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A wet and windy evening Tuesday past for a spot of Shostakovich (Op.68 and Op.73) and Weinberg (Op.14), in town, from the new to me Quatuor Danel, inter alia Weinberg specialists. See reference 2.

The rail strike has meant that the number of Waterloo trains from Epsom has been cut in half or so - but at least there is a reasonable number of trains and they do turn up at the time shown by the network rail journey planner, a site which both Bing and Google take me to on very slender prompting. Last trains not brilliant, but hopefully not an issue.

My train from Epsom started very quiet, only filling up a bit much nearer London. In the course of which the brain failed compute that not being sure that whether we were at Wimbledon or Earlsfield was not a problem for those getting off at Vauxhall. There was no need to panic, not even for a second or so.

The mirror

I was a little early, so thought to take a beverage at the Langham Hotel, where I was taken in charge by a greeter to find that I was not welcome at the bar. It was too full to be bothered with a low spender like me. Perhaps sir would like to use the Palm Court instead. Well yes, that would do. Then it turned out that I would have to wait a few moments for a table to be free, with a comfortable seat being provided the meanwhile. But when the few moments stretched to a lot of moments and I had tired of the giant mirror, I captured the fake fire already noticed at reference 1 and made my way to the Beckstein Room of the Wigmore Hall.

The Beckstein Room was closed and the few customers had carefully chosen their seats so as to maximise the distance between them. But much more suitable for my picnic than the Langham and the bar down the corridor could provide beverage and warf water.

The programme

For some reason I had been relegated to row K (from our usual row I) in a hall which was not very full, despite including (one supposes) a contingent from the cultural part of the Polish Embassy. One member of the audience, of middle years, was in a very serious looking wheelchair and appeared to be by himself. I admired his oomph - as I imagine it would be all too easy for him to sink into dreary solitude at home.

Shostakovich sometimes rather loud and strange, but good. Very conscious on this occasion of the shifting balance between the first violin (on the left) and the cello (on the right), with the second violin and viola between sometimes taking one side, sometimes the other.

Weinberg rather good too, perhaps even more strange. But clearly a relative.

Curious leg action from the (seated) first violin. At one point, a short repeat of challenging duration from the cello. Followed by a passage on open strings, not something I recall seeing, at least not for a while. Something well known to me from Tchaikovsky by way of an encore, but not so well known that I knew what it was. However, this morning I feed 'slow movement tchaikovsky quartet' into Bing and I quickly learn that it was the second movement of his first quartet.

Aka 'Les Dogues'

History of same

'Cock & Lion' busy with football in the interval and I now know that LOSC stands for 'Lille Olympique Sporting Club'. Do English clubs upgrade their badges every few years in the same way? And at least two supporters from Chelsea - to whom they lost - turned up on my train home.

Bread pudding

'Half Way House' quiet enough so the service was fast. I passed on one of their sausage rolls - a lot more sausage meat (of a sort) than roll - on the grounds that bread pudding was waiting for me at home. Made with half white bread for a change - which I much prefer to the brown bread version we usually have these days. Note also the posh version of our usual Villa Maria, brought to us by an advertisement from Majestic Wine. A bit dearer, but the present thought is that it is worth it.

PS: Larousse agrees with Wikipedia's English entry for LOSC that dogues might be Great Danes, otherwise large guard dogs from Denmark (or Germany), Littré has it that they are special hunting dogs used to grab the ears of wolves or wild boars. Maybe these two notions are not exclusive.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/12/fake-93.html.

Reference 2: https://www.quatuordanel.eu/.

Reference 3: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOSC_Lille. Still regarding the dogues, we have: '... L'origine du dogue reste floue mais selon certaines sources, le choix du dogue, apparu dans les années 1920, pourrait provenir d'un commentaire d'un journaliste qui soulignerait la hargne et l’engagement des joueurs sous le maillot lillois lors d'une rencontre. Ce logo évolue une nouvelle fois, avec une fleur de lys d'où sort un dogue et l'apparition au début à la fin des années 1980 de la mention Lille Métropole. Cette mention est symbole de l'ambition des dirigeants de « construire un club très enraciné dans sa métropole » et de « confirmer le LOSC dans son rôle de leader de communication de Lille Métropole », comme l'évoque le président Devaux en 1993. Le club n'est plus celui de la ville mais celui de la métropole, dans laquelle le LOSC va installer plusieurs infrastructures avec le soutien de la communauté urbaine de Lille. Légèrement modifié en 1997, il reste en usage jusqu'en 2002. À partir de cette date, le club opte pour un logo plus marketé mettant en avant l'acronyme LOSC surmontées d'un dogue. La fleur de lys, de laquelle sortait le dogue, est toujours présente sur le logo mais de façon marginale...'.