Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

I'm not sure I'm a lot further forward in Prokofiev Studies for having read the Life&Times book by Thomas Schipperges. I was expecting to come away with more of a sense of his personality, character, and politics and perhaps more about the music than such insights as,

Prokofiev's diatonic linearity is a manifestation of a swing away from late Romantic modernism, a full decade before the comparable paradigm shift occurred in Western European music.

And that's by no means the worst of it. The book was written in German and reads like a translation, it is sometimes heavier on ideas than enlightening anecdotes and I'm not entirely clear where Prokofiev stood in relation to the Soviet government. One reason for reading it was hearing from someone who should know that they admired him more than they admired Shostakovich and I admire Shostakovich this side idolatry but I haven't yet found reason to put Prokofiev alongsde him.

I can see that his music is in some ways less conservative than Shostakovich's but I could hear that already so, while I am slightly the wiser I'm not yet wise enough but maybe the Violin Concertos might take me further and perhaps a more 'general' lighter read might help with grasping the subject to my own satisfaction.

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I was surprised to find Maupassant's stories not on my shelves. I'm becoming vaguer by the week as to what books and records I do have. Mention of his name somewhere prompted me to take him up again rather than invest on new titles on Marlowe and by Ian McEwan and Arundhati Roy. So they are on order to bring back memories of 'shabby gentility' at 'A' level and emphasize what tremendous books we were mostly given to read in the sixth form. Shakespeare, obviously, Joyce, Orwell, Gide. Hardy was earlier. Any appreciation of Chaucer came later and that of Lawrence faded.

There's a few days out lined up so any plans to fit in the 774 pages of revisting Anna Karenina is put back. Eugene Onegin is also on order, it remaining to be seen if a novel in verse can work for me because Vikram Seth's thirty years ago proved to be something of a chore.

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The cricket season had its moments for one who can increasingly take or leave sport. The test series, mainly, proved highly compelling with two well-matched sides going to and fro. T20 and ODI's continue to set ridiculous statistics that will have to stop somewhere. Quite what it does to a young player to go for 62 off 3 overs is hard to say. But Notts go to the Oval one point behind Surrey in the championship for a perfectly scheduled head-to-head. Getting there for a 10.30 start if the last day was well set up isn't easy enough for me but it should be on the wireless.