Dante two

Last Sunday to the second of the Dante Quartets three concerts, the first being noticed at reference 1. Prelude and fugue from Glasunov, Op.73 from Shostakovich, Op.59 No.2 from Beethoven.

A bright cold day, plenty of low flying sun on the way to Dorking.

Swimming pool next to the hall busy, with the school children doing service on tall chairs as life guards looking properly bored and lethargic. No doubt they were more on the ball than they cared to look. We wondered, without reaching any conclusion, how long it was since we had actually been in an indoor swimming pool, as opposed to near one.

Hall pretty much full, mainly grey hairs, but with a sprinkling of working age, even some children.

Red chairs and the two ladies were trimmed in red. The Glasunov, a Russian romantic composer whose life overlapped with that of Shostakovich, might have been obscure, but it was properly printed, in Leipzig. And what I took to be the Beethoven had been much loved and was rather tatty. No computers here. We got introductions to the music from the quartet, which did not, for me, compute as I found it hard to make any connection between the words and the music. But then, that is usually true of programme notes too.

In the event the Glasunov was light and decent. The Shostakovich was disappointing, I know not why. The Beethoven was excellent.

The entirely suitable slow movement from Tchaikovsky's first quartet.

Nipped out the back for a fast exit. Not clear why more people do not use this back route or - contrariwise - whether we were supposed to use it at all without the excuse of a fire or a wheelchair. On this occasion we could have pleaded that we were accompanying one of these last.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/01/dante-one.html.