Schwizgebel

Last Sunday to the Wigmore Hall to hear Louis Schwizgebel give us an Allegretto (D.915) and four Impromptus (D.935) before the break and the Chopin Preludes (Op.28) after. A young pianist whom I have not come across before, described at reference 1 as being Swiss-Chinese.

A mild and overcast evening and I had occasion to notice two brown wheelie bins which were bursting down the side. Brown for garden waste, so do people tend to stuff too much in, or is there something about the brown dye in the plastic which makes it rot faster? And apart from that, most of the gardens around here are pretty big, so why don't people compost their garden waste down, as we do? No need for wheelie bins at all.

Epsom station unusually quiet, but one of the two elderly card machines at the ticket windows had been upgraded to a smart new black job. Portable, the ticket man proudly told me. Perhaps in a week or two the maintenance men will get around to the second machine.

White lad in the train, looking very much like the sort of person who might vote for Brexit or vote for the National Front (whatever it is called these days) - but also affecting the argot of a young black man. Which struck me as a curious combination.

A glimpse of a fine red mobile crane just before Vauxhall station. Marked it down for a proper look later.

Impressed by the cost of the advertisements to be seen around the Niketown store at Oxford Circus. Closed on this occasion, with security types outside and some sort of function going on inside.

Having marked down a public house in Duke Street (by Manchester Square) a few days previously as being one which I had never ever visited, I thought to give it a try on this occasion. To find it closed. One might have thought that there were enough flats in the vicinity to keep it afloat when shops and offices were shut, but clearly not. So put out, that I almost got myself run down by a silent taxi, presumably running on electric at the time.

Once in the hall, I enjoyed the Allegretto, but it took me a good part of the first impromptu to settle down to them - and I thought the pianist was taking a little while to settle down as well. But it was all plain sailing after that.

Preludes very good, to the point of my getting the sense of being lost inside the music at a couple of points, something which does not happen very often.

I was, on this occasion, counting the preludes as they went along, using as a prop the nine keystones decorating the arch to the apse, as shown in the snap left turned up by Bing. As it turned out, I was able to count myself through the 24 preludes on these keystones, without it costing much brain effort or distracting me from the music. As I have noticed in the past, the act of counting sometimes seems to concentrate one on the music; it helps rather than hinders.

In the interval, I tried counting the elements of the frieze around the bottom of the mosaic, visible if you click to enlarge. This was made much easier by their alternation, not like the toothed bar of reference 4, where one has to really concentrate to keep one's place on the bar. Enough easier, that the three or four counts that I completed were all within one or two of each other.

A short, suitable and entirely unknown encore. A fine concert. A young man to look out for.

Just missed the 2135 at Vauxhall and subsequently forgot to look out for the fine crane noticed above. Paused in the Half Way House at Earlsfield, which managed slow service despite - perhaps because of - being very quiet. No aeroplanes, no stars and no anything else from the platform. Part of the second leg of the journey was enlivened by a group of noisy young men talking about Brexit. I had forgotten how sure of themselves young men can be: completely sure that they have the right answers to everything and happy to be loud about it. No doubt I was like that once.

After they got off at Motspur Park, I learned from the programme that Angela Hewitt not only performs at the Wigmore Hall, but also features on the list of donors at the end. The only musician that I recognised so to do.

Reference 1: http://louisschwizgebelpiano.com/.

Reference 2: https://recliningstandards.org/. 'David Fox is a university administrator and teacher by day, culture arbiter (mostly theatre and opera) by night. For more than a decade, he was theatre critic for the late, lamented Philadelphia City Paper; he has also written for the New York Times, Parterre Box, Philadelphia Magazine, Opera Quarterly, the Kurt Weill Review, and others. In the wee small hours, he sometimes manages to think and write about other things, too, including movies and current TV shows. This blog will be a place to share those thoughts with the world'.

Reference 3: https://www.rashdash.co.uk/. A reference from reference 2. Responsible for a version of the 'Three Sisters' quite unlike anything you are likely to have come across before. So much stuff out there which one is never going to get to read!

Reference 4: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/04/a-speculation-moving-from-one-tooth-to.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/01/chopin-preludes.html. The last outing for the preludes, a bit more than a couple of months ago.

Reference 6: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=impromptus+ax. Although I am very keen on Schubert's impromptus, it seems that it is just about eight years since I last heard this particular set.