Art - Musee d'Orsay

   Paris, the city of arts, is one of my favourite places and has an amazing atmosphere. It always provide you something stimulating, such as the French music, fine arts, architectures, foods, heritages, lovely small items and so on. Why not visit some of numerous museums there when you travel to Paris? You will experience a great variety of arts there, but if you are especially interested in drawings and paintings, the Musee d’Orsay, which is probably the next largest and most famous Paris museum after the Louvre, is the place to go. You will make a good few hours of your day out at the Musee d’Orsay as it is located in the city centre of Paris, and so close to some other well known attractions including the Louvre, the Place de la Concorde and Notre-Dame Cathedral.

   According to the Paris guidebook I have, Musee d’Orsay is a museum, which specialises in the arts from the nineteenth century. Especially its extensive collection of the paintings of great Impressionist, including Gogh, Monet, Renoir, Manet, Gauguin, Rousseau, Degas and Millet, is internationally famous. You will find a number of paintings you must have seen somewhere like in your school textbooks and TV shows.

   The building of Musee d’Orsay, which is built in 1900 and one of the greatest architectures in Paris, has an interesting background. It was a train station building at first, but remodelled and opened as a museum in 1986. A lot of traces of its train station period can be seen throughout the museum, such as the big clocks, which is known today as the trademark of Musee d’Orsay. Although the museum has not so much history, it has a fine presence of the centre of arts and established itself as a main sight of Paris.

   I visited Musee d’Orsay last month as part of my short trip to Paris. It is a large museum but the internal structure is quite simple – the most of the paintings are on ground floor and the other kinds of arts, such as sculptures and crafts are basically on the first floor. I personally like its way of displaying works, which is by artists. The Musee d’Orsay does not tire your eyes because many of the paintings there are Impressionist ones which have got lighter and softer textures than the others like Classical and Modern paintings. The museum seems to have very open atmosphere with very high ceilings as it used to be a train station. I visited the Musee d’Orsay with my brother and he became tired to walk around because it is very large. However, there are shop, café and a lot of benches so you can have a sit and rest whenever you want, and take your time (It is important facility for museums I think).

   There is no regular route in the Musee d’Orsay and it is easy to move around the museum. This is the point because you will enjoy your visit as you like. For instance, art-lovers may thoroughly appreciate the whole collections and normal tourist can see only the most notable works. Thus the Musee d’Orsay can be an example of good museums, though the admission fee is required (€8, €5.50 for concessions).

http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/home.html

Music - BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra - Maestro's Choice, Thursday 18 March 2010

   Perhaps the first image of Glasgow’s music scene can be either popular music or the Scottish traditional music as typified in Celtic Connection. However you also can experience some stunning classical music here, as Glasgow is the home of two world-class orchestras - the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Both are very good orchestras with great venues, but this time let us look at the BBC one, which has been getting more publicity since the Scottish maestro Donald Runnicles became its chief conductor last September.

   On the Thursday 18^th of March, I went to see Maestro’s Choice, one of the main BBS Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s programme this year, at Grand Hall of the Glasgow City Hall. (The hall has its famous acoustic that is absolutely amazing, and this can be one of the huge advantages of the BBC orchestra.) The programme started with ‘Overture And Venusberg Music From “Tannhauser” / Wargner’. Then the orchestra hosted an American soprano Christine Brewer and played ‘Song’ / Richard Strauss. The climax of the night, after the 15 minutes interval, was Symphony No.7 / Beethoven. Donald Runnicles conducted throughout the programme and the venue was almost full.

   Runnicles’ music sounds as he looks like – wise and having bold presence, but also very graceful – you may feel the orchestra gets deeper sound when he conducts. (This can be said from my experience of some BBC SSO’s performance with different conductors.) In terms of that night, I thought the Tannhauser Overture was especially admirable. I would even say that it was the highlight of the concert. ‘The international reputation of Donald Runnicles as a Wagner conductor has been forged in the world’s leading opera houses from Vienna, Berlin and Bayreuth to New York.’ (extract from the concert programme book 18/03/2010) While I was listening to Runnicles’ Tannhauser, one word, which briefly describes the characteristic of his Wagner, came to my mind, ‘the sea’. It was vast, deep and varied as the waves that break on the shore and retreat. It is needless to say that there was a thunderous clapping of hands when the tune ended. Many audiences around me were talking how good Runnicles’ Tannhauser was.

   Richard Strauss’s ‘Song’ and the Beethoven’s masterpiece ‘Symphony No.7’ were also superb so I guess everybody there did enjoyed the performance. Although I would like to talk about these two works, I will now move on to the conclusion of this article.

   It can be said music is an art of theory and emotion. However, perhaps music should not let us aware of this point when it is used in our community. ‘The music that does not interfere with your brain’s work’* – this may be nice word to explain my view. Function (or wedding) bands are good example of this. No audience wonders about the meaning of lyrics and the compositional process when they are dancing. Also, in terms of classical music, who knows the real backgrounds and feelings of composers, who lived hundreds years ago? Music performances provide you a comfortable moment so that you will be slightly happier than usual and have a good sleep. This is everything I want from the music in the community.

*Yoro, T (anatomist), Hisaishi, J (composer) (2009) ‘Mimi De Kangaeru (thinking with your ears)’ Tokyo: Kadokawa Group Publishing, translated by Ryutaro Kikuta