D537, D840, interval and then D960.
Blog search revealed three previous hearings of D960 over the last four years, while windows search of the archive revealed six, three of which were false positives. One was for '9.60' counting as '960', which is fair enough, but I failed to find out what the other two were about.
Some very polite youngsters, we thought from Epsom College, moved around for us on the train from Epsom so that we could sit down and did not get off until Earlsfield - which struck us as a long way to go on a daily basis. Were they weekly boarders? Presumably both parents and boys convince themselves that the substantial investment in time and cash is worth it. Presumably neither parents nor boys are bothered by - or even aware of - the divisiveness of such schooling at this time of weakening social cohesion, a weakening driven by the increasing numbers of people stuck at the bottom of the heap. With its all too visible summit, a summit to which these boys no doubt aspire.
After our last outing earlier in the week, surprised to find there was no Christmas band for Friday evening at Waterloo.
On the other hand, most of the seats around the concourse area of the RFH were taken, many of them by people making use of the free wifi and other facilities and not spending much money. I was quite struck by the nonchalant way that one of them stuck his phone into a plug to recharge it, left his luggage somewhere else and then wandered off somewhere else again. He was back after a few minutes, but I would not leave my phone around in this way. Notwithstanding, we managed to collar a couple of seats and a table for our picnic.
Plenty of staff at the bar. Although given that the hall holds a couple of thousand people or more, very few of them made it down to this bar at half time.
A gentleman dressed as a zebra touching up his makeup in the gents.
A gentleman dressed with red trousers, red tie and flashy blazer in the middle of the front row.
A rather hyper Australian usherette, no longer so young, rushing around for all she was worth. But she managed a perfectly respectable response to some crack or other that I made on the way in. A lot faster in that respect than most.
Having complimented the RFH on not having computer displays about telephones on the last occasion, they went and had one on this.
Uchida dressed in different clothes, but much the same scheme as last time. Including something which glittered a great deal on her wrist, which I found a bit distracting. Fortunately it had swung to a different position by the second half, from where it did not glitter, at least not as far as I was concerned.
Another excellent programme, with the first half new to us (despite including some familiar material) and second half (D960) well known and very good indeed. Much standing up at the end.
Having spent a lot more time at the Wigmore Hall than the RFH over recent years, I was very impressed over how this solo piano came over in this big hall. It was really very effective, possibly the more so for the hall being fairly full, possibly the more so for sitting slightly above the piano with a clear view (row G again, spot on). The combination of pianist and Steinway concert grand did the business.
Very slightly marred by someone's phone going off and somebody else dropping something heavy, somewhere behind us. Phone noises, I am glad to say, are getting much rarer these days. More mysterious noises from the ceiling. And while last time I had the wobbling of the vertical pipes, this time I had trouble with the horizontals of the stage breaking up, strengthened as they were by black stripes, just about visible if you click to enlarge the snap above. Perhaps turning off the purple lighting on the pipes had cured that problem?
Missed the 2154 by seconds at Waterloo. To be entertained by a very angry young woman from the US, who made clear her view that the train should have interrupted its taking off sequence to open its doors for her.
PS: despite the snap being provided by the Southbank Centre, the colour mix seems to be all wrong. I don't remember it being all yellow and brown.
Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/12/schubert-one.html.
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