For once in a while a very wet evening and I was reduced to serious coat and serious umbrella, which committed me to cloakroom and queues at the other end, something which I try and avoid.
Uneventful journey until we had a young lady in the tube to Oxford Circus with a very damaged leg, with her left knee wrapped up in some complicated bandage and splint arrangement. But this did not stop her wearing a very short skirt and displaying her stretched out legs for all to see - while she watched a film on her telephone.
Luckily the rain had more or less stopped by the time I got to Oxford Circus and, having acquired an Evening Standard to sit on, was able to take my usual picnic in Cavendish Square. Enlivened by an older gentleman, bagman perhaps, with his shopping trolley full of all his worldly possession in plastic bags. First time I have seen a proper bagman for a while, with most of the homeless that I come across being much younger. We also had a council litter picker picking up what litter there was; clearly a much better class of public than down Longmead Road.
First time that I noticed the time zone clocks above the bar in the Cock & Lion. Clocks which were not, as it happens, working.
Handsome flowers in the hall. Dominated by a modest number of orangy-pink strelitzia, backed up with green, including some flowers which had been dyed green.
A large gentleman in holiday attire was sat in front of me with an odd scar across the back of his head. Horizontal, central, about two inches long, quarter inch across, roughly where the neck joins the head. A scar which looked operation rather than trauma to me, so perhaps a doctor would have known exactly what it was.
For once in a while, a Fazioli piano had been brought in for the occasion, presumably the piano of choice of Boris Giltburg. His website at reference 6 says nothing about it, but there is a link to YouTube of him playing Rachmaninov's Op.39 Études-tableaux on a Fazioli, so he looks to make a habit of it. While the Rachmaninov did not sound like my kind of thing; much too fast and complicated. The last Fazioli was about a year ago, noticed at reference 4 - for Goldberg variations, not a work that BH is keen on, so she was absent on that occasion too. This perhaps accounted for by the fact that she had once heard it twice in one sitting, once on a harpsicord and once on a piano - from an older lady pianist from Poland whose name I now forget.
Both the Beethoven and the Schubert turned out very well. With this last faring much better on this occasion than it had on the last, noticed at reference 5. Maybe part of this was the fact that the piano did not try to dominate the proceedings, it coming over on this occasion as an accompaniment, rather than as the main business. Reflecting the quintet's origins in a song?
Not for the first time, I wondered why it was that a live performance was so much better than an electrical one at home, despite my being an unsophisticated, albeit assiduous, listener. Part of it must be seeing the action, much more lively than YouTube, even on a large screen. With the action giving lots of clues to the music, lots of colour to the music. Another part must be being part of the action, participating in the ceremony. And another the fact that one is confined to a not very comfortable seat with an etiquette which says no wriggling around or otherwise fidgeting. One is confined to the music. And presumably a musician trained to one or other of the instruments would be echoing the cerebral activity needed to play it. With us lay people being confined to energetic thumping of the keyboard at appropriate moments.
I had an aisle seat and was able to nip down through the back and down through the Beckstein Room, luckily not locked. Set up for some private view involving a highly polished upright piano, presumably the following morning. With the result that I was able to collect my togs and get up the stairs past the rapidly forming queue down the stairs.
My Travelcard failed yet again at Oxford Circus, something which happens all to often with Travelcards bought from Epsom Station, on this occasion at a time when there seemed to be no attendants to let me through. I had to wait for what seemed like a long time for one to appear, probably less than a minute for all that. Failed for the second time that day at Vauxhall, but I still made the late running 2143 with stopover at Raynes Park.
Wound up the evening standing in the rain outside the window of the taxi I had just left, hearing all about Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor. On this telling, a regular 'Hound of the Baskervilles' sort of place when the wind and rain are in the right quarter. Looks all quiet and peaceful in Ordnance Survey, complete with heritage museum, but in Google's Street View you get the idea that it might have been a bit grim in the olden days, stuck out in the middle of nowhere.
PS: after the event I read in the programme that the quintet had been derived from the song of the same name, so thought to have a listen on YouTube at reference 1. From which I learned that it was all a bit more complicated than the pastoral idyll one might have thought it was. Still more complicated if you allow the last stanza included at reference 2 but omitted by Schubert. Something of the ambivalence, the knowingness pointed up by Bostridge in his book on the Winterreise: German romantics were not all they might at first appear.
Reference 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF9DrUXowBo. A rather fast version, but with words, both English and German, and pictures.
Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Forelle. From which we learn that the words were written by one Schubart and that Schubert omitted the rather soppy last stanza.
Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/02/pavel-haas-quartet.html.
Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/08/hot-goldberg.html.
Reference 5: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/06/trout.html.
Reference 6: https://borisgiltburg.com/.
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