Victor Goldberg in Recital
Victor
Goldberg (left) along with Prof Anne Murase, Ioana Nedelcu and house staff
send aloft a traditional Lanna lantern before the show.
By Jai-Pee
Occasionally, and very occasionally in a lifetime, a
person experiences one of those peak experiences referred to many years ago
by Abraham Maslow – a moment of total ecstasy and fulfillment so rare and
precious. That is what happened when Victor Goldberg struck his first
powerful and dynamic chords in the Music Salon of Anne and Kazuyoshi Murase
in August. Victor is a master of the keyboard, one of those rare yet
exciting and addictive performers whose playing engulfs his audience from
the very start and then proceeds to take them on a journey unique in the
musical world. This young man in his early thirties has a magician’s power
greater than Gandalf and more momentous than Merlin. Playing to a capacity
audience for the Friends of the Chiang Mai Music Festival, this unassuming
yet totally dedicated pianist captivated, enthralled and enchanted. Choosing
a wonderfully balanced program, Victor thundered out the opening of the
Piano Sonata Number 5 in F sharp by the Russian composer Scriabin. This
composition, groundbreaking in its time, left the audience stunned – Victor,
himself of Russian origin, was at one with the music. His magic lay in the
fact that he made the strident dissonances sound acceptable, balancing these
passages against the more lyrical legato sections that provoked eerie
meditative interludes of deep beauty. Following on from this piece came the
Piano Sonata No 9 in D major by the twenty-one year old Mozart. Here Victor
excelled again, capturing with intense splendour the youthful exuberance of
this delightful sonata but without losing any of the underlying genius that
is the hallmark of everything Mozart wrote. Nowhere was this more apparent
than towards the end of the middle slower movement. Here Mozart repeats the
movement’s original opening theme but with intensely beautiful counterpoint,
something that was later to become a great characteristic in much of
Beethoven’s piano work. Victor fully understood the great genius that had
penned those few magical bars and he gently but forcefully persuaded us
through his sensitive interpretation that this composer was going to set the
world alight.
Victor Goldberg then did the very same thing by setting
the salon alight with his final rendition – the set of twenty-five
variations and fugue on a theme by Handel written by Johannes Brahms. Brahms
is often called the master of the variations, inserting such movements into
several of his more well-known symphonies and sonatas, but he also wrote
several sets like this which are simply astonishing. Each variation is a
great contrast to its predecessor and the challenge for any performer is to
capture those differences and to bring out the subtle nuances and powerful
distinctiveness of each section. Victor excelled. He breathed new life and
deep beauty into this great piece of romantic music, cascading the salon
with rich harmonies ideally accentuated and forcefully delivered, as well as
lingering wistfully in some of the quieter sections and sustaining
commanding rhythms in the chirpier passages. The whole recital was a canvas
of distinctive colour, elegance and solid craftsmanship by a unique
performer and true professional. The highly appreciative audience rose to
its feet as the final chords of the Brahms echoed away, in recognition of
the great artistry of this man, already being labeled the new Horowitz by
some critics. The audience was rewarded with three encores by Rachmaninoff,
Scarlatti and a Chopin showstopper of the finest caliber. This was a
stunning performance by a dedicated, intuitive and highly intelligent
pianist as he brought his masterful magical musicianship to the salon that
is now being described as ‘the new cultural centre of Chiang Mai’.
By the Computer Quack
Are you looking for something that can play those videos
and songs that you downloaded (legally of course)? Something that will work
with that shiny new flat screen TV to which you treated yourself?
A recent article in a well-known Thai newspaper reviewed
the iOmega Screenplay Director, and although the author pointed out some of
its flaws, he chose to give it a general thumbs up.
I found this strange, as I’ve gone through a number of
media players in recent years, and this was one of the poorest. It doesn’t
support Matroska (MKV) files, it’s menu system is weak, and only the 1TB
installed hard disk makes it a reasonably priced acquisition.
After a long search, and quite a few trades, I ended up
plumping for the Briteview CinemaTube HD - http://www.brite-view.com/cinematube.php.
The Cinematube plays everything I’ve ever thrown at it,
it reads complex directory structures in no time at all, has a nice preview
function as you scroll through your files, and remembers where you were in
the file if you power off and go to sleep. It doesn’t have an inbuilt hard
disk, but when you can pick up a 2TB Western Digital Mybook for around
Bt4,000, who cares?
It finds computers on your home network and can play
files off network shares. It has two USB slots, so you can plug in Flash
drives as well (and it can read NTFS and FAT drives). It can read .ISO
images of DVDs and give you the menus like a DVD Player. It has an inbuilt
uPnP server, so you can stream to your Xbox or PS3. And you can even
download torrent files on the box itself, (although in all honesty it’s
isn’t the most friendly interface I’ve seen for torrents).
And the Briteview costs just $90 online. Plug in the disk,
plug the enclosed HDMI cable into your Plasma or LED/LCD, and you’re in
business.
I don’t often recommend products, mainly because people
have their own opinions of what is good or bad. But when something is so
full featured and so well priced, I think it’s worth bringing it to your
attention so you can decide for yourself.
As usual, your comments and questions are welcomed. Drop
me a line at thecomputerquack@gmail.com.
