Yehudi Menuhin

I started reading Yehudi Menuhin's autobiography Unfinished Journey several years ago. Actually, I first found it in a library in Manchester in June 2003! I spent an hour or so browsing it there. But Manchester was a depressing place—it drizzled constantly, and there were basically no trees. So within days we had decided to hire a car and find someplace else to live.

But a few months later I found a second hand copy for sale for £2.50, and grabbed it. Yet I didn't get around to reading it until we'd been back in Australia for some time.

Two years ago, here's the brief review I wrote of what I'd read so far:

In accordance with the book's title, I have only got half-way through this book, and now it must be packed for our move to Mackay. Sigh. Worth reading, although I'm skipping quickly through some of it that I don't find interesting. I'd rather know more about his attitude to the violin (but he says he talks more about that in the latter half, which I haven't got to). I share his opinions of San Francisco (positive) and New York (negative).

Fortunately, he did talk more about violin playing, and music in general, in the latter part of the book. Technique-wise he puts great emphasis on flexibility. He gets a little carried away when he compares the violin to the piano! (“Who could lavish affection on a piano? Or cuddle it, or carry it in his arms, or put it to bed in silk and velvet?”) He also discusses the school he set up in England. He even mentions Suzuki, by whose method I first learnt to play the violin.

His cultural commentary makes very interesting reading. As a travelling performer he has been to many, many different countries around the world, in peace-time and in war. He makes remarkable cultural comparisons based on his experience, for instance in regard to individual performers vs team and chamber players, and the corresponding differences in sight-reading ability.

I especially enjoyed Yehudi Menuhin's stories about his music because in some ways my own musical journey has been quite similar. I also began with violin (though not as early), and later added viola. I also am careful with my diet and (as I get older) with stretching before I play. And I also was an ugly violinist who married a beautiful wife!

The prose is easy to read, although being topically- rather than temporally-organised the story jumps around a little in place and time. My edition includes an index, of mostly names of people and places.

Recommendation: Worth reading if you like biographies or music, especially if you play strings—but beware if your favourite instrument is the piano!

Mackay floods

Okay, I suppose it's time I made a blog entry about the flood, eh?

Friday morning about 3-4am it started bucketing down. We could barely get to sleep for the sound of the rain. The view at dawn was bleak and wet.




Apparently at 5:30am there was still no water in the classrooms at the school. By 8am it was over a metre deep. It peaked at around 9am. Looking through the small gap left in the window of my usual classroom and seeing the plastic furniture floating around was quite an experience!




The floodwater rose visibly while we watched. In the space of 15 minutes we watched it move up a road sign. Before an hour was up, the sign was completely submerged.




We went for a short walk. At the end of our street we saw some drivers taking their cars where no small car was ever meant to go: through flood waters across the street. There were waves breaking against the kerb of the traffic island!




At the Gooseponds we found a raging torrent. Seriously, the speed of the current was pretty scary; it's normally a placid little lake. Usually you can walk along a concrete path underneath the Maplethorpe Bridge, but not today.




We lost power at around 10am. We got a little of it back in the late afternoon, and I mean exactly what I wrote: enough for the radio to play, but not enough for it to light up its display; enough for precisely one of our inside lights, but not enough for the fridge, phone, microwave, toaster or anything else. Finally at around 8pm we got full power back.

More rain fell overnight, but not nearly as much as on Friday morning. Apparently Mackay received the equivalent of about a third of the usual annual rainfall in the space of 6 hours! When I went to the school this morning, the floodwater was still deep over the oval and rugby fields, but was no longer in the classrooms. I spent the afternoon at the school, helping with the clean-up. Sad sights abounded: ruined resources and waterlogged textbooks, filthy furniture, chipboard as soft as tissue paper… but by far the worst was these pianos:




Tomorrow, more cleaning up in the afternoon. Church in the morning—if we can get there.

By the way, you might also like to read Laetitia's blog about the flood, and there are more flood photos up on Flickr.

Part of the family

Laetitia keeps reminding me that I haven't posted to my blog for a while, so here goes..

This afternoon she told me something very touching. Her mum has offered us their piano (I have no idea how we could possibly get it up here to Mackay!) because I'm “the only person in the family who (still) plays piano”. Why do I find that touching? It shows that she considers me part of her family.

Meanwhile, we've just been offered a 13-month extension to our lease here (until early January 2009), which means we don't have to worry about finding somewhere to live for next year. For those who don't know, we currently live directly over the fence from the school where I work—I can even connect to the school's wireless network from our dining room table, on a good day. This is very convenient, as it saves us from needing two cars (or alternatively from organising a complicated schedule that would get us both to work on time). But it can be almost too convenient: it can sometimes be hard for me to leave my work behind when I come home, and it's almost too easy for me to go in to the staffroom on a weekend.

Speaking of two cars, we're still trying to sell our Volvo 440. Know anyone who wants one?