32 countries have visited my blog! 
Wow, the Internet age is really impressive: and the love for the oboe is evidently universal! 
To celebrate, I did a little You-Tube of an oboist who is really worth getting to know: Louise Pellerin studied in Montréal with my teacher (Bernard Jean) and also in Europe with Heinz Holliger! They have even recorded double concertos and double sonatas together.
Before Albrecht Mayer, I had always found her sound to be the best. The discovery of so many extraordinary oboists in the world thanks to You-Tube (see Learning from the Masters Electronically) might make her interpretation seem a little old-fashioned, but there is a lot to be learned from her. You can find Heinz Holliger’s influence… and also Bernard Jean’s style, if you know what to look for!
This excerpt comes from a recording she made at the monastery Abbaye St-Benoit-du-lac (close to my home town) with a really important organist (and monk in the monastery) Dom Andre Laberge. For the video, and to thank all of you, I put the flags of all the countries that visit here! To avoid any political or moral insensitivity, I put the countries in alphabetical order as the names are spelled in English (the language of this blog!). Notice that this way, my own country is 5th in the progression! Also, I may have missed your country, because Blogger Statistics don’t show them all, only the most frequent 10 in a specified time frame. If I missed yours please let me know and I’ll fix it!
So far, thank you to:
Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Chile, Columbia, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, India, Ireland, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Netherlands (Holland), Portugal, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, ,Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, U.K., Ukraine, U.S.A.
Handel: beautiful but …..
I absolutely LOVE the music of Haendel and Telemann. I also think they are the most difficult to play of all composers of all time! Looking at the sheets and the notes and rhythms makes them appear simple, perhaps enough for and advanced 1st year student to master. But the soul in there is so strong that the technical simplicity makes it hard to reach!
Heinz Holliger has to be the master at ornamenting Haendel, but it is too easy to overdo ornaments and drown the musical soul in technical dazzle.
3rd IMS treatment – worthwhile!
When I get to the treatments, the fear of the pain is getting hard to bear. Some needles do not hurt at all and some are really painful. But when the needle is out, that’s it. So the mental apprehension is worse than the treatment.
This week was bad because the weather changed a lot (from –15 to +15 Celcius, from rain to snow to gusting winds) and that usually causes pain to flare-up the entire body. But my neck is usually a lot worse, and my right hand has begun to really relax and stay relaxed. I can compare with my left (not yet treated): it is “normal”, so always tensed, always clutching and always a little sore. My right used to be like that, now it is becoming truly normal: relaxed, open and no pain.
Yep, definitely worthwhile!
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