Buenos Aires, Argentina

Last month I visited Buenos Aires for a few days. Here are some of the photos I took there. As usual, click on any thumbnail for the full-size picture.
This post is dedicated to our favorite greek-argentinian, apos.

Over the Andes, flying Santiago-Buenos Aires	Taking a break…	La Boca, the working class neighborhood	A presidential guard
From the windows of the Casa Rosada, the Presidential Palace	Inside the Casa Rosada	Casa Rosada	The 67 m high Obelisco
The Teatro Colón, one of the great opera houses	Monk Parakeet (Myiopsitta monachus)	Santo Domingo; San Telmo neighborhood begins here	Squares in B.A. have facebook pages!
The Ministry of the Army	Iglesia Nuestra Señora de Belen, in San Telmo	The Buenos Aires cathedral	The goth, haunted-looking School of Engineering
Nuestra Señora del Pilar, outside La Recoleta Cemetery	At the Recoleta Cemetery	Sic transit gloria mundi	Evita Peron's grave, in the Duarte family lot, La Recoleta Cemetery
La Recoleta Cemetery	At La Recoleta Cemetery	The 60 ft high "Floralis Genérica", by Eduardo Catalano (2002)	The School of Law, at Recoleta
On the The Argentine National Congress	What would a latin american capital be without a demonstration!	The Mausoleum of José de San Martín, the leader of independence	The Argentine National Congress

More inflight pics

During my recent trip to Athens for Easter, I spent a good deal of my flight time taking pictures, as usual! Here are two of them.
The first one^* is the Rio-Antirrio bridge. Rio is to the right (and south), while Antirrio is to the left (and north). The Rio castle is also visible, just to the right of the bridge.
The second one⁺ is a spectacular view of New York city. Manhattan, with its parallel Avenues, is visible in the center of the photo. At Manhattan's center, in the shape of a dark rectangle, one can see Central Park. Left and bellow, lies Bronx, while further to the back is Queens and Brooklyn. To the right of Manhattan lies Jersey City. Further back, and to its right, is Newark, NJ.
(Click the thumbnails for a full size version of each pic).
^*Flight IB 3885 (ATH-MAD)
⁺Flight B6 22 (JFK - SYR)

A rose

Some of the most moving, beautiful, and touching music has been written for Christmas carols. Many christmas songs and carols have become part of our culture, whether one is religious or not.
And since there are so many good carols, it is difficult to chose a "favorite" one. Still, I will mention one of my favorites: Es ist ein' Ros' entsprungen, or, as it is usually known in english, Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming. For my greek friends, there is no commonly used translation: this is not one of the carols that have become known in Greece, despite the fact that many other western carols are as popular in Greece as in any other country.

Es ist ein' Ros' entsprungen was originally a german chorale, and it probably originates in the middle ages. Michael Praetorius wrote the most commonly used harmonization in 1609. (Look up any hymnal and his name is prominently featured - he wrote many of the hymns that are used up to this day). It is not one of the "top 10" carols, but it is pretty commonly heard in german and english/american churches and carol services. Here is a nice rendition by the Regensburg Cathedral Choir.

One of the most interesting and beautiful settings of this chorale was written by Brahms. It is the eighth of his Eleven Chorale Preludes for organ, op. 122, composed in 1896 but published in 1902, after he had died. These were Brahms's last compositions (poignantly, the very last one is the chorale prelude O Welt, ich muss dich lassen, "Oh world, I must leave you now"...).
It is written just for the manual, and thus can be easily played on the piano too. It is a very unusual chorale, as the melody is rather hidden, alternating between the voices and played on the weak beat, becoming rather difficult to discern. The whole effect is sweet and romantic, and a little bit sad I think. It is one of the most cherished pieces of the organ repertoire.

Eleven Chorale Preludes (1896, Published 1902), Op.122: Es Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen, played by Peter Hurford

I first heard the Brahms setting when I was a child, on BBC short wave radio, and I was immediately captivated by it. Many years later, it was the first organ piece that I learned to play (and one of the very few), at the Bigelow chapel of Mt. Auburn cemetery in Cambridge, MA. The organist there let me practice on Tuesday evenings, when the chapel was not in use. He had even given me a key to the place - to a greek, 20-year old kid he had never seen before! God bless him!

Busoni wrote piano transcriptions for six of the Brahms chorale preludes, including Es ist ein' Ros' entsprungen. These are less known than his famous Bach transcriptions, but they are certainly worth checking out.

Merry Christmas!

Always on My Mind, All over the world

The Pet Shop Boys, my favorite group, will be performing in Athens and Thessaloniki in a few days, as part of their Pandemonium Tour. For my friends in Greece and for all the fans of the PSB, here are some of the photos I took during their concert in Boston, on September 5th, at the House of Blues. The pics were all shot with my cellphone. (Click a pic for a larger version.)