This is the famous Hungarian March (Rákóczi March) from Part I of Berlioz‘s La damnation de Faust, Op 24 as interpreted by the inimitable Herbert von Karajan leading the Wiener Philharmoniker (I think so… the orchestra’s A is tuned a tad higher). There’s no shilly-shallying about… it’s a MARCH, after all. There are some who want exile Herbert’s memory to the outer darkness because he “collaborated with the Nazis“. Such people should get a life. Von Karajan was a musician… he didn’t participate in the madness. It’s much like Jeff Smith… I still have the Frugal Gourmet books he wrote, and use them. You separate the work from the person. One thing you don’t do is to enact a damnatio memoriae on someone’s memory. Even if someone’s a bastard, their misdeeds contain a lesson for us… therefore… we can’t pretend that Schmemann, Feodosy Lazor, Pierre l’Huillier, and Dmitri Royster didn’t exist. They did exist… their actions existed… we averted our eyes… how many were hurt? No one knows… does anyone care? Am I alone in wondering… WHY? If we continue to lie about these men, we’ll learn less than nothing… we’ll not only do the same things over and again, we’ll be told, “Ignore it… for the good of the Church”. I think it’s time that stopped…
Caprilands Herb Farm in North Coventry CT… from an old postcard…
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Nicky and I were in need of some serious “recharging”. Times have been “tough” for us… Nicky’s been out of work, and all that… but I have to say that we’re still getting by; there are many worse off than we are, we still have our apartment, and we still have our dignity. We set off on a “quest” yesterday… we were on the search for Caprilands Herb Farm in Coventry… Nicky remembered going out there some thirty years ago. It’s down in Connecticut, past Hartford, so, we motored out east, and got on the Mass Pike. At Springfield, we turned south on 91, then, the fun stated… we missed our turn onto 84, so, we had to backtrack, and we got the proper exit. It was simple going onwards to 384 and 44, but (of course) you know that “chance” had its inevitable hand in things. I’d left my written instructions home (natch), so, we were at sea how to make the final connections (thank God, I remembered that the final turn was at “Silver Street”)… we asked at two locations, got the right intel, and fund ourselves at the Farm. There had been damage from the recent storms, and (later on) the fellow there told us that the power had been out for four days.
There were two vintage Jaguars parked in the driveway, and a beat-up Land Rover (that had been used in the First Gulf War by a news correspondent), too. When we got behind the house, the smell of herbs was heavy in the air. Two orange cats greeted us, and, finally, an older fellow and two dogs showed up (along with Ludwig, a black cat). I must say that we had a pleasant conversation for nearly an hour… we shared some common interests. For instance, I found out that Adelma Grenier Simmons, the late owner of the farm (she died in 1997) was a lover of Russian opera. She named some of her dogs “Natasha”, “Ivan”, and other Russian names. In fact, Eddie (the fellow I talked to) told me that when a tree in front of the house leaned over in the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, he said that she told him that she thought that it looked like the peasants in Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchinamarching forward. To say the least, a pleasant time was had by all… one of the things that we laughed about was the “Holy Trinity” of Vienna… Richard Tauber, Johann Strauss, and Franz Lehár. Eddie said that the Viennese would dance through the End of the World… isn’t that a fact!
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Here’s some music of the Viennese “Holy Trinity”… Richard Tauber…
with a bonus piece by Johann Strauss I, Radetzky Marsch, which is the concluding piece for every New Year’s Gala of the Wiener Philharmoniker, here conducted by the late great Herbert von Karajan in 1987…
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It took us about two hours driving time each way… what with stops on the way and an hour spent at the farm, we were away for eight hours. To say the least, “home” looked very good indeed! It was a lovely motor through green and lush countryside… it’s a joy to drink it all in… I was hungry for such, I’ve got to say. You’ve got to connect with the “really real”… it keeps you grounded and centred. You can tell the people who only “live in their heads”… they believe in the oddest notions and they REFUSE to accept reality… reality is like a storm… you can try to ignore it, but you can’t hide from its effects. If you don’t take shelter, you get swept away, and that’s that. Think on that.
