Elias

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Last Monday off to town to hear the Elias Quartet do Haydn Op.33 No.5, Hindson String Quartet No.2 (short) and Schubert D.804. A quartet which we heard quite a lot of in 2011 and 2012. A little while ago but in the second half of their career to date, which started in 1998. See reference 1.

It being wet, I cadged a lift to the station, but I had to get out before the bridge as there was a flood underneath, a flood which I later learned was to do with a burst water main, not with the low lying drain under the bridge being overwhelmed by all the rain, something that used to happen on a regular basis. The solution may have been to drill a very deep soakaway into the chalk which is somewhere underneath.

Thought about but declined the four M&S trolleys on Station Approach, there not being quite enough time for their return to their stack in comfort.

The Cavendish stones

What with the square bit of Cavendish Square being shut and it being rather wet, I took my peanut butter sandwich standing under some scaffolding on the western side. First time that I recall picnicking off peanut butter. Maybe I had nearly run out of cheese and was trying to conserve stocks until I could get to Covent Garden.

The Ontarian stones

But, having noticed some poor detailing at Buckfast Abbey the week before, it turned out to be an opportunity to study some Edwardian detailing, which I thought was rather heavy, clumsy and ostentatious. Ostentatious in the sense that all the stone cutting involved looked more expensive than I thought it was worth. How much of the detail was stuck onto basic blocks? Such sticking on would have made for a cheaper job, but I could see no such joints.

I was left thinking that it was harder to get this sort of door right than it was in the case of a pointed, gothic arch. With the transition from vertical jamb to arch via some kind of capital being much easier in the latter case.

Would I have like the rather similar doorway turned up by Bing from Ontario, included above, quite possibly from around the same time?

A quick beverage in the Cock & Lion and then into the two thirds full hall. With flowers being both unusual and effective on this occasion, compositions in green, cream and white, with the keynote flowers being green anthuriums. Plus I had the luxury of the two seats immediately in front of me being empty, which made for a good view of the proceedings.

Haydn very good. And the audience was very enthusiastic about the Hindson, premièred by the very same quartet in Australia. Perhaps an Australian claque had been shipped in? OK, but I though the programme notes went a bit overboard on the astronomical origins. See reference 2.

A further beverage in the Cock & Lion, where the same couple who were standing at the bar on my first visit were still standing there. I remembered because the lady's dress was split down the back, more or less from collar fastening to waist band. During the visit, I may have witnessed the racist scene at a football match in Bulgaria, subsequently in the following day's news. I was just glad, given the exhibition we are giving the rest of the world over Brexit, that this exhibition was foreign.

Schubert very good indeed - although I had quite forgotten that we had heard the piece twice in the course 2018, but not at all in the ten years before that. See reference 3.

For encore, we had a rather folksy piece composed by the second violin (promoted to first violin for the occasion) for a friend's wedding. A very suitable ending. I left wondering whether a spectral analysis of the Haydn with the encore would pick out the very distinctive folksy motifs of this last, for which I dare say there is some proper musical term. Lots of lower ground fifths or something like that.

Out to find that it had stopped raining, which was good. That Oxford Circus was full of young people. And that the tube was still very hot, which was bad.

Epsom trains delayed, but I caught one after a very short wait at Vauxhall, knocking out thoughts of beverages at Earlsfield (Half Way House) or books at Raynes Park (platform library).

Out at Epsom to find that the bearded beggar had moved on, leaving a large pile of soggy free newspapers where he had been sitting.

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=elias+quartet.

Reference 2: http://hindson.com.au/info/. Suggesting that Hindson is something of the musical bureaucrat as well as being a musician.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/search?q=schubert+804.