So what with that and the successful outing noticed at reference 4, we were drawn to the programme illustrated left.
Started off badly with a lot of low cloud at Clapham Junction and the best I could do from the train was one aeroplane, disqualified because it was flying the wrong way.
Got worse when we arrived at the Festival Hall, to find that they were having a water emergency, with a Thames Water pumping station having fallen out of line. It did not seem to affect the neighbouring restaurants, but all the public toilets in the hall were shut and the building was partially evacuated. I was both surprised that just the hall would have been affected and, given that it had been, that they kept the building open. Presumably these days they have well rehearsed incident plans for events of this sort, plans which have been vetted by the appropriate authorities, and the plan did not call for immediate evacuation. We nipped down the Archduke were they accommodated us - although they may have got a bit grumpy by the end of the afternoon. Then a young chap in one of the shops in the hall thought he was going to be able to shut up for an hour or so and pop off for a smoke, but BH soon faced him down.
Worse still, when we found that the art work, noticed for the second time at reference 5, was missing.
Into the hall itself, where the seating arrangements were much the same as for the Kurtág, although there were rather more people and there was no screen between the artists and the body of the hall - which I thought would matter, but in the event did not. Once things got under way one was more or less unaware of the hall beyond.
But underway is putting it a bit strongly, as I found the whole thing rather bitty, with the musical performances being broken up by a rather slight play, a slight play which had not all that much to do, as I found out afterwards, with the Tolstoy short story. The play was for two voices, with the male voice - Samuel West - being the partner if not the husband of the playwright - Laura Wade. With Wade being unusual in that her wikipedia page - she does not run to her own web site - listed her unpublished as well as her published work. The play was in two halves, the first being the version of the story in which there was no adultery and the second that in which there was. Or vice-versa. An interpretation which a literal reading of the story allows, but which I think improbable. With play being inserted between the movements of the two pieces of music. As I say, it came across to me as rather bitty, despite strong performances from both voices.
There was an attempt to address the interesting question of the intimacy which will arise between a man and a woman - who are not married to each other - playing a piece like this sonata, but I think it failed. I think they might have done better to be less ambitious, and to have done just the sonata. Perhaps played it in a sort of master class format in the first half, and then just played straight through in the second half.
Not helped by our sitting next to two young girls, maybe 8 or 9 years old, whom I think were the daughters of our pianist for the day. Two young girls who were far too young for concerts and far too young for the subject matter, with the result that they fiddled and fidgeted all the way through. Not too bad for me being one across from them, but I think the older lady behind them was very put out. I think in France she would have had words or worse, but in this country it is not done to discipline other people's children when their own parents are about.
The programme told us that the performance was part of a series in memory of the late Sir Claus Moser, which caught my eye, as he was the chap who signed the handsomely produced letter, complete with a fancy die-stamped lion & unicorn at the top, which announced my arrival in the civil service back in the 1970's. Despite the friendly tone of the letter, no doubt a form letter which was the work of his outer office, I never got to meet him, although I did get to meet his deputy and eventual successor, Sir John Boreham, on several occasions.
For the first time in a while, perhaps helped along by the glass of Piquepoul taken in the cabin above platform 1 at Waterloo, I stood up for a young mother in the unexpectedly crowded train home. It usually, these days, being the other way around, certainly in tube trains where there are plenty of well trained young ladies from foreign.
Back home, I turned up the story again, to find it not as bad as I had remembered. Twenty pages of rather tiresome preaching about the role of women in the world (obviously important to the chattering classes of the day), forty pages of story (told after the event, from the point of view of the murderously jealous husband), then ten pages additional preaching, with my not bothering with this last on this occasion. But the story, once you got there, was rather good, amongst other things a portrait of the sort of urban middle class life which must have been well known to many of the original readers back in 1890, ten years after 'Anna Karenina' and twenty after 'War and Peace'.
PS: in the margins of this post I have established that google search is accent blind while blog search is not. In blog search, 'Kurtág' is not the same as 'Kurtag', although, as a consolation prize it is the same as 'kurtág'.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=kreutzer.
Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=kreutzer.
Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=candyman.
Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/kurtag-kafka.html.
Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/myth-rituals.html.
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