Started off in a shiny new Siemens five coacher, instead of the weekday ten. As BH observed, our railway system has gone metric, just in time for our leaving Europe. Not so shiny inside, where the smart new in-train indicator boards told us that they were out of service. Train started off very quiet but was full by the time we reached Vauxhall. Then Oxford Circus quiet and All-Bar-One quiet, which last was good as it meant we got better service than sometimes. One pot of smarties, dominated by smarties of a rather lurid pink, almost a mauve, only half consumed on this occasion.
Onto the Wigmore Hall where the flowers were a composition in green and white. Rather handsome. Hall pretty much full and we had a lady from the US next to us sporting a walking stick with a carved alligator head by way of handle - with its mouth well open. Not a sort of walking stick that one often sees these days, although I believe that these carved handles were quite common in the days when one still had craftsmen in small shops making a living out of such things. I think Proust mentions one such in one of the shops which occupied much of the ground floor of the Paris town house of the Duc de Guermantes.
We were to hear the Rolston Quartet, a young quartet from Canada, including three musicians of Far Eastern appearance. We decided that whatever the back story was, all three had probably been raised in Canada, with English as their native tongue, as the group dynamics might otherwise have been a bit too complicated. The Internet is curiously silent on the subject of their origins; perhaps there is a bit of a taboo out there, as there is on the age of lady luvvies - although it did come up with a Danish connection and Wikipedia did say that 'Leung' was an originally Chinese name, now common across much of the Far East. Notwithstanding, as is proper for young musicians, they all played from computers rather than from paper.
They gave fine renditions of Haydn Op.76 No.4 and Brahms Op.51 No.2 although BH had a little trouble making the transition from one to the other, it being quite a big jump. Unusually, I did not have trouble of that sort and enjoyed the Brahms more than I had expected. I think they gave a very short and entirely appropriate encore, perhaps a short movement from a Haydn quartet, but I forget - and their twitter feed (the first time I have looked at real twitter for a while) knows about the concert but does not tell us about the encore.
On to the Caldesi (of reference 2) for lunch, to find that they had upgraded their menu - with a price upgrade to match. Presentation and service excellent, on this occasion from a young lady from Slovakia. Which we got to know, not because I asked, but because I noticed her sniffing my grappa (see below) at the bar with a fine grimace of displeasure, and asking her about that, she explained that they had stuff like that where she came from, but that she did not like it at all. She remembered to hope that I would.
Mixed charcuterie to start. Scottish beef tagliata for me to follow, free-range chicken, spinach, cherry tomato, mozzarella etc salad for BH. I don't have steak very often these days, but this sliced take on fillet steak was very good indeed, perhaps the best steak I have had since the Florentine bistecca we had some years ago, somewhere north of Florence town centre, beyond the antique gate at the end of the Via San Gallo. Served with some rather splendid sliced and flavoured roast potatoes and some fried mushrooms. And BH was very pleased with her salad. All washed down with a fine Greco di Tufo from Benito Ferrara (of reference 3). While the tiramisu to follow was washed down with a spot of pale yellow grappa, brought down from upstairs. The manager explained that he couldn't do the dark yellow stuff and hoped that the pale yellow would do. Which it did.
Followed by a little light shopping at gift department at Oliver Bonas, followed by the Jubilee Line to Waterloo.
Spot of Monkey's Shoulder at the Half Way House at Earlsfield, livened up by the two year boy at the next table. Very cute.
Spot of aeroplane spotting after, managing just the one one. Don't know what went wrong.
PS: I find that we had heard the Brahms before, noticed at reference 4. But while we appear to have heard most of the Haydn Op.76 quartets, not this particular one.
Reference 1: http://www.rolstonstringquartet.com/.
Reference 2: http://caldesi.com/. One day I will get around to find out what the place was called when it was a public house, which it looks to have once been.
Reference 3: http://www.benitoferrara.com/index.php/en/.
Reference 4: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/03/dorking-two.html.
Group search key: wga.
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