The piano in question was a rather more fancy looking antique, entirely appropriate for something once owned by a member of the Austro-Hungarian imperial family. And while such pianos are made now, they are generally made as bits of repro., which makes my thoughts of reference 2 very wide of the mark. Maybe not so surprising that the Wigmore Hall did not deign to reply to my inquiry!
The occasion in question was a Schubert recital given by Sir András Schiff at the Wigmore Hall: D.845, D.850, D.894 and what I thought was an impromptu for an encore.
Another bright, warm evening, but a day on which the trains to Waterloo were troubled by signal failures, so we took a chance on a Southern train to Victoria, a gamble which paid off on this occasion.
Cavendish Square was shut by the time we got there and the only bench available (at the north western corner of the square, by the motorcycle stand) was occupied by a smoking lady, so we were reduced to taking our picnic standing by the low perimeter wall.
No less than eight microphones in the hall, two on poles and six in a suspended cluster, seemingly connected to the BBC by radios. BH thought that some of the flowers in the arrangements had been dyed. While we both thought that the audience had a slightly more dressy tone than usual. Maybe the 'sir' brings it all out.
Schiff was also slightly more dressy than is usual these days, with the full penguin. He also had his piano tuned in the interval, and, given that it was his own, personal piano, we wondered whether he had brought his own, personal tuner along too. Played without score. Nice stage manners.
We were both surprised at how different Schubert sounded when played on the sort of piano that he would have known, rather than the large & smooth Steinways we mostly get now. So not surprised when we read in the programme notes that fortepianos were very different from modern pianos, running, for example, to no less than four pedals. We thought a rather raw sound, with the various elements coming through loud and clear, not all blended down to something smooth and uniform. I wouldn't say that I preferred this version, but it certainly worked and it was a very good concert indeed.
Just the one hair stroker in front of us. Not too bad.
Outside to find a large herd of young people (it being a Wednesday evening) queueing outside Pull & Bear in Oxford Street. Didn't find the energy to cross over to find out what they were about.
Tube seemed very hot but by the time we got to Vauxhall, the Waterloo trains to Epsom seemed to be on again. With the result that we caught a couple of aeroplanes at Earlsfield - going the wrong way so they did not score - but missed the books at Raynes Park.
Reference 1: http://www.hogwood.org/instruments/.
Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/09/staier.html.
Reference 3: https://www.pullandbear.com/gb/. The people who had a huge video display involving a shark what turns out to be as long as four years ago. See reference 4. But no clue here that I could find as to what might have been happening on this occasion.
Reference 4: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/05/takacs-quartet.html.
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