With a programme which continues to work, along with the Heath Quartet at Dorking, on our very slender knowledge of the Tchaikovsky chamber oeuvre.
The day had been fine so we thought to take our sandwiches at the right time, somewhere in the vicinity of the Hall, rather than at the wrong time, at home, before we left. As it happened it was cold by the time it was the right time, but, by way of compensation, the chairs and tables in John Prince's Street, outside the BHS cafeteria were back in place again, so we were able to take our open fish paste sandwiches in relative comfort. Fish paste because it had suddenly come into mind the week previous, so we had been stocked up. One of those things like pork pies which one does once in a while. All of which reminded us of the foodie nonsense which says that fish paste in small jars is common while fish paté bought loose from rather larger tubs in Waitrose is OK - food fashions sometimes being as silly as the clothing sort. I then thought that a suburban dinner party might be livened up by lining up a battery of mixed fish paste jars down the middle of the table and giving people bread sticks to dip into them with. But then, somebody might spoil the fun by banging on about the lack of oral hygiene in such a proceeding.
And on into a nearly full Wigmore Hall, for what turned out to be three rather dense pieces, all rather good in rather different ways. The Mozart Duo, K423. I did not know at all. The Mozart Quintet, K515, I knew slightly - only discovering that it was not the Schubert C Major Quintet I thought we were getting on the day before. The brain must have seen the string quintet bit of the advertisement and had filled in the composer space with Schubert without bothering to check - this despite the fact that I have the Mozart Quintets on vinyl too. On the day, but not during revision, I was struck by echoes of the Beethoven 18.4 Quartet which I once used to know quite well.
The sextet was a very grand and exuberant affair and I was surprised how much extra noise one got for the extra viola and cello. This piece gave me echoes of the Brahms Op.25 Piano Quartet; probably the exuberance.
Experience only slightly marred by an older lady a couple of rows in front who spent most of the concert reading the programme, with her head popping at regular intervals to see what was going on on the stage.
Just made our connections on the way home, so no halfway house at Earlsfield. On the other hand there was a new moon, to the left of the set sun, with horns pointing left. But I only knew it was a new moon by checking. Despite all my efforts to get a grip on the business of the horns, it does not stick in the mind from one sighting to the next. See reference 2 - posted, as it happens, the day after hearing the Schubert Quintet mentioned above.
Unfortunately, all the stuff so carefully set down there does not seem to agree with the current sighting. This sighting was waxing horns left, whereas that allegation was waxing horns right. Maybe I got into a muddle with clockwise and anticlockwise, but I can't be bothered to straighten it all out this morning. The lesson being that I am still as accident & blunder prone as I was in my youth - a pronality which did for me as a serious chess player. At least with computer programmes, you can gradually squeeze all the blunders out, and once out, they stay out.
Reference 1: http://www.razumovsky.org.uk/.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/experiment-2.html.
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