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, which is a bit of a change of pace. Counter-tenor Iestyn Davies and the singers of the BBCSC were really beautiful in this piece.
4. Ralph Vaughn-Williams’s The Lark Ascending, featuring Nigel Kennedy as the solo violin. I really like this piece, it’s so very English, and as it’s so calming and beautiful, quite an apt piece for the first half of LNOP, before the madness of Act II. Kennedy played beautifully, and listening to this piece on a Sunday afternoon, with the sun streaming in through my window, looking out on the green Australian countryside, everything felt rather perfect.
5.  Centenarian Benjamin Britten’s The Building of the House. This piece shows off the chorus wonderfully, and they do sound fantastic.
6. 7. & 8. The final three pieces of Act I were all sung by soprano Joyce DiDonato, accompanied by the BBCSO. In order, they were Massenet’s Chérubin – ‘Je suis gris! je suis ivre!’, Handel’s Xerxes – ‘Frondi tenere e belle … Ombra mai fù’, and Rossini’s La donna del lago – ‘Tanti affetti in tal momento!’. These were very well sung, but I think I preferred everything else in the first act, rather than these three pieces, as I’ve said before and I’ll say again, I’m just not the biggest fan of opera.

So far, over £82,000 have been collected for the Proms Musical Charities.

Act II:

The second half began with two pieces from Bernstein’s Candide, the Overture and ‘Make our Garden Grow’. I particularly loved the overture, it is quite a famous piece, but it’s a great one, too. The chorus were again sublime in ‘Make our Garden Grow’. I will keep going on about how great the BBCSC are, because they really are absolutely fantastic.

The BBCSC again got to shine in the other bicentenary man Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘Va, pensiero’ (Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) from Nabucco. This is probably one of the most famous opera choruses, and I must say, I operatic pieces sung by a chorus, rather than a soloist.

Between pieces you can hear all the party-poppers going off in the crowd. This has been happening since the very beginning.

Joyce DiDonato then returned to sing Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz. This was a properly beautiful rendition of this song.

Nigel Kennedy then returned to play Monti’s Csárdás. This is obviously one of those pieces that you miss quite a bit from when you can’t actually see it, as a number of times throughout this piece, the audience laughed. I don’t know why, as us poor iPlayer listeners aren’t treated to such information, but it was amazing playing by Kennedy anyway, who brings such energy and enthusiasm to his playing. I think in the end Kennedy was just improvising, as there were definitely the opening cords from Beethoven’s 5^th Symphony and some other pieces thrown in there. That was brilliant.

Next Joyce DiDonato took to the stage again, this time to sing the traditional Londonderry Air (Danny Boy). You can actually watch this here, and it was great to be able to see the RAH and what everyone looked like! It would be nice if the full stream was available internationally, but, alas, snippets are all we get. This song was beautifully performed. Very, very good.

Singing voices at the ready, here we go!

Joyce DiDonato sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from the Rogers and Hammerstein musical Carousel.  I was also able to watch this here. I had the sound on my laptop turned up to full-blast, but it loses too much sound quality, so I ended up putting headphones in. At least then I can’t hear myself singing (though the rest of the family are probably thinking what is she doing?!). I love this song. I love 6000 people singing along to it. It’s brilliant.

With hardly any break, the orchestra went straight into Granville Bantock’s Sea Reivers, which started a bit of an maritime-themed trilogy. This was a great piece, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve really enjoyed all the Bantock pieces played during this Proms Season, and I hope to hear more of him, because all of his works have been wonderful.

The maritime theme continued with the UK premiere of George Lloyd’s HMS Trinidad March.  I love a good march, and this is clearly one of them. I found myself bopping away to it. Very cheerful, very good.

Voices at the ready – the maritime theme concluded with Thomas Arne’s Rule, Britannia! You can watch this, Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem here. Words fail me. There is nothing I can say about this. Brilliant. Amazing. The best. An encore. Of course.

Marin Alsop kept the Prom moving after the encore, plunging straight into Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 in D Major (Land of Hope and Glory). Again, what can I say. Watch it. Encore of the chorus. So much energy from the RAH audience.

Parry (arr. Elgar) Jerusalem. Ibid. Full encore.

Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of the British National Anthem (God Save the Queen). Even HM the Queen herself has said that she likes this version of it (which is saying something, since she’s rather well acquainted with said song!). It is a very good arrangement, and such a great way to conclude the Proms.

And of course, the unprogrammed Auld Lang Syng, when the audience take over.

This has probably been the best LNOP that I’ve heard. I’m at a loss for words. I can’t possibly listen to any more music for probably the rest of the night now. That was just so good and I wasn’t even there.

There is nothing like the Proms, and nothing like Last Night.

“Thank goodness for the BBC Proms.”

(Photos from the BBC Proms Facebook page)

Banana White Choc Muffins

 

These muffins are the Banana Butterscotch Muffins from Nigella Express, but I’ve substituted the butterscotch chips for white choc. These muffins are incredibly easy to make and so very delicious, not to mention a great way to use up some over-ripe bananas.

Orginal recipe found here.

3 very ripe bananas
125 ml vegetable oil
2 large eggs
250 grams plain flour
100 grams caster sugar
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 pinch ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
150 grams  white chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6/400°F and line a 12-bun muffin tin with muffin papers.
2. Mash the bananas and set aside for a moment.
3. Pour the oil into a jug and beat in the eggs.
4. Put the flour, sugar, cinnamon, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder into a large bowl and mix in the beaten-egg-and-oil mixture, followed by the mashed bananas.
5. Fold in the white choc chips, then place equal quantities in the prepared muffin tin – I use an ice cream scoop and a spatula – and bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

Prom 72: Verdi & Tchaikovsky Review

Prom 72 included two of this Proms Season’s theme: Verdi 200 and the Tchaikovsky symphony cycle. The Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi made their Proms debut with conductor Xian Zhang.

The first half was a celebration of one of this year’s birthday boys, Giuseppe Verdi. It was a compilation of some of the best bits from Verdi’s operas, with the pieces played in the following order:
La forza del destino – overture
Attila – ‘O dolore! Ed io vivea’
I vespri siciliani – ‘À toi que j’ai chérie’
La traviata – Prelude (Act 1)
Simon Boccanegra – ‘O inferno! … Sento avvampar nell’anima’
Aida – Triumphal March (Act 2)
Luisa Miller – ‘O fede negar potessi … Quando le sere al placido’
Rigoletto – ‘La donna è mobile’
Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja, who was heard on Last Night of the Proms last year, returned to the Royal Albert Hall to sing the arias. All of these Verdi pieces were, of course, very well played by the OSMGV, as one would expect when they take their name from the composer in question! As much as they were well played, and seemed to be wildly enjoyed by the Royal Albert Hall audience, they didn’t do a lot for me, mostly as I’m not a big opera fan. I do always enjoy the Aida – Triumphal March however.

The second half of Prom 72 concluded this Proms Season’s cycle of the Tchaikovsky Symphonies, ending with his un-numbered Manfred Symphony, which Tchaikovsky wrote between his Symphonies Number 4 and 5. Considering what absolute symphonic gems the 4^th and 5^th symphonies are, the Manfred is a bit of a letdown. This work does divide conductor’s opinions – it seems to be a very love or hate work. I just feel a bit eh about it. It was good, but it’s far from being one of Tchaikovsky’s best works. The OSMGV performed a very energetic encore Rossini’s William Tell overture. Huge cheer from the audience at the end, very well deserved.

Spring has sprung!

Spring has been here offically for a week now, down here in Australia. The grass is beginning to grow at a rather exuberant rate, the trees and blossoming and leaves are returning, flowers and springing from the ground and baby animals are appearing in paddocks. The days are longer (it’s still light-ish at 6:30pm!), the wind is not so Antartic, and one is able to leave the house without a coat (and scarf and gloves).

As much as I like the colder months, there is always something nice about spring rolling in.

An Unusual POV: Weekly Photo Challenge – Pippa

Standing at only about a foot high, Pippa is very little thing. It is easy to forget how big we must seem to her, so when playing with her this morning, I lay down and took this photo from ground level, looking up on our little cat. As children, we spend much more time down low, playing on the floor, sitting on the floor in class, etc, but as we grow up, we don’t get down that low nearly as often, so photos from this angle look quite particular to us.

What’s Pip looking at so intently, I hear you ask?

Maggie the chicken, who was taking herself for a walk around the yard (no particularly special POV, just a rather funny picture of Mags!).

Find the weekly photo challenge here.

Prom 71: Górecki, Vaughan Williams & Tchaikovsky Review

Prom 71 is a rather big Prom, with not one, but two symphonies, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra with conductor Osmo Vänskä. This is the BBCSO’s 10^th of 11 Proms this season; their final Prom will of course be Last Night on Saturday night (UK time). The Proms Tchaikovsky symphony cycle also continues with Prom 71 featuring his final work, the beautiful Symphony No. 6.

The Prom began with Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’, a rather mammoth work, with a running time of just under an hour. This piece is not called ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’ for nothing – the entire symphony is particularly melancholy, and quite properly sad. Ruby Hughes n was the soprano, and I must say, she was outstanding. Despite this being a very sad piece of work, it is also beautiful, and was excellently performed by the BBCSO.

Ralph Vaughn Williams’s Four Last Songs (orch. A. Payne) followed after interval, with mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston as soloist. This was nice, but after the excellent symphony beforehand, it didn’t quite hit the mark.

The final piece of this Prom was Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor, ‘Pathétique’. This piece originally premiered in October 1893, with the composer as conductor, and then Tchaikovsky died only nine days later. This symphony is extremely popular in the classical repertoire, but it’s not my favourite of the Tchaikovsky symphonies; I much prefer 4, 5 and 1. But it is still a beautiful piece, and the BBCSO once again were fabulous.

Only two more ‘normal’ Proms to go before Last Night! I hope everyone’s been practicing their singing!