Excellent performance, which left me wondering why ever one would try to play the thing on a piano. Most unsuitable. Attention maintained maybe 66% of the time, quite high for me; maybe Bach's number games strikes some important inner chord. With part of this being that at several points I was reminded of the drone of the bagpipes, and at several other points I was reminded of the sound of single notes plucked on a guitar.
A wooden harpsicord, that is to say the wood had just been stained and/or varnished, none of the black lacquer which one expects from a Steinway. And none of your painted panels, the sort of thing you see, for example, in 'A Young Woman seated at a Virginal' at the National Gallery. I was reminded of the grain of elm, but perhaps something tropical is more likely. The music seemed to me to be at the wrong angle for comfort, but I think most of the time it was just a prop. And Esfahani chose to sit on a chair rather than a piano stool. Perhaps piano stools are only for pianos.
About 80 minutes without an interval, the absence of which seemed absolutely right on this occasion. In which connection, see the discussion of repeats at reference 1.
Esfahani did not care, quite rightly to my mind, to give an encore, with the Goldbergs themselves being one large encore, but he wanted to do something and so he gave us a little talk, from which I have taken away the reminder that there is always something new to be found in good music, even when, as in his case, he has performed this particular piece maybe a hundred times. A veritable Bostridge of the Bach - see reference 3. He also contributed some nice notes to the programme; clearly a thoughtful sort of chap, with a pleasantly self-effacing stage manner.
As for the margins, at Epsom we had the first heavily graffitied train that I have seen for a long time. A full-on composition that must have taken some time and money - on paint - with these particular vandals not being destitute. Let's hope Southwest Trains can keep on top of them.
The shimmering art work on the outside walls of Debenhams continue to please. Both clever and understated; none of the gross exhibitionism featured in so much modern art.
While at Earlsfield it was rather cloudy and I thought I was going to score a duck. Then, aeroplane one swung out of the off-piste to the north into the flight path down to Heathrow, followed by aeroplane two dropping out of the cloud on-piste to the right, easily spotted by the glare of its headlights in the cloud. Thus closing the proceedings with a sneaky two.
Home to peer at my Urtext edition from Germany, from which I was able to learn something of the conventions for marking rests when writing more than two lines on music on just two staves. I also found some excellent music theory notes at reference 4. From all of which arose another oddity of the workings of the mind. I had completely forgotten that the treble and bass clefs were named for treble and bass voices, and that there were other clefs. Preoccupied with other matters, the brain had left the origins of the terms behind. But the big take-away was that it looked terribly difficult to play, running at times to four lines of music running on four lines of rhythm. From where I associate to my clarinet teacher, from back when I went in for a bout of music making, who sometimes doubted whether I had any sense of rhythm at all.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/goldberg.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/coped-with-modern.html.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/winterreises-old-and-new.html.
Reference 4: http://musictheoryblog.blogspot.co.uk/.
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