Clarinet

Last week to the Wigmore Hall to hear the Jerusalem Quartet with clarinet for the second half and just about a month since we had last heard them. See reference 1.

Slightly unsettling episode in the afternoon when we learned from a parcel delivery driver that he got around 50p for each package that he delivered, working his own van from a base in somewhere like Leatherhead. A 50p that was held down by regular recruitment drives to get people prepared to work for such rates. A story which left me feeling a bit guilty, to the point where I thought that maybe I should tip each driver who got as far as knocking on the door a flat rate of a fiver - a proceeding which was not going to cost £20 in an average week. Maybe have a supply of fivers to hand by the door. But despite the guilt, I have not yet laid in a supply of fivers.

We then got caught in a heavy shower on the way to Epsom Station, the first time such a thing had happened for quite a while. Luckily we were prepared to the extent of having folding umbrellas with us.

The 1719 train out of Epsom was surprisingly full, a story which continued with a busy Vauxhall and a full tube train. Out to no rain and to picnic on the chairs conveniently left outside BHS in John Prince's Street. Chairs which may not be there for that much longer.

Onto to Wigmore Hall where we had the same burly gentleman on the door as last time, but unlike last time the hall was only around half full. Which was a puzzle as it was a perfectly respectable middle of the road programme - and I had thought that the Brahms clarinet quintet would have been popular.

The Beethoven Op.18 No.6 quartet continues to grow on me. I seem to like it better every time. Bartok good and Brahms very good. This last, I think, the best that I have ever heard it. And Kam's stage manners were much more attractive than those of Collins whom I find a bit full of himself. See reference 4. Her off the shoulder dress served, inter alia, to remind me, once a tyro of the clarinet myself, what a shouldery business playing the clarinet was. Along with the scissor wielding hairdresser, another trade which must be good for the shoulders. On the other hand, I did wonder whether having a dress which was tight around the chest did not interfere with breathing, particularly important for a musician who blows. But presumably not, as her web site (at reference 2) suggests she likes this particular sort of dress.

Audience made up in enthusiasm for what it did not have in numbers, enough to earn a short encore.

Treated on the train home to the sight of a large lady in summer clothes supping on a litre tub of yoghurt. At least she had remembered to take a spoon out with her, something we have yet to remember in connection with the rather hard ice cream that they sell at the Wigmore.

Further irritated by reading about some large sculpture to do with bees at Kew Gardens, whom one suspected of falling down the visitor attraction hole, rather in the way of Wisley. Nostalgia for the days when these places were botanical gardens. And by British Gas treating us, its customers, as if we were children, with advertisements featuring things called Gaz and Leccy. See reference 3.

PS: in the course of checking up on tyro (from the Latin), I find that, amongst other meanings, a toller is also a sort of small dog used for decoying ducks.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/jerusalem.html.

Reference 2: http://www.sharonkam.com/.

Reference 3: https://www.smartenergygb.org/en.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/clarinet-collins.html.