St. John's

This notice of what might be the last visit to St. John's before the Queen Elizabeth Hall is up and running again, to complete the musings at reference 1. Martin Helmchen offering numbers 1, 2, 5 and 8 from Schumann's Op.21 Novelleten in the first half, Diabelli in the second.

A cold day and once again I decided against Bullingdon, not wanting to have helmet and so forth to mind during the proceedings.

Met a couple of fellow OAP's in the bar and we discussed the merits of the various membership schemes for galleries, gardens, heritage and the like. We agreed that it was important to keep an eye on usage as it was easy to wind up with more of these things than one gets value out of : at £100 or so a pop they sound cheap enough, but they do add up. Which left me thinking that at four we have maybe one too many.

In the hall, worried, not for the first time, about the beam erected across the stage end of the church, visible in the illustration at reference 1. It rather spoiled the lines of the arch, but I failed to come up with anything that I was confident would be better, given that one did need the curtain. Maybe a curtain rail would have looked better than a curtain beam - assuming that is that the beam is not doing anything structural?

Next up was a young lady showing off a good deal of back and shoulder, in a cool hall which had most of us OAP's triple wrapped. That is to say, at least three layers. She toughed it out until the end of the interval, at which point she put a large woolly cardigan on.

Hall maybe two thirds full. Half the price that Uchida had been in December at the Festival Hall. BH thought that being there would put a good bit on the price, while I thought that she could command the stronger fee. We will never know.

I liked the Schumann, with Helmchen managing to be both loud and warm.

Slightly disturbed by what sounded like a central heating hum from the ceiling up behind me. Only in the quiet bits and it seemed to have gone by the second half.

Slightly disturbed by a large gentleman a couple of rows in front fiddling with his telephone. A large chap whom I thought was probably in some aggressive trade, like a barrister or a salesman. But in the interval he was doing something which looked mathematical in his notebook and during the Diabelli he looked every inch the aficionado. Someone who knew the work well, so I was perhaps wrong about the aggressive trade.

The Diabelli started off fast, also loud and warm. But they were very good. Helmchen managed without any score and I liked his stage style. Soberly dressed, with sober and respectful manners.

On the road home, I think the taxi driver was short of change, so he asked for a fiver, less than it showed on the clock, before he saw that I had a pocketful of change. Onto the crowded platform at Vauxhall, to be greeted by a mess of messages about a trackside fire and delays. But within about five minutes a much delayed train to Epsom rolled in and carried me off to Epsom without further delay. Two results.

PS: checking, it seems that I had heard (and liked) Helmchen just once before, an occasion noticed at reference 3.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/on-counting-variations.html.

Reference 2: http://www.martin-helmchen.de/?lang=en.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=helmchen+silliness. Note that the second search term is no reflection on Helmchen; it just stops the query returning more than the one hit wanted.