Dorking three

On Saturday to the third and last recital given by the Piatti String Quartet at Dorking Halls, promoted by the Dorking Concertgoers Society. An outfit which must have been going for a while as we must have been going to their concerts for more than twenty years and it was not young then.

Brahms No.3, Op.67 and Beethoven Op.130 with the Grosse Fugue ending, aka Op.133. First new, second last heard just about two years ago and noticed at reference 3. Two more in 2014, another in 2013 and another in 2010. So it should be reasonably familiar.

Slightly irritated to find that the Dorking Halls people had thought it appropriate to provide light classical background music while we waited for the off, in and around the Martineau Hall, one of several halls in the complex. Furthermore, there were no cakes on offer. Not the first time that the Dorking Halls people had come across as a bit amateurish. But I suppose I should not moan and should rather be grateful that the facility still exists.

We were sitting near the left hand end of the third row - of raking seats installed on a slightly creaky scaffold - which I think was too close for comfort, at least on this occasion. The sound was too raw, too much the parts rather than the whole, possibly accounting for the fact that sometimes the first violin seemed a bit weak, while at other times the cello seemed a bit strong. One does not pick one's seats in the way that one would at, say, the RFH, but next season we will give the seat allocator a hint about further back and in the middle and see what that does. And one wonders, not for the first time, what the musicians hear; presumably something rather different to what you or I might hear, even if we had somehow been inserted into the middle of their group. And maybe someone in the audience who played one of the instruments concerned would be somewhere between the two, acting out that part of the performance, at least in their mind, as it unfolded.

In any event, while the Brahms included some fine passages, I did not really feel that I made a connection, that I had settled to it. Beethoven much better, probably helped along by knowing it quite well. Knowing it not in the sense that I could have hummed any tunes or phrases beforehand, rather that as the music unfolded, I recognised things. A familiar friend rather than a new acquaintance.

Smart exit through the back door, with the result that we were one of the first cars out of the car park. Odd that no-one much else seems to take advantage of it.

PS: the Martineau Hall was presumably named for some local eminence, someone whom I have yet to track down, with wikipedia only recognising a once Huguenot family which moved from Norwich to eminence in Birmingham. No Dorking angles at all. Perhaps a visit to the local museum is called for.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/dorking-two.html.

Reference 2: http://dorkingconcertgoers.org.uk/.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/big-fugue.html.