Rediscovering Esplanade Library
Was at the Esplanade library after visiting PSC in the morning to enquire about the whole gap year business. The Asian Business Fellowship program offered by MTI looks fairly interesting. But working in China is going to be a bit challenging, considering how er... linguistically challenged I am in the local language. There's India too, which could really be quite exciting, recalling the good times I had in Stanford. And with my "expatriate" Singaporean pay in India, I could live like a rajah!
Anyway, I discovered, only today, that you can actually listen to the CDs at the Esplanade library! Spent quite a while there listening to full versions of the one minute clips I was getting off Amazon, which incidently have all their tracks on streaming audio now, rather than only the first five. Caught Richter's awesome depth in Franck's Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, bits of Pollini's Davidsbundlertanze and Concerto sans Orchestra, which I haven't heard before and really should listen more closely to - it's quite a fascinating work. Ended with bits of Richter playing Prokofiev's 8th sonata. I really love Prokofiev the more I listen to him. When I was younger, I was taken by the energetic bravado of his music, but now, it is the nostalgia-tinged introspection of works like the 9th sonata and even the 8th sonata (very different in character from the previous two war sonatas I feel, although there is still the element of tough, uncompromising fighting music in it). I think if anything at all, one can really trace the development of Prokofiev as a composer from surveying his piano sonatas, something which is I believe quite unprecedented since probably Beethoven. From the hyper-romantic 1st sonata, to the confident and brash 2nd and 3rd sonatas, to the more subdued and restrained 4th and 5th sonatas, to the fighting music of the 6th and 7th sonatas, and moving to a calmer, sparer composition style in the 8th and final sonatas, it is strangely moving to contemplate the sonatas as a cycle together, almost like a journey through life.
And I just discovered that I have to go back to camp tomorrow for chemical defense training. This should be interesting.
2 Comments:
Dear Soon-to-be-Rajah-Tucque,
Can you help me complain to the relevant authorities? Esplanade library only got music and music books. Not even much fiction. I'm sure they'll appreciate the comments of a foreign rajah more than that of a local schola.
And by "the good times" do u mean the time spent with all those IIT kids? Hehe. Btw how many IITs r there anyway. And how many IIT kids in cornell?
And man your notes for interview quite thick. Even longer than YL's 'model answers'.
I don't know if Esplanade library is supposed to have any fiction man... It seems pretty much specialised on arty farty stuff... but I don't know anything other than music so I can't really comment. But now that the central library's gone, I see your concern - no general library in the city hall area. Quite annoying.
I guess I shouldn't have used "good" times. It really should have been "interesting" times. The IIT folks were just amazing. And quite a few of them too. I'm not sure if all the Indian guys I hung out with were IIT gods but they were sure good companions in the lab when programming in the wee hours of the morning. Cornell I don't think so many IIT guys. At least if there were, I didn't notice them, since I mainly took undergrad classes.
The notes are quite crappy la... just my very last minute effort in preparing for current affairs questions. Just scanned the papers and some books and collated some info.
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