Dear Diary,
I returned this a.m. from Winnipeg where over the weekend Kenneth
Gilbert gave his recital X2 on Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening.
The event was indeed recorded by CBC for later broadcast nationally (and
on the internet), but just when it will hit the airwaves has not been
determined. Kenneth played a French double (one of mine, ca 1990) and a
lute/harpsichord by list member Anden Houben. The menu included Byrd,
Froberger, J.S. Bach's English Suite in F major, F. Couperin's Quatrieme
Ordre, and Balbastre's rendition of Rameau's "Pygmalian", all of the
preceding done on the harpsichord. On the lute/harpsichord he played
several selections from his own version of the Kapsperger lute suites,
plus JSB's Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E-flat major BWV 998.

Gilbert played fast and beautifully yesterday. Well, fast where it was
called for, for no one would have played the Froberger "Lamentation on
the death of Ferdinand III" very quickly, and the lute/harpsichord,
being for all practical purposes undamped, imposes its own speed limit.

Capricious humidity and temperatures played havoc with the tunings on
Saturday (there's nothing like a room jammed with 60 heavily breathing
souls). By Sunday things were under control and both instruments behaved
themselves during the recording process. For temperament I settled on my
version of Valotti on the hpschd, and a circulating fifth quasi equal
system for the lute/hpschd. A couple of pieces were repeated as encores,
due to the presence outside of a boy and his dog  making themselves
audible through the microphones.

All this was a welcome relief from the past couple of weeks, which were
devoted to: 1, bringing back from the dead a "harpsichord" which should
have remained dead; and 2, restringing an 18th c. French hpschd in Rose
wire. Both events are stories in themselves, and perhaps I'll write you
about them later on.

Affectionately,
dpj