A fine evening, but we must have taken our time as we arrived at Epsom Station with only a couple of minutes to spare. Train then held for a bit at Raynes Park. Someone called a 'trespass and welfare officer' on the platform at Clapham Junction, this from the label stencilled on the back of his jacket. Very hot in the tube.
Greeted by an indigent in a cardboard box on exit from the tube at Oxford Circus and there was another in Regent Street. Not impressed that our capital should be decorated in this way, that we cannot find some better way to manage these people, almost certainly afflicted with some serious complaint or other.
A M&S food hall trolley in among the bins at Cavendish Square, but no time to return it to M&S and did not think to snap it. Picnic in the square, which left us just enough time for me to take some Monkey's Shoulder before the off. After, that is, having clocked an art work there taking the form of a large and ugly head, apparently buried up to the nostrils in the ground. Great heavy thing in bronze, maybe half an inch thick - but appearing, at least, to serve as a place of refuge for rodents. Hard to see that climbing on it would do it any harm - beyond not showing it the respect it did not deserve.
Got into the hall itself by the back entrance, to be greeted by what appeared to be an ancient piano, perhaps the sort of thing that would have been available in Schubert's day. It turned out to have been built this year, after an original by Conrad Graf, whom I now know to be the most famous piano maker of his day, that is to say the first half of the nineteenth century. Supplied and tuned by the builder, Christoph Kern.
With this snip from reference 1 possibly being about the instrument in question, with the bit at the bottom possibly saying prices on application - but with the price of the one above probably giving the general idea. That is to say, a lot!
The keyboard struck me as being a lot narrower than that of a modern piano, so presumably not as many octaves. While the tone turned out to be quite different from that of a modern piano - and I rather liked it; it seemed well suited to the occasion.
So a fine performance, with plenty of variation between loud, soft and still. With Padmore managing to inject strain into his voice at appropriate moments. Also, despite Schubert having stripped out the poems that frame the cycle we know at beginning and end, there was still (for me anyway) an element of self-consciousness about it all, of irony and of laying on the emotion a bit thick. With a rather pre-Raphaelite page turner, suitably willowy and earnest in appearance. Audience diverse and very enthusiastic.
On exit, it seemed even hotter in the tube. But we did pick up the flower power again at Vauxhall, although I failed on this occasion to snap the number. See reference 2. While the times of trains meant that we failed to make the Half Way House at Earlsfield, it seeming more sensible to proceed direct to Epsom, not passing go, as it were.
Home to some stars, and to match the mood of the songs, I got quite sentimental about the sight of the big and little dippers. The names which came to mind at the time, but seemingly more current in north America than over here, where we talk of ploughs and bears. I usually tend to think of saucepans. From all of which I associated to the soppy Madeline Bassett of Jeeves & Wooster - but not so soppy that she did not end up marrying an older man for the sake of his title. And after which I read of asterisms, entities I had not before heard of. Another north American usage?
PS: 'not so soppy that she did not' is a bit nonsensical, but I think it is the usual way of saying this. The Queen's English. Or perhaps Oxford English.
Reference 1: https://christoph-kern.de/.
Reference 2: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/09/beethoven-250.html.
No comments:
Post a Comment