The arrangement, which worked very well, was that a screen had been erected at the front of the stage, we mostly sat on chairs at the back of the stage and the two performers - soprano and violin - stood between - at the same level as and just a few feet in front of us. There were a few extras in the choir stalls behind us. It worked very well because management had contrived a very intimate space in which the soprano could move from whisper to full blast, without losing us, control or pitch. It might have worked at St. Luke's but I don't think it would have worked at the Wigmore.
The performers were Anu Komsi (soprano) and Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin). Two serious people for such a small audience; one can only suppose that they take their fragments very seriously. See references 1 and 2. While Komsi presented herself and performed in what I imagine is standard & stately soprano manner - not something I have much experience of - Kopatchinskaja was dressed in a sort of sombre, cut away tail suit with bare feet and turned in a very physical performance, almost dancing around the singer. Tremendous use of her face. Thinking about it now, I associate to the French lady who gave us some chunks of Finnegan's Wake, noticed at reference 3.
The fragments - a song cycle in the same tradition as the Winterreise - were very powerful, very high impact in this setting. BH, more susceptible than I to this sort of thing, was more or less wrecked by half time (not that there was any interval), while I was still running - maybe close hauled under storm rig - to use a nautical metaphor - at the end. Damaged to the extent that either the apple juice I had taken beforehand or the music had reached the innards, innards which other music does not reach, and added a certain amount of gurgling to the proceedings. When I apologised to the chap next to me afterwards, he waved off my apology very graciously. Perhaps my being affected in this way was a compliment to the music rather than otherwise.
Usual problem with this sort of thing, especially when it is in foreign: does one follow the words or the performance? BH settled, in large part, for the words, but I thought that the performance was more important. There was too much going on for one not to give it one's full attention. I don't think a screen behind or to the side would have worked, would have taken too much away from the performance's visual impact.
Ran for about an hour and twenty minutes, twenty minutes longer than advertised. Notwithstanding we were very glad to have been and I will go again should there be a suitable opportunity - by suitable I mean that it would have to be staged in the same sort of way. Intimate good, concert hall bad. I would also do a bit more work on the text beforehand.
Somewhat shattered, we broke the journey home at the Half Way House where we took refreshment, both solid and liquid. Quite decent beefburgers for the money.
Cheerful Chinese family with small children, who had been out celebrating the arrival of the monkey on the train which followed. Also a family - a couple with five children - presumably not all theirs - one still in a buggy - who had been to the Lion King - which must have been quite a trip, not least because the ticket that I saw cost around £75. The mother said that it was her third visit to the show and a lady sitting by said that she had been in New York - in a theatre which was much the same sort of size as one of our West End theatres - and loved it. Very dear but very good. Are we missing something?
With thanks to Emma McConnell, of the Eastman School of Music of Rochester University of New York State. for the illustration. Google will turn up the whole document for interested readers.
PS: in passing, I would like to say that I think that the RFH has worn very well in its sixty or more years of operation. Touched up a bit over the years, it is still looking very good. Of its time, but very good.
Reference 1: http://www.anukomsi.com/.
Reference 2: http://patriciakopatchinskaja.com/.
Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/awake-in-shed.html.
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