At this mid-morning hour; Dittersdorf's work is actually Zwölf Sinfonien nach Ovids Metamorphosen, three of which are on this album from 1995: 'the four ages of the world', 'the fall of Phaeton', and 'the transformation of Actaeon'. Some of the twelve survive only in piano reductions, some are lost.
I was momentarily over-excited (yesterday evening) by Governor Brown's imposition of a regime of mask-wearing inside stores etc, beginning tomorrow, but that moment passed. The burden of enforcing the masquerade falls on businesses (i.e. in my case, tomorrow anyway, the folks at the supermarket) and am not going to fuss there at a quarter past six in the morning on account of some abhorrent abortion-providing identities politics-loving practioner of political vileness. I had forgotten that that is how the business works: she exhorts us citizens to 'virtue' but business-owners and their employees are the ones who are subject to the fines etc. There are days when I honestly wish that I had at least fallen ill with a cold this past season so that I would have had a reminder in my own body (in a vague sort of way, anyway) of what goes on with others in tempore pestilentiae.
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The squirrel will very carefully examine one of the peanuts and then elect to begin opening up the one sitting next to it, leaving the first to its own devices. I wonder if the squirrel-- I will occasionally eat one of those peanuts, myself-- knows or discerns something that I don't or can't.
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Am now listening to three of Ditters von Dittersdorf's Sinfonien nach Ovids Metamorphosen played on the fortepiano, on two of them, actually; James Tibbles and Michael Tsalka, the pianists. These pieces are described as 'sonatas' but I'm going to presume that they are the piano arrangement the German Wikipedia article supra was going on about. 'Ajax and Ulysees', 'the apotheosis of Hercules', and 'Jason of the golden fleece'. On YouTube?
Unfortunately, this is only three or four minutes from a rehearsal of the 'Ajax et Ulysees'. There are a surprising number of recordings of the orchestral 'Ovid' works, though; he is more widely performed in the Habsburg lands, perhaps, than in US concert halls. I know Ditters von Dittersdorf only very vaguely-- friend of Mozart, and so on.
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