My original post started off by writing that my 2010 model Lexus IS 250 is without doubt the most reassuring car I’ve driven since  I sold my 1960 Humber Super Snipe in 1975 and bought an imported  Datsun 180B.  I used to love the Humber Super Snipe, which I inherited from my father who passed away in 1964.   It was a large imported car from Britain, with a 3 litre 6 cylinder in-line engine that developed 130 bhp.  It had disk brakes and automatic transmission, and a polished wood dashboard.  It was a true luxury car in its day.  The photo below was taken on a day trip with my parents to Carpenter’s Rocks in south east South Australia, an hours drive from our home at Mount Gambier.  My father took the photo.

I’ve always been a great fan of Humber cars, and the Super Snipe and the Pullman limousine in particular, for many years, so I was thrilled when my father bought the Super Snipe  in 1960.

I’ll now go back in time to 1954, and the the Humber Super Snipe of the day, as shown in the featured image.  You can see the original advert (in B&W) in the image below from the UK Daily Telegraph - a special issue perhaps.   As you can see, the pages have aged.  On the left page you can see the original advert for the 1954 Humber Super Snipe, and on the right page you can see (if you look closely) a map of the world showing the Queen’s journey around the world in 1954.

After her Coronation in June 1953, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh spent 6 months in 1954 touring the world, including several months Australia and New Zealand.  They travelled by sea on the Gothic.  As part of this trip they spent a day in Mount Gambier.  I had graduated from High School the year before and had begun work at The Commercial Bank of Australia Limited.  The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh flew into Mount Gambier and landed at the airport about 5 miles north of our home.  The only route from the airport to the town was past our home.  From our front lawn I saw the royal visitors on their way into town and on their return to the airport.

The Queen and Duke travelled in an open 4-door version of the Humber Super Snipe in the above advert.  My father took the photo below at Vansittart Park in the near central part of  Mount Gambier.   The open Humber Super Snipe was a custom built vehicle, and as you can see, it’s not a convertible, which would be 2-door.

The town Mayor (Mr Marks as I recall) and his wife are standing in front of the car to welcome the royal visitors.

Here is a shot of the Queen and Duke at the Blue Lake in Mount Gambier.  I don’t suppose they remember the scene as they went through so much in a few months.  My head would be reeling if I ever did what they did.   But the photo holds magic for me.  It shows the young Queen and the Duke at the main scenic spot in the South Australian country town I was born and grew up in.

Here’s another shot of the royal Humber.

As I mentioned about, the Royal Tour in 1954 was in the year after the Coronation.  One of the greatly admired guests at the Coronation was Queen Salote of Tonga, seen below.

Sadly, Queen Salote died in 1965, and her son reigned as King Tupou IV, until his death in 2006.  He was succeeded by King George Tupou V.  The photo below shows a scene after the coronation of Tupou V,  in his Humber Pullman.

and

Almost four weeks ago, my honeymoon period with the Cuisinart Soup Maker / Hot & Cold Blender came to an abrupt end.  I was making a soup and had set to the timer to 28 minutes as usual.  When the timer got close to the 20 minute mark I stood in front of the blender to keep a very close watch on it to be ready for the moment it came to a vigorous boil, and press the Simmer button.  However, as you no doubt know, there is an old saying that a watched pot never boils.  And this proved to be the case.  The liquid just wouldn’t come to the boil while I watching it.  Then I got distracted for maybe 30 seconds, or a minute at most, and the next thing I knew the liquid was shooting out of the top of the blender and making a terrible mess on the counter-top.  It took about 15 minutes to clean up the mess which got into and under everything within reach on the bench.

To add insult to injury, the final soup had more lumps in it than usual, and I found that it gave me some tummy discomfort every time I had it.  In the end I threw the remainder out and haven’t made soup since.  To be fair, I should mention that I had been having tummy discomfort since the week before Easter, and I had to be very careful what I ate.   Simple food worked best.  My tummy discomfort after having the soup could have been from the wholemeal or multi-grain bread, toasted, that I’d eaten with the soup.  I soon afterwards switched to light and white breads such as Vienna loaf, and my tummy has been fine since.

Today I read somewhere that the old food pyramid showing how much we should eat of what, each day, is changing.  Grains are no longer held in such high regard, because for some people they cause sickness.  I don’t want to get into that, but it struck a chord with me because of my recent experiences.  My tummy troubles ended when I switched from Brumbies wholemeal and grains breads to their white breads such as Vienna loaf, French Stick, and Ciabatta.

Coming back to the Cuisinart Soup Maker / Hot & Cold Blender, I have to say that after the overflow four weeks ago when it came to the boil, and the lumps after blending the cooked soup with the blender as best I could, I’ve concluded there are better, quicker, cheaper and surer ways of cooking soup.   I’ll make a post on this when I find the time.  But in short, using the Cuisinart Pressure Cooker to cook the soup and the Kenwood TriBlade Hand Blender to blend it, is the answer.

Just put the ingredients into the pressure cooker, lock the lid on, set the timer for the cooking time – maybe 8 minutes (instead of 20 minutes) – and the cooker will take care of everything, and switch off when it’s done.  The cooker doesn’t start timing until it reaches the desired pressure, then it reduces the heat to maintain pressure throughout the cooking.  The Kenwood TriBlade blending attachments with plastic feet are ideal for the non-stick interior of the pressure cooker.  They can blend everything without any lumps.

Despite the above, I still think the Cuisinart Soup Maker (as called overseas) or Hot & Cold Blender (as called in Australia) is a fine product.  I was so pleased with it that this is what inspired me to buy the Cuisinart Pressure Cooker.  With the benefit of hindsight, I think the pressure plus Kenwood TriBlade blender set is the better combination to make soup.  The two products together are about the same price as the Cuisinart Hot & Cold Blender, and they are of course much more versatile.  I cook my corned beef in the pressure cooker, and it’s great for cooking rice in 3-4 minutes, or risotto in 7 minute (with no stirring).  But again, I’ll make a post on that when I get the time (and inspiration).

Today, the Good Weekend supplement to The Saturday Age contained a full page advertisement for the Cuisinart Hot & Cold Blender (called Cuisinart Soup Maker in many other countries).  The photo above is from that advertisement – the rest of it is at the bottom of this post.

The first I heard that such an appliance existed, was almost five weeks ago, when I received an email from Kitchenware Direct in Perth, WA, with a photo and details of the product.  I think it was love (or desire) at first sight for me.  I wanted it. But I resisted buying it for a few weeks, as my brain told me that (1) I can cook soup in a saucepan or pressure cooker, and (2) puree it in the pot with a hand held blender.

My resistance faded when a few weeks later I received a card in the post from David Jones advertising discounts for card holders that week.  The offer included 20% off all electrical kitchen appliances.  That offer was too much to resist.  I decided to trust my instinct and give the appliance a try, so I bought one.

The featured image on the home page of my blog shows two onions cut in half at the bottom of the blender.   The image below shows a segment of pumpkin, like the one in the advertisement photo above, in the bottom of my blender.

In the past two weeks I’ve made soup four times using the Cuisinart blender, and it’s been a taste delight each time.  That’s full credit to me because of having some experience over the past year in making my own soup, and also thinking about what I’m doing, as to how it might affect taste.  But in my mind, it’s also a major credit to the Cuisinart appliance.  The glass blender and 1400 ml limit for soup is for me, a great guide as to how many vegetables pieces to add to achieve the result I want.  I can see through the glass what I’ve added, and then how much stock, or water (with stock powder already added) to reach the 1400 ml level.

Over the years I’ve enthusiastically bought many appliances, pots and pans that have turned out to be a poor choice, and of no use to me after the novelty has died off.  But this appliance is looking like being a winner for me.

It has a lot going for it.  The results are enjoyable.  It’s very easy to use.  And it’s very easy to clean.  That does it for me!

Check out the videos at the end of the above video.

In the coming weeks I’ll make posts about another Cuisinart appliance that has won my great respect.

The Cuisinart pressure cooker.

The above is Part 1 of the video from The Last Night at the Proms at the Albert Hall in London, in 2008, with Helene Grimaud playing .  Get ready to play part 2 below, the moment that Part 1 finishes, to try to preserve the continuity.

You may have noted similarities to other works by Beethoven, including his Symphony No.9 (the Choral Symphony, written many years later). If you enjoyed the work, you might enjoy the following 4 min 40 secs of another performance – Daniel Barenboim and Berlin Philharmoniker. It’s dramatic.

What have the above videos got to do with the Olive O4HD?  The answer is that soon after writing my post about the Olive O4HD on 30 January, I bought one, and today I finished recording my CD collection to the Olive.  I had decided that free CD samplers and CDs from the covers of magazines such as Classic CD and Classic FM, usually contained an unrelated collection of tracks, mostly only part of a work; so they didn’t count as part of my collection, and I didn’t record them to the Olive.

With my whole CD collection now on the Olive, I have now begun listening to the sampler and magazine CDs, perhaps for the first time, to see if there is any music that I really like.  And on the very first Classic CD (No. 25) that I played, I came across the final 9 minutes of the above work.  I loved it immediately.  I’d never heard it before, but the 9 minute sample has been in my collection since 1999 as far as I can work out from checking out the Classic CD 25 heading. The reality is that I would never have discovered or played that CD except for the fact that the Olive has caused me to look at every CD I can find in my home, and in doing so I came across the Beethoven Choral Fantasy.

Following on from that, I’ve discovered Beethoven’s Triple Concerto.

Who knows what else I might find in the coming weeks and months when I listen to the sample CDs.  This post also has something else to do with the Olive O4HD.

It’s for those who like to jump to the verdict before they start reading the review. In short, I’m thrilled I bought the Olive O4HD.

In my post last week, about the Emperor Concerto performance, I neglected to mention the conductor – Antony Walker – an Australian now mostly working in the US.  For me, his conducting of the Sinfonia Australis orchestra was very engaging, as he so clearly enjoyed and respected the music, soloist and the orchestra.  He has his own website at www.antonywalker.com if you would like to read about him.  His list of recordings  includes the CD set of the complete Beethoven Piano Concertos with Gerard Willems, Sinfonia Australis and the Stuart & Sons grand piano.  But his recordings also include works as diverse as Carmina Burana; Handel arias sung by David Hobson (see note below*); Handel’s Messiah; Missa Solemnis, and many other choral works, and works with soloists.  With so many choral works to his credit, it should perhaps come as no surprise that he was the Choir Director for the movie Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

*David Hobson is an Australian tenor.  His website is www.davidhobson.biz and  you can read a brief outline of his performance history on the About page, which includes grand opera, and Gilbert and Sullivan.  Some TV viewers might remember him more as a contestant on Dancing With The Stars several years ago, and was one of the professional singers paired with an amateur singer as a coach in the It Takes Two (Aussie version) series that mercifully only lasted 3 seasons (2006-2008).  But I remember him mostly for his performance of  The Impossible Dream at an AFL Grand Final several years ago.  It’s one of my favourite songs, and it was the best version of it I’ve ever heard.

33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli, Opus 120, by Ludwig von Beethoven – commonly known as The Diabelli Variations – is a new work to me.  And it seems that I’m not alone in this.  It is apparently not a well known work, despite its importance.  For that reason I’m not going to comment on the interpretation and playing by Gerard Willems, or on the sound of the Stuart & Sons piano, until I’ve heard other versions of this work.  I have two on order from Amazon in the UK.  I’ll make a further post once the CDs arrive and I’ve had time to listen to them and from some impressions.

In thinking about this, I should remember that quite often I don’t like something on first acquaintance (be it a person, a type of food, a movie, a TV show, or a piece of music), but on further and repeated acquaintance I begin to appreciate the qualities I didn’t recognise on first meeting.  This could be the case with the Diabelli Variations, and the performance by Gerard Willems.  Some of it I liked immediately, in my first play, and some of  struck me as loud playing  just for the sake of it, with no musicality.  As I say, that was my first impression of the whole work when hearing it for the first time; and it just happened to be Gerard Willems playing it on an extended Stuart piano, because it was the piano that attracted my interest in the first place.  I was keen to take every opportunity to hear the piano.

Until the other two CDs arrive, I will give a little demonstration of the reason as to why I’ve become interested in hearing different versions of the Variations.

The following audio track is the 25th Variation as played by Gerard Willems.  He plays the variation in 65 seconds, so you might even listen twice, if the piece is new to you, to become more familiar with it (and note the tempo) before you listen to Brendel’s version.

Now listen to the same 25th Variation played by Alfred Brendel.

Wow!  Two very different ideas of the tempo Beethoven had in mind when he noted marked the score of the variation to be played “Allegro”.  Now perhaps you’ll understand why I’ve ordered two other Diabelli Variations from Amazon to see how they play the work (but not the Brendel, as this seems to be unavailable directly from Amazon).

Here is another version by the English pianist Paul Lewis. I like his interpretation of the Variations.

As to the price of the Diabelli Variations on CD, here are two notes:

My Diabelli Variations by Gerard Willems cost me A$27.99 from the ABC Shop at Chadstone  Shopping Centre in Melbourne.

But check out the price of the same recording at Amazon.uk.  The 61.99 Pds converts to A$99.18.

By contrast, in Melbourne, just one of the two other Variations I ordered costs $32. To go into the city to buy it, I would not only have to devote a large part of my day to do it, but I’d also have to a pay $20 a parking fee. Total cost $52. By contrast, night I ordered that and another Variation from Amazon UK, and the total cost of the 2 CDs plus shipping was A$29.

If one has been collecting CDs for as long I have (about 25 years), the collection can grow to unmanageable proportions. I have CDs in various plastic cabinets, and on shelves and in piles scattered throughout 3 rooms in my unit, and even in places I’d forgotten that I’d stored CDs – until I did a thorough search last week. My concerns over the years have been that I have no idea where to find most of the CDs if I want to play a particular one, so it’s too daunting to do a search. I find that getting up to put on a CD and changing it when it finishes, is tiresome, so I don’t do it often (and especially in the case of works that spread across several CDs. And perhaps the biggest concern of all, at my age, is that I will probably never get to hear most of my CDs again. It’s just too hard: and it’s not so easy and convenient to play them that I’ll do it because I can, and can quickly and easily explore the depths of my collection.

Enter the second exciting gadget I came across on Thursday. In this case I read about it in an article in The Age Green Guide headed “Music lovers don’t cut corners” (see featured image).  For the record, I didn’t read the article in the physical newspaper.  I read it on my iPad in the digital edition, which is a 100% facsimile of the actual newspaper.

I’ll quote parts of the article that aroused my interest:

Music lovers — those who can pick Pavarotti in 1965 from Pavarotti in 1985 — have always had a love/hate relationship with iPods and the electronic music storage they represent.  Most of them wouldn’t touch an iPod with a five-metre baton.

This is because the signal is compressed so more music can be squeezed onto the hard drive and in this compression process, much of the original signal is deleted, especially in the upper range. The music sounds similar, yet is not the same.   It sounds as if it’s all there and yet it no longer brings tears to your eyes. All the nuance has been lost.

But what music lovers secretly like about iPods is their convenience.  An album, or a particular track, can be found in seconds and played immediately.

The music is categorised and indexed automatically. And it’s all in one place.

Now those serious about their music can have it all; the music quality of a CD with the convenience of an iPod.  Modern solid-state hard drives have the capacity to make electronic music storage a viable option for people who refuse to compromise on sound quality.

The unit is shown above.  Here’s a further description:

Store up to 20,000 high-resolution HD tracks (6000 CDs) in 24-bit on this award winning music server – with more than 250 times the resolution of CDs, you’ll hear the HD difference immediately. Experience it right out of the box, the Olive O4HD includes over an hour of music with 12 of the best Chesky Records’ HD Tracks for Free!

Everything from 24-bit HD files to 16-bit converted CDs will be at your fingertips. Convenient storage, easy touchscreen access and the ability to play it all in any room of your home with the addition of an Olive 2 (see below). Now you’ll enjoy your music collection more than ever.

You can even turn your screen into an oversized color display and use the Olive remote control to see music details or select songs from across the room. It’s a great alternative to navigating with the touchscreen or our iPhone App.

Why does it sound so good?

The Olive O4HD will deliver exceptional sound quality from all of your digital music sources. Maximize your signal transfer with the 24k gold RCA connectors and use the Olive O4HD as an outboard DAC. With 24-bit/192kHz oversampling, noise and distortion are ultra low resulting in incredible purity in both high frequencies and low-level detail.

A quote from a review:

Exceptional sound; approachable and easy to use; quality build and finish; sheer value…this is 21st century hi-fi: the Olive O4HD is superb to live with and listen to’ (What Hi-Fi magazine February 2010)

All this plus a free iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad app to control playback (as well as the supplied remote control).

The Olive O4HD has a wonderful final trick up it’s sleeve.  You can add a slave to every room in the house where you have a system through which you can play audio – and you can do it wirelessly with your Wifi network.  Wunderbar!

For this feature you need an Olive Melody 2 in each room where you want it.