Ruminations on RR

This is coming a few days late, but I needed to raid the photo collection first.

There have been many wonderful things said about Robert Redford's actions in life. I haven't seen the following discussed.

For me, one of the defining things that Robert Redford did as an actor, especially in closeups, was the "freeze expression, slide the eyes in one direction, slide them back, continue." He could do this with a variety of emotions and apply it to scenes with different tones. It's everywhere in his body of work because he was masterful at it (and it reinforced his aura of charm).

This photo, from a fall trip to NH when I was 16, does not have Robert Redford in it. Instead that's my dad, Richard Reutter, who can sometimes make you double take before realizing no, that's not the famous actor. I'm thankful that both men have been in this world, and that my dad is still with us.

UVM Lane Series: Evren Ozel

We saw Evren Ozel perform at the UVM Lane Series on Friday.  The Lane Series has a tradition of bringing in Van Cliburn finalists, and we've made a tradition of going to those events.

Ozel's program began with three Scarlatti Sonatas (Sonata in G Major, K. 427, Sonata in C Minor, K. 11, Sonata in C Major, K. 159), then moved on to Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major, op. 109, and went into intermission with Bartok's Out of Doors, Sz. 81, BB 89.

After intermission, Ozel played Fauré's Nocturne No. 4 in E-flat Major, op. 36 and finished with Schumann's Carnaval, op. 9.  Aside from the Beethoven, I wasn't familiar with much of the program, and it's always interesting to be introduced to new favorites.  :-)

Ozel demonstrated extraordinary fluidity and musicality, making difficult passages seem trivial.  We placed ourselves on the left side of the stage, so that we could see the smooth and effortless movement of his hands.  He was charming and down to earth in his discussion of the pieces, with a genuine enthusiasm and love for music and music history.  And *fun*.  

He was very practical in the encore, not waiting very long before coming back out onstage.  He played Brahm's Hungarian Dance Number 5, as arranged by György Cziffra.  Then he was gracious enough to play a *second* encore, joking he'd "only keep us for one more", and finished with Leopold Godowsky's transcription of Le Cygne from Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals, noting that it was, perhaps, "a little disrespectful to the cello" to play it on the piano. 

All in all a wonderful night!  To "replay" it when I like, here's a playlist with the program from that night.  (note: Spotify didn't have all of the pieces performed by Evren Ozel)

MS follies: Forms surveys

Last week, I wanted to solicit suggestions from my team at work, so I went to OneDrive, clicked the "Create or upload" button in the upper left, selected "Forms survey", created my survey, and sent the link out to my team.  This week, I wanted to look at the results, so I went back to OneDrive... which had no way to get me to the form I had created... from OneDrive.  I needed to go to forms.office.com to find the form, at which point I could export the results to Excel.

Meanwhile, Google Drive treats Forms like any other "document" that you can create and go back to from within that "one drive".