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November and December 2007 [2008-02-25]
I started November with much activity for ARTE VERUM.
Love Derwinger and I returned with pleasure to our favourite recording hall, Nybrokajen, the
Swedish Academy Hall where we finished the recording of melodies of Francis Poulenc that
will be released in the spring of 2008 bringing the Arte Verum releases to four and a half.
We finished the Shostakovich CD by adding the famous trio.
I had a few songs to add to the Brahms recording with Roland Pöntinen, we finished early and
had some time left over so we recorded Schubert’s Ave Maria that will be released in a
special edition with Schubert’s Mignon Lieder for the festival La Folle Journée whose theme
for 2008 will be Franz Schubert, his music and his contemporaries.
I then ran up to Finland to sing Strauss’ Vier Letze Lieder. There are some pieces in my
repertoire that have become the backbone of my orchestral repertoire and to which I am
always happy to return. These are signature pieces for me that truly define my artistic
development. And this group of Strauss songs is at the top of that list.
I spent a few days I Oulu and enjoyed working with the orchestra and their young conductor,
Dimitr Slobodeniouk. I ate a few excellent meals as well.
Love and I met in Brussels and we had a wonderful week with our recital program that we
performed in Turnhout, my first time in this town where we were warmly received in a lovely
concert hall, Liege and Brussels at the wonderful Palais des Beaux Arts. I did have to suffer
the music in the hotel restaurants, which was really painful for me. It is impossible to think
about the music that I am going to perform because of the constant noise pollution
everywhere.
Back up north to Borĺs in Sweden, I was to sing more of my signature pieces, Mozart concert
arias and Berlioz’ Les Nuits d’été. Not all orchestras are equal and yet it is sometimes more
satisfying to work with orchestras that are dedicated to making the music as best as they can
than with their more famous but blasé colleagues. The orchestra in Boras is not a permanent
organisation and is made up of some musicians that have other professions but they all
brought a passion and dedication to the music making. I enjoyed this concert very much.
Finally a few days of rest before coming back to Magnus Lindgren and the quartet in France
for some more Billie and the Blues.
DECEMBER
Love and I had a few more recitals in and then I had to get back to Sweden to prepare
everything for the Holidays, decorating the house and making sure that everything was ready
for the family to gather. This is what I love most at this time of the year, being with my
family. I also take the opportunity to be especially grateful for the blessing that we have and
to search for a sense of renewal and energized vigilance to carry through the beginning of the
new year to come.
To get in the mood for the season I performed two Christmas concerts in Norrköping Sweden
conducted by my friend Jan Söderblom.
The choir was made of young students from schools in Norrköping. Christmas was now on
it’s way.
I had agreed to do one last concert of the year in Torino. The dates changed to a later date, the
program was difficult to agree upon and then two days before leaving for Torino, the
conductor Lawrence Foster fell ill and cancelled. I arrived with a delayed flight. I should have
gone through Munich but when that flight was too delayed for me to get my correspondence I
was hurriedly re routed instead to Berlin and then to Frankfurt. I arrived in Torino several
hours later than my original flight with out my luggage I had to wait another 24 hours before
they arrived the hotel. The hotel claimed be of a high standing but had no idea what that
means and the music playing constantly in the restaurants and entrance was so loud that I had
to eat in my room on the day of the concert. After the orchestra rehearsal in the morning on
the day of the concert I had no energy to be subjected to the torture of music being played
during my lunch so I was forced to eat in my room so as to keep some peace of mind. After
all of these problems I asked myself if the concert could go well but it was the only thing
about this engagement that went well. After all I always think that the audience that comes to
the concert is not interested to know that I have had problems and I had to give my best for
them and for the sake of the music. After the concert I was very satisfied. I left the hotel at 5
the following morning to go to meet my husband and children for some quality down time.
We had a quiet, relaxed holiday and it is the time with my family that I treasure the most of
all and for which I am the most grateful.
I wish everyone a 2008 full of love, joy and peace.
Best regards
BH
IN 2008 PLEASE DO NOT FORGET
From The Independent Newspaper
10 humanitarian crises forgotten (but not gone)
If doctors edited newspapers... The
frontline physicians at Médecins Sans
Frontičres have chosen the 10 humanitarian
crises that should have been given more
coverage in 2007.
By Claire Soares and Daniel Howden
Published: 20 December 2007
Colombia
While the cocaine trade regularly features in the headlines, little
attention is devoted to the scale of the internal refugee crisis. After
four decades of civil conflict that has evolved from a war of political
ideologies to a struggle for territory and control over the narcotics
trade, large numbers of Colombians live in areas controlled by militia
or guerrillas. With basic human rights under threat and unpredictable
violence endemic in many rural areas, millions have fled to the
shantytowns – or barrios – that ring every major town. Nearly four
million people live in these insecure settlements cut off from basic
state services such as mains electricity, water and health care. In the
endless slums that now choke the capital, Bogota, areas are divided up
and fought over by the same paramilitaries and left-wing rebels that
blight and dominate the countryside.
Sri Lanka
After a quarter of a century of fighting, this year will be remembered
among the bloodiest in Sri Lankan history. The civil war between the
government forces and the separatist Tamil Tigers flared back into life
last year and has kept worsening. International efforts to resolve the
conflict have made no headway as key figures on both sides appear to
have decided that a military solution is possible. Targeted bombings,
mine attacks, suicide bombings, abductions, recruitment of child
soldiers have all followed. The civilian toll in a country already
flattened by the 2004 tsunami has been horrendous. Hundreds of
thousands of people in need of humanitarian aid have been forced to
flee to makeshift camps and the situation has been compounded by a
climate of hostility and suspicion towards aid agencies. MSF is among
the few agencies still operating in frontline areas, such as Point Pedro
and Vavuniya, where doctors are desperately needed.
Somalia
Violence in Somalia hit some of the worst levels in more than 15
years in 2007, prompting UN officials to declare it the worst
humanitarian crisis in Africa, surpassing even Darfur in its horror and
hopelessness. Ethiopia invaded Somalia on Christmas Day last year
and easily overpowered the Union of Islamic Courts, but ever since
insurgents have been staging increasingly ferocious guerrilla style
attacks, particularly in the capital, Mogadishu. Aid workers say one
million people have fled their homes, including 60 per cent of
Mogadishu's population. This week mortar shells slammed into a
crowded market in the capital, killing a dozen people including a
mother and her three children, and a foreign journalist was kidnapped.
This precarious security situation means reaching those in need is
increasingly difficult. Just yesterday, the UN called for the creation of
"safe zones" so that aid could get through to the most vulnerable,
particularly children.
Burma
The extraordinary democracy protests by the Buddhist monks in one
of the most repressive countries on earth put Burma back atop the
news agenda this year. But the nature of ordinary life under the
military junta has remained a dim part of the picture. High levels of
malaria and HIV are made unimaginably worse by the negligence of a
regime that spent only 1.4 per cent of its budget on health care.
Despite the overwhelming need, there are few humanitarian groups
able to work within the country and those that do so have to operate
under severe restrictions. Comparatively few donors are willing to
fund operations in the country for fear of indirectly supporting the
regime. Further complicating the situation is the absence of any clear
statistics on the health situation. The UN says that as many as 360,000
Burmese, out of 50 million, are living with HIV.
Malnutrition
There may not have been a headline-catching food crisis in 2007 on a
similar scale as the one that beset Niger last year, but malnutrition is
still a disturbing way of life for many in west and east Africa and
south Asia, and is associated with the deaths of five million children
under the age of five. MSF is campaigning for international donors to
scale up their funding for ready-to-use foods, milk and peanut-based
pastes that do not need to be kept in a refrigerator, so can be sent out
into the rural mud-hut villages where mothers can feed them to their
babies at home, rather than being forced to trek miles to the nearest
clinic. In Maradi, Niger aid workers are using these pastes to boost the
diets of 62,000 children during the seasonal lean period and stop them
becoming malnourished in the first place.
Chechnya
Ninety-nine per cent of the electorate here turned out to vote for
Vladimir Putin in the recent Russian presidential election. Such a
result defies belief in the breakaway Muslim republic crushed by Mr
Putin's forces in the second Chechen war. The Putin-installed
strongman who rules the republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, made sure that
his boss would not be disappointed. Under his authoritarian rule, Mr
Kadyrov has cowed the separatists and terrified their families through
torture and abduction. The capital, Grozny, flattened by Russian
bombs, has been rebuilt, and the airport reopened. But two wars have
left psychological and physical scars on the civilian population with
large numbers of people suffering from high levels of anxiety,
insomnia and depression. As the military conflict with Russia fades
into the background with only sporadic clashes now reported, and
western leaders no longer openly challenge Russia on its human rights
abuses in the republic, humanitarian needs remain critical.
Zimbabwe
With each new headline warning of economic meltdown in Zimbabwe
the litany of impossible statistics has grown this year: inflation at
12,000 per cent, three million fleeing the country, 85 per cent
unemployment. Under this extraordinary strain, what had been among
the best healthcare systems in Africa has collapsed. As many as 3,000
people are dying every week from HIV/Aids and the chronic absence
of life-extending antiretroviral drugs is accelerating this death march.
As many as four million people are in danger of starvation according
the World Food Programme and the fuel crisis means that rural clinics
are treating patients who have sometimes walked for days in search of
medical treatment. The fate of the 83-year-old President, Robert
Mugabe, continues to dominate coverage of the country that was once
seen as the poster boy of post-colonialism, but it is the impoverished
people of this beautiful southern African country paying the price of a
man-made crisis.
Central African Republic
While neighbouring Chad and the western Sudan region of Darfur
have made their way into global media coverage, the tiny landlocked
Central African Republic finds itself starved of attention. This
"phantom state" in the middle of Africa has no government
institutions functioning outside the capital, in the north bandits and
warring factions constitute the law of the land. Rights groups say
hundreds of civilians have been executed and at least 100,000 people
caught in the crossfire of rival armed groups have fled their villages
and are hiding in forests and bush. Complicating a perilous internal
situation are the CAR's unpredictable neighbours. The potential for
the whole region to tip over into chaos is immense. A small contingent
of EU peacekeepers is due to be deployed in the New Year.
Democratic Republic of Congo
With the country's first democratic elections in decades successfully
completed in 2006, the Congolese might have been forgiven for
expecting an easier time in 2007. But those out in the east, in the
North Kivu region, have seen little sign of the stability that re-elected
President Joseph Kabila promised. Instead, fighting between armed
groups has raged for much of the year and the government is in open
combat with rebel leader Laurent Nkunda. Hundreds of thousands of
homeless people are hiding in the forest because their villages are no
longer safe. They are scavenging food to stay alive and trying to
dodge the cholera that is rampant throughout much of the region. And
for the women living in this area, there is another nightmare to face:
sexual violence is alarmingly high. A peace conference has been
scheduled for next week to try to calm the troubled region, but few are
optimistic of a rapid solution.
Tuberculosis
Kairat, from Uzbekistan, on the right, was among the 500,000 people
to be diagnosed with multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis this year. But
he was one of the lucky ones, moving to one of the few hospitals in
the region to get specialist care. But even those who do get treatment
have to rely on a highly toxic and expensive cocktail of drugs that
often trigger violent side-effects and has to be taken for two years.
Amazingly, there have been no major advances in treatment of the
disease since the 1960s, and the most commonly used test to diagnose
TB was developed at the end of the 19th century and detects only half
the cases. An estimated $900m is needed every year for research and
development but only $206m has been made available.
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