Shimshock Redemption

Posted on July 26, 2021 by leslie

Shimshock Redemption

Ilana Mercer meets boy wonder

What are our conservative “kids” thinking? I went in search of one such elusive creature and found Rob Shimshock, DC-based editor. In May, he published his first book,“Nightmare Crescendo: Breaking the Chokehold of Woke Capital.” In the dialogue below, Rob patiently explains the idiom in which he expresses his ideas, political and social. Amazon understood enough Millennial Speak to censor his ad campaigns.

ILANA MERCER: “Blistering diatribe” is the correct way to describe your first book, Rob. For me, it is a much-needed glimpse into the mind of a young, thoughtful conservative, ruminating about the state of our country. Explain what is this cabal that “ensnares” us all?

ROB SHIMSHOCK: If I were a magician and you asked me this, my response would be the expected “pick a card, any card.” Academia, Hollywood, the media, Silicon Valley, the banks … no matter which modern institution you choose, the house wins. Except this house doesn’t accommodate a family; in fact, it is explicitly anti-family, anti-Western ideals, and anti-natural law. It is what I term the “Nightmare Crescendo,” or an amalgam of woke corporations and social decadence that’s as loud and merry as any rock concert. But the volume keeps rising, slowly but surely deafening us to a whole host of horrors. Continue reading →

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ENDNOTES, AUGUST 2021

Posted on July 26, 2021 by leslie

Anton Bruckner

ENDNOTES, August 2021

In this edition: Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony; Froberger’s Suites for Harpsichord; The King’s Alchemist, by Sally Beamish; Professor John Kersey defends the music of the West, reviewed by Stuart Millson

Where is the Bruckner of my youth? The 1980s saw a proliferation of Bruckner performances in London: a visionary Bernard Haitink in the Ninth with the Concertgebouw Orchestra at the Proms; Gunter Wand at the Royal Festival Hall and the Proms in the Fifth and Eighth; Giulini – again with No. 8 – and von Matacic and Sinopoli, all with the Philharmonia, in the Third. All different interpretations, even tempi, but common to all was a definite, “dark brown”, Teutonic sound: a heaviness – even a thickness of sound – ending in a ritual ascent to greatness.

Listening to a recent recording of Bruckner’s rarely-played Symphony No. 6, one is struck by how much the approach to this Austro-German composer has changed – and how clearly the tone of orchestras has altered. The new Bruckner 6 from the BBC Philharmonic and their inspiring Spanish conductor, Juanjo Mena, gives us a lighter touch to the autumnal intensity of this 1879-81 symphony. The composer was often revising and reworking material over several years. Instead of the usual heavy tread across the Brucknerian alps, the turf is suddenly springy – the symphony almost sounding as though in the hands of a smaller, softer orchestra. Continue reading →

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South Africa, United Against Criminality

Posted on July 20, 2021 by leslie

Ilana Mercer

South Africa, United against Criminality

by Ilana Mercer

Against the backdrop of conflagration in South Africa, I offer positive commentary about the country of my birth. Do I need to provide a disclaimer before saying positive things about South Africa mid-riots? Probably—given that I’m the author of a scathing, 2011–dare I say prescient?– indictment of the political dispensation forced upon South Africa by the “Anglo-American Axis of Evil.” That dispensation is the “one man, one vote, one time” arrangement, to quote “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa”: “Democracy is especially dangerous in ethnically and racially divided societies, where majorities and minorities are rigidly predetermined and politically permanent.” That’s what The West forced on South Africa.

For the last decade, I’ve seen South Africa as a sea of troubles—and a harbinger of things to come in America. When America becomes a majority-minority country, it will likely resemble South Africa. But, in their darkest days, the country and its people need upliftment—and have, surprisingly, earned it. I saw a ray—nay, rays—of hope amid the revelry of looting, robbing and arson that has engulfed the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and the Transvaal (my birthplace), following the conviction and jailing for contempt of court of former President Jacob Zuma.

Dozens have been killed in the two provinces mentioned, more than 200 shopping malls have been robbed then razed, and countless cattle have been stolen, which generally means sentient animals are being savagely hacked to death for food. Continue reading →

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Virgilian Legends and More

Posted on July 12, 2021 by leslie

Gustave Doré, Dante et Virgile dans le neuvième cercle de l’enfer, credit Wikimedia Commons

Virgilian Legends and More

Nicholas Horsfall, Fifty Years at the Sybyl’s Heels: Selected Papers on Virgil and Rome. Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. i-xv; 1-522, reviewed by Darrell Sutton

Technical studies of Virgil’s texts exist in abundance. Periodicals do not lack submissions on esoteric themes that are discoverable in his poems. Consequently hundreds of papers are issued annually. Literary specialists who write with verve often tell Virgil’s tales better than he did. Textual editors, too, apply their skills to his texts routinely. Virgil’s readership, ranging from antiquity through two thousand years, has been consistent and can be numbered in the millions. Scores of scholars currently study his more popular poems in Latin as well as the Appendix Vergiliana. In the same way, students by the thousands study his poems in translated forms around the world.

Despite the ongoing revival within the fields of Virgilian research, few commentators on the Aeneid in recent times have made advances that are comparable to those made by Nicholas Horsfall (NH).[i] Forty-two of his one hundred and forty-five published papers are included in this book. None of his reviews, though numbering over one hundred and thirty, is included. Unhappily, his epigraphic research is excluded too from this collection. Favor is extended to definitive research, literary pieces and to papers published in obscure journals or to articles he wrote in Italian, which appear here now translated. Papers are arranged chronologically. NH was polylingual and came from cosmopolitan stock. In his scholarship, at times he held rather inflexible views. He spoke his mind loudly and in print on numerous occasions. Able to explicate the finer shades of ancient Latin idiom, his universal knowledge of the Graeco-Roman contexts of Virgil’s poetry and of Greek legends that here and there formed their bases, are well known. Historical examinations conducted by him never made for dull reading. He solved many problems. The titles of the collected articles are appended at the conclusion of this review. Continue reading →

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Maxwell, in the Flesh

Posted on July 11, 2021 by leslie

Headington Hill Hall, credit Wikipedia

Maxwell, in the Flesh

Fall: the Mystery of Robert Maxwell, John Preston, Viking/Penguin Books, 2021, 323 pp, hb, £18.99, reviewed by Leslie Jones

In her memoir A Mind of My Own, Betty Maxwell characterised her late husband as “the Greek tragic hero”, the author of his own downfall. Unquestionably gifted and intelligent, Robert Maxwell spoke nine languages and read a book every day, either a Pelican or a Penguin. He could absorb information “at a phenomenal rate”.

On Desert Island Discs, in July 1987, Maxwell described himself as “a very happy person” and claimed that his childhood “has had no effect on me”. He acknowledged, however, (somewhat inconsistently) that as a child he was always cold and hungry, arguably the root of his subsequent gluttony. Ján Hoch, aka Robert Maxwell, was born in Solotvino, Ruthenia (Czechoslovakia), on June 10th 1923. His father, an orthodox Jew, scraped a living selling animal skins. The parents and their nine children lived in a two room wooden shack with an earth floor. There was no running water and only a pit latrine. Maxwell, not surprisingly, rarely spoke of his childhood.

Freud, referring to his own upbringing, emphasised the significance of his mother’s unstinting love and attention. Maxwell’s mother, likewise, doted on her first born son but his father regularly beat him. The boy evidently adored his mother. She perished in Auschwitz along with Maxwell’s father, two sisters and grandfather. Betty believed that he felt responsible for the destruction of his family. Instead of joining the Czech resistance, he should have stayed at home and rescued them. He subsequently tried to replace the family that he had lost with one of his own. He and Betty, whom he married in 1945, eventually had nine children. Like his father before him, he beat them if they did badly at school. His children were all terrified of his temper and intimidated by his high expectations. Continue reading →

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Death by Des Grieux, Encore

Posted on July 11, 2021 by leslie

Puccini

Death by Des Grieux, Encore

An emotionally powerful Manon Lescaut from the Grange Festival, reviewed by David Truslove

It is a brave individual who updates Puccini. So it was of considerable interest to see the veteran director Stephen Lawless wrench Manon Lescaut out of the mid-18th century and situate Puccini’s first operatic success (1893) in Nazi-occupied France. Black and white film footage prefacing each act provides a visual historical context. Little change geographically, yet the director’s dramatic licence heightens the work’s darkness with his transformation of the wealthy Geronte into a collaborator and Le Havre’s detention centre occupied by resistance fighters avenging wartime crimes. The deportation envisaged by Lawless (to some unspecified location) brings far more sinister overtones than the American colonies outlined in the original novel by the Abbé Prévost. But is anything gained by suggesting an incestuous relationship between Manon and her brother?

Adrian Linford’s designs are devoid of purpose. Setting Act I largely in a dilapidated schoolroom which morphs into a restaurant and then a garage is frankly bizarre. Similarly, attiring the students in shorts and sandals seems absurd. How does this reinforce any sense of tragedy? At least there’s a luxuriously appointed Parisian salon, but why are the madrigalists dressed as men? Overall, it’s a fanciful reshaping which undermines the work’s emotional core that is the relationship between the pleasure-seeking Manon and a helplessly infatuated Des Grieux. Continue reading →

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Me Too Movement Ensnared Cosby

Posted on July 4, 2021 by leslie

Bill Cosby in 2010, credit Wikipedia

Me Too Movement Ensnared Cosby

by Ilana Mercer

“The matriarchy is merciless, and it has thoroughly feminized and twisted US law,” this writer wrote, in April of 2018, upon the sentencing and jailing of comedian Bill Cosby. Cosby had been found “guilty” “of three counts of aggravated indecent assault, for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his home in a Philadelphia suburb in 2004.” CNN gloated at the prospects of the legendary 83-year-old comedian facing up to 10 years in prison. The network, under whose auspices are gathered some of the most malevolent and moronic activist broadcasters in an already crooked media-industrial-complex—did not feature one dissenting legal opinion.

Actually, with few exceptions, talking heads, right and left, converged on Cosby. So, while decent logic and law came from Townhall.com’s Marina Medvin, the unthinking Kimberly Guilfoyle on Fox News joined the #MeToo mob in raising her pom-poms for this travesty of a verdict. Those of us who did dissent at the time are thrilled that Pennsylvania’s highest court has vacated Mr. Cosby’s 2018 conviction, after Cosby had served two years of a three-to-ten-year sentence.

The same myopic, malfunctioning media are currently choosing to focus on how the Cosby verdict has been overturned on a procedural or technical matter. A prosecutor, Pennsylvania Republican Bruce Castor, had struck a “non-prosecution agreement” with Mr. Cosby in 2005. Lack of admissible evidence notwithstanding, this prior agreement with Castor barred the case from going to trial.

Now, as the Guardian explains, Philadelphia justices ruled that Cosby relied on the promise that he would not be prosecuted, when he agreed to testify in a civil case brought against him by [accuser] Andrea Constand, without invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Enter District Attorney Kevin Steele. He must have been watching too many episodes of the new, #MeToo “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” where a team helmed by vengeful protagonist Olivia Benson traps men by means fair and foul. Too often, plea bargains and other agreements are struck only to be gleefully and maliciously torn up once the suspect is deceived into compliance, having trusted the integrity of “the system.” Continue reading →

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Is Anybody Out There?

Posted on July 3, 2021 by leslie

Seven Spiritualists, 1906, credit Wikipedia

Is Anybody Out There?

by Bill Hartley

It’s not uncommon for churches to be turned over to new uses, selling, for example, anything from carpets to bathroom fittings. Often they were built to serve a population crowded into streets of terraced houses, close to places of employment. Darlington in County Durham has several former churches which have gone over to retailing. On the north side of town, where the route of the Stockton and Darlington Railway still bisects the main road, is a working class district which has been spared the joys of multiculturalism. The only people noticeably different are the Chinese who run the Heng Fu takeaway and similar establishments. No-one is going to starve here.

However, the district shouldn’t be considered culturally insular. On the main road  is a place where you can get a Reiki head massage, or for £50 experience past life regression – an interesting way to spend time after dropping off your vacuum cleaner for repair. There are small businesses here offering everything from furniture repair to plumbing. Among them is the Coast to Coast emporium which sells exotic plants and animals. It leaves one (perhaps unfairly) with the image of a newly sold tarantula or corn snake, far from home, slowly dying in unsuitable accommodation. Continue reading →

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Ivan the Terrible

Posted on July 3, 2021 by leslie

Still from Ivan the Terrible, director Sergei Eisenstein, credit Wikidata

Ivan the Terrible

Rimsky-Korsakov’s Ivan the Terrible, Grange Park Opera, reviewed by David Truslove

An opera impresario needs enterprise and tireless zeal and Wasfi Kani of Grange Park Opera has both. This season she has made the bold decision to include two unknown works: a world premiere by Anthony Bolton (whose career began as an investment banker) and a neglected opera by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Ivan the Terrible (originally The Maid of Pskov) has not been heard in Britain for over a century. But, as the first of his fifteen operas, written while he was still a serving officer in the Russian navy and sharing an apartment with Mussorgsky, Ivan the Terrible is a remarkably assured work, a portrait of flawed humanity, oppression and doomed love. Premiered in St Petersburg in January 1873, it was performed in Paris and London in 1909 when Serge Diaghilev introduced the renowned Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin. However, since then this richly scored work, with its ceaseless flow of lyrical invention, stirring choruses and touching romance, has become a musical footnote. Continue reading →

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ENDNOTES, July 2021

Posted on July 1, 2021 by leslie

St Mary’s Church, Horsham

ENDNOTES, July 2021

In this edition: Blissful sonatas at the English Music Festival; contemporary organ music from the United States, reviewed by Stuart Millson

Classical music has endured a turbulent time during the last year. The depredations of the Covid crisis, the loss of cultural self-confidence in the West – which has resulted in institutions such as the Royal Academy of Music* examining ways to “decolonise” (i.e. make less European) the art-form that constitutes its very raison d’etre – have all inflicted lasting damage. Even those, such as English Music Festival Director, Em Marshall-Luck, who continue – against all the odds – to run concerts and make recordings during this time of near-paralysis, provide us with stark warnings. For example, in her introduction to this year’s Festival programme, Em tells us the stark reality now before us:

‘A survey** conducted last year revealed that, as a result of the impact of COVID-19 and event cancellations, 64% of musicians are considering leaving the profession permanently. The irrevocable loss of so many talented artists will inevitably result in a significant contraction of the UK music industry, so we need to do all we can to keep concerts going as much as possible, to succour our artists and prevent any more such loss.’

Continue reading →

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