Monday, December 12, 2011
Back to the wiggers
To the Wigmore Hall after something of a gap to hear the Nash Ensemble. The driver for the visit was an opportunity to hear the Schubert C Major quintet of which I had been reminded of a few months previously, but we also got a couple of Mendelssohn quartet movements (Op. 81 parts 1 and 2) and a Schoenberg sextet (Op. 4). Rather to my surprise we quite liked the Schoenberg. Liking the Mendelssohn was less of a surprise, in any event it made a good opening. And it was no surprise at all to be reminded why the Schubert is so popular. Also that the quality of silence and the dynamic range of a concert hall far surpasses, certainly for this sort of thing, what has been achieved by Sevenoaks in my study. Audience properly enthusiastic. We get to hear the Ensemble again next year, at St. Lukes, concerning which I note in passing that St. Lukes is one of the few areas in London known by its parish name to the Bullingdon Bike System, the only others that I could spot being St. Giles and St. James. Also that there is no saint for the church which everything seems to agree is called St. Sepulchre, mentioned previously. Presumably a confusion with the French, for whom holy and saint are synonyms.
Wigmore only marred by the two sitting in front of us, a middle aged dad with an adolescent son. After the interval, the dad did not finish his mobile phone conversation until the lights started to go down, which I thought a bit poor. He then proceeded to nod and eventually fall asleep properly, which was actually a bonus as I could then see the centre of the stage, previously blocked by his head - which, given that he was a bit shorter than me, made me realise that sitting behind me in a hall without raking seats must be a bit of a pain, even though I do try to keep my head reasonably still. Unlike the adolescent son who appeared to be well bored and fidgeted through most of the second half. The lesson to take away is that sitting in the middle of a middle row is not quite the best wheeze. Middle row good, but if one sat slightly to the right one, rather than in the middle, one would be less likely to have one's view of the stage blocked. Something to be explored.
Rather liked the Oxford Street lights on exit.
Home to resume my first pass of this year's prize book from Goncourt, 'L'Art français de la guerre'. Starts off well, being a handsomely produced paperback from Gallimard, who have an excellent house style and good standards. Vocabulary a bit tricky but I shall pick up on that on the second pass. Subject matter including a fair amount of butchery, sharing what seems to be a French taste for that sort of thing with last year's prize book, 'La carte et le territoire'. One notices the same thing in arty French films.
I shall no doubt report further in due course, but in the meantime find it rather depressing that the French, having more or less lost the second world war, more or less immediately plunged into a very unpleasant war in their colony of Vietnam, with both sides displaying considerable savagery & cruelty. Helped along on the French side by an infusion of men who had been brutalised by fighting either for the French resistance in France or for the Wehrmacht on the Russian front. I dare say the story will move onto Algeria where there will be more of the same. A rather worse record than our own, at least in the sense that while by default or otherwise a lot of people in our colonies were killed - some tortured - on or shortly after our watch, quite possibly more in total than in their colonies, I do not think we ever went in for quite the same sort of organised savagery.
All of which reminds me why we were right in 1968 or so to protest the US presence in Vietnam which followed. Even more savagery & cruelty, which turned out in the end to be completely unproductive, even for the US, quite apart from being the cause of several million excess deaths. A far worse record than in Iraq.
PS: on the second post of September 23rd, I noticed the idea that the hill people's of south east Asia do form a unit of sort, cutting across the boundaries of Burma, Thailand and so on. Pushed up there by the more successful peoples of the plains. This idea has now resurfaced here in the reported use by the French of the highland people in Vietnam to slaughter the lowland people, for whom they had but a low regard. Blogger search failed to find the earlier post though; had to resort to sledgehammer technology. Google search finds it, but only at the month level, rather than the post level, which is not quite what one wants.
Wigmore only marred by the two sitting in front of us, a middle aged dad with an adolescent son. After the interval, the dad did not finish his mobile phone conversation until the lights started to go down, which I thought a bit poor. He then proceeded to nod and eventually fall asleep properly, which was actually a bonus as I could then see the centre of the stage, previously blocked by his head - which, given that he was a bit shorter than me, made me realise that sitting behind me in a hall without raking seats must be a bit of a pain, even though I do try to keep my head reasonably still. Unlike the adolescent son who appeared to be well bored and fidgeted through most of the second half. The lesson to take away is that sitting in the middle of a middle row is not quite the best wheeze. Middle row good, but if one sat slightly to the right one, rather than in the middle, one would be less likely to have one's view of the stage blocked. Something to be explored.
Rather liked the Oxford Street lights on exit.
Home to resume my first pass of this year's prize book from Goncourt, 'L'Art français de la guerre'. Starts off well, being a handsomely produced paperback from Gallimard, who have an excellent house style and good standards. Vocabulary a bit tricky but I shall pick up on that on the second pass. Subject matter including a fair amount of butchery, sharing what seems to be a French taste for that sort of thing with last year's prize book, 'La carte et le territoire'. One notices the same thing in arty French films.
I shall no doubt report further in due course, but in the meantime find it rather depressing that the French, having more or less lost the second world war, more or less immediately plunged into a very unpleasant war in their colony of Vietnam, with both sides displaying considerable savagery & cruelty. Helped along on the French side by an infusion of men who had been brutalised by fighting either for the French resistance in France or for the Wehrmacht on the Russian front. I dare say the story will move onto Algeria where there will be more of the same. A rather worse record than our own, at least in the sense that while by default or otherwise a lot of people in our colonies were killed - some tortured - on or shortly after our watch, quite possibly more in total than in their colonies, I do not think we ever went in for quite the same sort of organised savagery.
All of which reminds me why we were right in 1968 or so to protest the US presence in Vietnam which followed. Even more savagery & cruelty, which turned out in the end to be completely unproductive, even for the US, quite apart from being the cause of several million excess deaths. A far worse record than in Iraq.
PS: on the second post of September 23rd, I noticed the idea that the hill people's of south east Asia do form a unit of sort, cutting across the boundaries of Burma, Thailand and so on. Pushed up there by the more successful peoples of the plains. This idea has now resurfaced here in the reported use by the French of the highland people in Vietnam to slaughter the lowland people, for whom they had but a low regard. Blogger search failed to find the earlier post though; had to resort to sledgehammer technology. Google search finds it, but only at the month level, rather than the post level, which is not quite what one wants.
# posted by Jim @ 11:38 AM 
