Jerusalem Quartet!

Jerusalem Quartet

Thursday, February 19, 2015

7:30 PM

Alexander Pavlovsky, Violin

Sergei Bresler, Violin

Ori Kam, Viola

Kyril Zlotnikov, Cello

Quartet No. 59 in G minor, Op. 74, No. 3 "Rider" - Franz Joseph Haydn

Allegro

Largo assai

Menuetto: Allegretto

Finale: Allegro con brio

String Quartet No. 4, Sz. 91 - Béla Bartók
Allegro
Prestissimo, con sordino
Non troppo lento
Allegretto pizzicato
Allegro molto

-Intermission-

String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D. 810 "Death and the Maiden" - Franz Schubert
Allegro
Theme and Variations: Andante con moto
Scherzo: Allegro molto
Presto

This was a truly spectacular performance by the Jerusalem Quartet. The quartet was the most technically sound of all the chamber groups thus far this season; able to masterfully execute all the running passages and in particular the chaos that is the Bartók. I was very impressed with the cellist in particular. The quartet was also the most musically talented of the chamber groups this season, able to play as a group, covering the spectrum of musical expression. I was a huge fan of how they performed the Haydn and Schubert, and they at least made the Bartók bearable instead of the random jumbled mess of sound that it normally sounds like. Hopefully I'll get to see them perform again!

Theme Hospital

For a limited time, Theme Hospital is available for free on Origin (this is slightly old news). It's great that Origin is offering the game for free, but the bad news is that you have to deal with Origin.

Theme Hospital came out in 1998, long before I started any sort of gaming, but it comes from the era where games were much simpler (mostly because they couldn't be complex), but the games were still difficult. It's not like today's iteration of FPS games, where you have to memorize map layouts far in advance to beat the game at its highest difficulty levels bundled together with complex structures. With these older games there are only a few basic mechanisms, and really seem to relish in you failing (like trying to beat Super Mario on the SuperNintendo).

Theme Hospital, as the name suggests, is a game where you try to manage a hospital through increasingly difficult scenarios, trying to maintain a profit and happy patients combined with a few other objectives. It's actually a lot of fun and I'm having a difficult time putting it down...

The Importance of Conversation

...or more specifically, the importance of your conversation (to yourself, naturally).

I tend to people-watch when I'm on the bus (that is, when I'm not asleep myself), and I have a good 20-25 minute commute to and from work aboard the King County Metro's buses. It's always interesting to see what happens, and conversation tends to lead to interesting observations. Of course, these are not my conversations, but those of others.

The buses, particularly on the commute home from work, tend to be very crowded, and oftentimes the aisle of the bus becomes standing room. Naturally, when there are only a few seats left, and when friends get on the bus together, one person takes an available seat, and the other person, seeing that there are no nearby seats, stands in the aisle next to their friend to continue their conversation. Naturally, this happens while the bus is still on campus, with a good number of people still wanting to get on the bus. Of course, the second friend is standing in the aisle near the front of the bus and is always completely oblivious to the crowd that is gathering at the front of the bus. Almost always the person plugging the aisle will not move and instead makes everyone else pull a swim move to get around to access the rest of the aisle space to let everyone else actually get on the bus. It's always interesting that people think their conversations are so important such that they'll endure 30+ people to swim around them in the not so wide aisle over several stops. It always feels that people are so unaware of their surroundings, though these days I'm never surprised anymore (even when cops show up and arrest someone off the bus).

Naturally, this problem will only get worse, as King County Metro is continuing to reduce service due to an increase funding gap, resulting in a lot more swimming around unaware self-important undergrads.