A cold and wet evening, but livened up by a small party on the tube to Oxford Circus which included a heavily made up young lady and a young man who appeared to be of the third sex. That is to say he was wearing florid, vaguely feminine clothes but had made no attempt to appear to be a woman. Perhaps the sort of thing that Oscar Wilde would have approved of. The second such we have seen on the tube in as many months.
We made the mistake of thinking that the closed sign on the Bechstein Room meant that OAP's could not take their picnics there, so we took ours in the main bar, which I was not that keen on. But they got our drinks money, so they did not do too badly out of us. Furthermore, my interval whisky was presented by itself, but with ice in a separate glass in case I wanted any, which I did not. But very proper of them.
Flowers green and white, rather good. Hall about two third full.
The Concertino was interesting and BH rather liked it. The Mozart was good, reminding us how much chamber music involving winds that Mozart wrote. I remember that my father used to be rather keen on his divertimentos, many if not most of which involved winds. Music he could read to without feeling that he was not showing respect. The Beethoven was very good.
One of the ladies, I think the viola, sported a colourful apron and had a very engaging manner, diving into her entries with great verve and taking a great interest in the goings on around her when she was stood down, as it were. Another, the double bass, sported a sort of topknot and had a rather irritating manner. When she was stood down, she was apt to idly gaze about the hall or up at the ceiling, contriving to look very bored with the whole business. She also appeared to be using a short bow, holding it about a third of the way along. Nevertheless, she managed her pivotal contribution to the music well enough. Her manner may have just been nerves, rather than the real her.
I counted three clarinets, with two sharing the one mouthpiece, while BH made it two. While Wikipedia takes it up to around a dozen, some with horns in the way of a saxophone. The programme claimed that the key of Eb was wind friendly, and there does indeed seem to a lot of it about, including the Mozart and Beethoven included here. Must try and find out what this is all about.
Caught the 2158 to Epsom with a short stopover at Raynes Park, short but long enough to pick up a copy of Matthay's Epitome of Pianoforte Technique (from 1931), an epitome which seems to be more concerned with matters physiological, than with matters more obviously musical. Nevertheless, I shall peruse. For now I offer one of the maxims at the end: 'Never use the Poke-touch or Shove-touch, with Elbow and Forearm digging into the keyboard'. Plus the advertisement for a production of an opera by Salieri, illustrated above. I was pleased to see something of him, other than his appearance in Amadeus. A leading musician of his day, much loved, much respected and who did not deserve this last.
PS: the blog admits to three previous hearings of the septet, one more than a dozen years ago. See reference 2.
Reference 1: http://ensemble360.co.uk/.
Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=septet.
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