Matthew Zadow's opera blog: Bread, stew, guitars, and Bach...

After a very rainy couple of weeks it's been quite sunny here, although colder: this morning the thermometer on the back terrace read eight degrees. By midafternoon it's now up to 17 and sunny, which is really pleasant after last week's cold and wind and rain. We have been resisting the impulse to turn on the central heating, and instead have been making do with dressing a little more warmly, and choosing to cook things that use the oven for longer periods.

Yesterday for example I made up two loaves of my no-knead bread, which bakes inside a cast-iron dutch oven at the hottest temperature that a standard oven can produce, which is around 550 degrees F / 285 degrees C. It takes half an hour for the pots to heat up, and then the oven is on for around 45 minutes in total while the bread is baking. As well, I made oven fried potatoes, and a flemish beef stew that used three bottles of Chimay Bleu, onions, garlic, bouquet garni, brown sugar, and red wine vinegar, finished up with dijon mustard and a few pieces of spice cake that thickens the gravy... after the initial sear on the stovetop, the stew sat in a 300 degree oven for a couple of hours, so that did something to take the chill off the house, and when it came to the table it warmed us up also.

I rehearsed for the Christmas Oratorio last weekend, and it went very well. That performance isn't until December 9th, but our rehearsal time with the soprano soloist Fiona Hick will be abbreviated, as she lives in Toulouse and won't be coming until shortly before the concert, so she wanted to do a little work with the conductor while she was in town. Joris Vershueren is a former counter-tenor who conducts and teaches in the Brussels area, and he knows the work and is a sympathetic colleague. We all got on very well, and I am confident that we'll have a good time.

at the market of Tervuren

After the rehearsal I met up with Lawrence and ran from his home out through the Foret des Soignes, and around the park of Tervuren, logging around 17km. We stopped at the market square of Tervuren, where the Chefs on Wheels food truck festival was taking place... Maggie and Tiffany and the Edwards children met up with us and we sampled some nice beer on tap and tried out some of the food on offer. Since then I haven't run at all, but have been resting up for the Chimay Trail des Trappistes that happens this Saturday. I hope that will go well... Maggie isn't signed up but I'm encouraging her to try the 11km trail, and she can make a day registration if she wants to.

Yesterday morning I had my first look at the score for Wouter Dekoninck's transcription of Bach's Dritter Teil der Clavier-übung, an organ mass of Bach's first published in 1739. Bach wrote four of these keyboard exercises: the other three of the group are for harpsichord, with the last one more commonly referred to as the Goldberg Variations. Wouter has transcribed this work for singers and baroque orchestra, and named it the Grosse Messe 1739 für Bach und Luther. This mass is meant to be a counterpart to the famous Mass in B-minor, but in this case the text is in German, not Latin. We perform it in the 15th-century Sint Geertruikerk in Leuven, and then in the Church of the Dominicans in Brussels.

It will be an interesting project to present, and will tick another box in my checklist of Bach repertoire... I am running out of the big Bach pieces to premiere (a great problem to have). This season is Bach-heavy for sure: in March I will for the first time sing both the bass arias and the Christus part in the Johannespassion in Brasschaat, near Antwerp.

the Kasteel of Brasschaat

The same week I will do the bass arias, Petrus, Judas, and Pilatus in deSingel Antwerp, Sint Carolus Borromeus Antwerp, and Concertgebouw Brugge. Lastly I will make my debut as Christus in the Matthäuspassion in Zieuwent, NL, which will check off the last part of the Passions from my to-do list. That means that with the exception of the Easter Oratorio (BWV 249) all I really have left is the regular Cantatas; there is no danger in me singing all of those, however; so far I have done only about twenty-four, and that comprises only about 10% of the Cantatas written by this amazing artist!

In house news, we made the down payments for the installation of our wood stove (scheduled for mid-October) and the replacement of our roof (scheduled for the end of October). It's expensive to do the roof in particular, but we need to get that done and insulated, as there is currently nothing keeping the heat in at all! The clay tiles are from the time of the initial construction (c. 1936) so they are still holding up but needing a fix, and the chimneys are in very poor shape (as you can see in the photographs below).

street side chimney

garden side chimney

I am sure that we will begin to see a benefit immediately in the feeling of warmth in the house, and avoid wasting money on heating costs, and also that we can get the attic rooms ready to accommodate guests as soon as possible. Right now Malcolm is staying most of the time in his student room in Laeken, so the upper floor is empty, but there will be periods that he needs to stay here. I have found a hotel-style fold-out cot that can be placed in Duncan's room when his friend Arthur stays over, and that may have to do for Malcolm as well while renovations are ongoing.

We have transplanted pretty much every thing that we brought from the allotment or our terrace garden. The five rhubarb plants were beaten up pretty badly but they all have new leaves, and the red, black and white currant bushes haven't lost leaves, although there is some tip yellowing. The raspberries seem to have been hardest hit but we'll have to see how they come back next year. For the front garden we've planted our wisteria, a hortensia, a rosebush (which was very tired looking but is now showing buds!), a blue spruce, a number of lavender plants, a flowering laurier, and a regular bay laurel (the leaves of which I used in the flemish beef stew, btw). I expect we'll be planting some iris corms and tulip bulbs as the season progresses so there is something colourful next spring. Keeping the weeds down is a weekly chore, as the front was really left to go wild for many years and the weeds are well established. The same is true for the back garden, which has a terrible infestation of stinging nettles which is a challenge to keep up with.

On Tuesday I went into town on the bus, leaving around 8:00 from the house, and walked to the Wavre Gare to catch the C bus at 8:20, arriving at Ben's shop by 9:05. I got a lot done on the Zadowcaster, and now have perhaps one good day's work left to finish. Here are some photos...