Beethoven mixes well with Emily

The recent Charlotte Brontë concert by the Melbourne Symphonic Orchestra is reviewed in The Age:

HERE was a recital that began with fair competence following a clear path, sank to a state bordering on tedium in its middle reaches, then came to life in its shorter second half. The Melbourne Symphony Chamber Players - four of them, including Isabel Morse on viola and Sarah Morse playing cello - provided a backdrop for selections by their sister, actor Helen Morse, from domestic and personal writings of the three Bronte sisters and brother Branwell. The extracts were punctuated by music that might have been heard in the Haworth parsonage: Beethoven's Serenade Op. 25 and Symphony No. 1 in Hummel's arrangement for a quartet, and Mozart's taxing violin/viola duo in B flat.
While the readings percolating the serenade's movements displayed some reflectiveness, the Mozart work came across as oddly situated, its final variations an uneasy backdrop for Charlotte's story of revealing their identities to their publisher.
More effective was the juxtaposition of the senior sister's sad account of the destruction of her family and Emily's fiercely assertive poems with the Beethoven symphony. Fortunately, the score's ebullience made an ideal foil for Morse's impassioned versions of the liberty-extolling verses.

Chortle reviews the new sketch comedy by Leila Hackett & Charlotte Hudson: Two Left Hands. They're appearing at the Courtyard Pleasance for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 5-31 August 2009:

So on the occasion of her wedding Charlotte Bronte’s Dad is most chuffed – and relieved - that she has finally bagged a man, and during Florence Nightingale’s funeral service the vicar considers her lasting legacy is that it was a shame she died a spinster. Elsewhere the housewives with cupcake and frilly apron fixations satirise the current trend for the fetishising of the Fifties housewife and penchant for posh stripping otherwise known as burlesque. (Marisa Burgess)

Marisa Mackle is interviewed in The Independent (Ireland):

"I'm the biggest Jane Austen fan of anyone I know. I've read and re-read all the books and make a point of watching any movies, TV dramas or plays based on her stories. My sister even brought me back a Mr Darcy fridge magnet from Bath! The first female writers I ever read were the Brontës, so when I discovered Jane Austen I felt like yelling 'At last!'

Bookhora talks about Swedish author Jessica Kolterjahn:

Finns det några författarskap som inspirerat dig i ditt sätt att skriva?
Jag inspireras av många olika slags författarskap. När jag var yngre så läste jag mycket Mare Kandre, Christine Falkenland, Selma Lagerlöf, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens och systrana Brontë. (Google translation)

NovelPress, Babbling About Books, and More, Páginas repletas de emociones :) (in Spanish) and If it doesn't have a tail... it's not a monkey post about Wuthering Heights (incidentally prettybooks uploads some scans of a 1904 edition of the book), Dragonflowers and Books talks about Syrie James's The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë and mupwangle has some Brontë moors pictures on flickr.

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Humour, Jane Eyre, Music, Theatre, Wuthering Heights