Tuesday, October 02, 2012
Wigmore reprised
Back to the Wigmore on Sunday for the second concert of the season, Susan Tomes and Eirch Höbath offering Mozart, mainly violin sonatas. It was, I think, the first time we had heard any of these sonatas since we heard Lupu & Goldberg do them, just about 40 years ago.
Got off to a good start with there being no engineering works on this Sunday evening, otherwise very much a reprise of our outing on 19th September. But there had been a run on cake at Ponti's so the last slice of polenta cake in the house was rather larger than last time, while the bowl of tiramisu was rather smaller. Maybe the slimmed down tiramisu was going to stretch to a few more portions; perhaps just as well as the calorie count of the stuff must be pretty horrendous.
Wigmore Hall not as full as usual, although maybe usual for a Sunday evening, not a day on which we usually attend. I found the piano a bit loud, not piano at all, in the first sonata, K305, but after which the pianist made a little speech about how these sonatas were written before the arrival of prima donna violinists and the job of the violin was to accompany, not quite a full partner. Which perhaps accounted for their weak presence in the repertoire - but which I also found a little tactless, with the luckless violinist standing by! As it turned out the three sonatas which followed (K379, K304 and K454) were much more balanced in this particular way. Also that I liked what I knew better than the new, that is to say the middle two sonatas better than the first and last; liking the first movement of K379 well enough that it will probably serve as closing music for an upcoming funeral. But all good, with the diet varied with a couple of rondos for piano alone (K485 and K511).
For a change took a taxi across London to Waterloo so that we could see the sights and catch an earlier train than we might have otherwise.
On arrival at Epsom I was very pleased to find that the shiny new DT was still shiny and new, so a vote of thanks to Network Rail (or whoever it is who is responsible for such things in these days of franchises and subbing) for their excellent provision of such - one on each island - at Epsom; the best provided station that I know of, and as luck would have it, our own.
Ashley center today not quite so good. For the second time in a couple of week, DT shiny and new but with no hand drying facilities. Unusually for me, sufficiently moved to mention this fact to a lady cleaner who just shrugged and walked off, which was a mistake because this really got me moving and I started to search the place for the manager's office. This seemed to have disappeared, but eventually a car park attendant directed me to a security office where the lady behind the jump at least gave me a decent hearing, apologised and may even go so far as to speed up repair. She might also have a pop - well deserved - at the cleaner. Maybe I really do have the makings of an urban busy, something which FIL was certainly up for in his prime, so maybe it is rubbing off from my long association with his daughter.
Perhaps my busyness was connected with the rather unusual dream I had had the night before. Back in the old Treasury building, the locale of so many of my dreams, where I had picked up someone else's briefcase on the way out. The lowest grade of black plastic civil service briefcase, containing nothing but a small plastic box with luncheon sandwiches inside. I noticed a rather severe middle aged lady, sombre reddish business suit, full head of straight hair but a bit lank and graying, in a bob. Someone I knew very slightly, by name Elizabeth Falk. After I had passed her, I realized that I had picked up her brief case rather than my own and went back to swap them. By the time I got back, the swap had transferred from my brief case to my bicycle and Ms. Falk was so angry that she had had my bicycle carted off to the lower depths of the buildings, many feet below ground and somewhere really obscure which was going to take me a while to find. While this finding and recovering was going on, the dream moved on to the problem of cycling home, from a building which had moved to Victoria from Whitehall and a journey which seemed to involve crossing to the south of the river and then a long swing to the west before cutting back to the east. With a complex junction on the way which seemed very familiar but which I could not then and cannot now put a name to, despite a fair amount of cogitation both in and after the dream. Furthermore, I was fairly sure while waking up that Ms. Falk was a real colleague, but fully waking up decided that she was probably a confusion with Elizabeth Frink, a famous sculptress whose work I do not care for at all. The bicycles were probably lifted from adventures with Bullingdons, but how did Falk/Frink get into the dream? How could the dream be interpreted as wish fulfillment? Perhaps the answer will come to me tonight.
Got off to a good start with there being no engineering works on this Sunday evening, otherwise very much a reprise of our outing on 19th September. But there had been a run on cake at Ponti's so the last slice of polenta cake in the house was rather larger than last time, while the bowl of tiramisu was rather smaller. Maybe the slimmed down tiramisu was going to stretch to a few more portions; perhaps just as well as the calorie count of the stuff must be pretty horrendous.
Wigmore Hall not as full as usual, although maybe usual for a Sunday evening, not a day on which we usually attend. I found the piano a bit loud, not piano at all, in the first sonata, K305, but after which the pianist made a little speech about how these sonatas were written before the arrival of prima donna violinists and the job of the violin was to accompany, not quite a full partner. Which perhaps accounted for their weak presence in the repertoire - but which I also found a little tactless, with the luckless violinist standing by! As it turned out the three sonatas which followed (K379, K304 and K454) were much more balanced in this particular way. Also that I liked what I knew better than the new, that is to say the middle two sonatas better than the first and last; liking the first movement of K379 well enough that it will probably serve as closing music for an upcoming funeral. But all good, with the diet varied with a couple of rondos for piano alone (K485 and K511).
For a change took a taxi across London to Waterloo so that we could see the sights and catch an earlier train than we might have otherwise.
On arrival at Epsom I was very pleased to find that the shiny new DT was still shiny and new, so a vote of thanks to Network Rail (or whoever it is who is responsible for such things in these days of franchises and subbing) for their excellent provision of such - one on each island - at Epsom; the best provided station that I know of, and as luck would have it, our own.
Ashley center today not quite so good. For the second time in a couple of week, DT shiny and new but with no hand drying facilities. Unusually for me, sufficiently moved to mention this fact to a lady cleaner who just shrugged and walked off, which was a mistake because this really got me moving and I started to search the place for the manager's office. This seemed to have disappeared, but eventually a car park attendant directed me to a security office where the lady behind the jump at least gave me a decent hearing, apologised and may even go so far as to speed up repair. She might also have a pop - well deserved - at the cleaner. Maybe I really do have the makings of an urban busy, something which FIL was certainly up for in his prime, so maybe it is rubbing off from my long association with his daughter.
Perhaps my busyness was connected with the rather unusual dream I had had the night before. Back in the old Treasury building, the locale of so many of my dreams, where I had picked up someone else's briefcase on the way out. The lowest grade of black plastic civil service briefcase, containing nothing but a small plastic box with luncheon sandwiches inside. I noticed a rather severe middle aged lady, sombre reddish business suit, full head of straight hair but a bit lank and graying, in a bob. Someone I knew very slightly, by name Elizabeth Falk. After I had passed her, I realized that I had picked up her brief case rather than my own and went back to swap them. By the time I got back, the swap had transferred from my brief case to my bicycle and Ms. Falk was so angry that she had had my bicycle carted off to the lower depths of the buildings, many feet below ground and somewhere really obscure which was going to take me a while to find. While this finding and recovering was going on, the dream moved on to the problem of cycling home, from a building which had moved to Victoria from Whitehall and a journey which seemed to involve crossing to the south of the river and then a long swing to the west before cutting back to the east. With a complex junction on the way which seemed very familiar but which I could not then and cannot now put a name to, despite a fair amount of cogitation both in and after the dream. Furthermore, I was fairly sure while waking up that Ms. Falk was a real colleague, but fully waking up decided that she was probably a confusion with Elizabeth Frink, a famous sculptress whose work I do not care for at all. The bicycles were probably lifted from adventures with Bullingdons, but how did Falk/Frink get into the dream? How could the dream be interpreted as wish fulfillment? Perhaps the answer will come to me tonight.
# posted by Jim @ 11:35 AM 
