一天世界

Do check out this 1980 bootleg recording of Ivo Pogorelich playing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 — the piece Wang’s playing tomorrow — with Seiji Ozawa as the conductor. This shit is on fire, and Pogorelich is the ultimate androgyne of pianists.

Androgyny is also a part of Wang’s charisma, I just hope she’ll be able to translate that quality into her playing soon.

上海古籍出版社的強悍大作

lawrencelry — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 03:26:30 +0000

Peter Hessler’s talk at M on the Bund, March 13, 2011

lawrencelry — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 14:18:45 +0000

Here’s the link to the MP3 file (64K bps, 37.9 MB, about 78 minutes)

Time: 19:00, March 13, 2011. Place: M on the Bund, Shanghai.

I captured the whole talk except for the first five minutes. The whole thing is good, with some acute observations and lots of deadpan humour that Hessler’s famous for. For people already familiar with his works though, it’s more like a rehash of old stories and ideas.

The thing I find most interesting is how he repeatedly emphasized the importance of taking notes (sometimes with accurate time stamps) and doing research. Writing is pleasant, but doing research is hard work. Visiting a hot, stuffy Wenzhou factory every month for a whole year, having ‘endless conversations about bra rings’ is, in Hessler’s words, ‘interesting to a point, right?’ (45’20” into the recording.)

As always, the most important works are the least interesting (and often invisible) ones.

Urban soundscape in China still a treasure

lawrencelry — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 15:09:26 +0000

This one was found in Shanghai metro Line 2, Feb 25, 2011.

Typography in Love and Duty (1931, featuring Ruan Lingyu)

lawrencelry — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 12:05:19 +0000

Broadway Cinematheque in Beijing is doing a Ruan Lingyu 阮玲玉 retrospective this week. In addition to the better-known titles like The Goddess 神女 and Little Toys 小玩意, there’s also one rarity called Love and Duty 戀愛與義務. The film of the 1931 silent movie by Bu Wancang 卜萬蒼 is in the possession of Taipei Film Archive, and today is actually the first time it is screened in public within Mainland China since 1949. As far as I know, it has yet to be released on DVD (let alone iTunes).

The film itself is more interesting as an artifact of film history, but the typography definitely puts today’s Chinese movies to shame. Some details are considered to be typographic faux pas now (like mixing western style punctuations with Chinese characters), but it’s the fact that they care to craft these letters and ideograms at all that counts. For your viewing pleasure, I took the liberty to capture a few of them with my phone.

Calligraphic typeface used for Chinese letters.

Calligraphic typeface used for English letters.

Emil Telmányi Plays Bach’s Chaconne with the Vega / Bach Bow

lawrencelry — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 17:38:10 +0000

The Vega / Bach bow was designed by Knud Vesterggard to enable chord-playing on the violin. Here in the beginning of Chaconne, we hear a curious, harmonica-like sound of chords instead of arpeggios. If you’ve listened to Busoni’s piano transcription of Chaconne you’ll know what I mean.