Back at the court

Last week, as briefly noticed at reference 1, back to Milton Court, this time in proper seats, unlike the occasion noticed at reference 2, another outing, as it happens, for the No.4 bus.

But this time we thought we would try the Elephant & Castle option suggested by the Network Rail Journey Planner. An option which turned out to involve picking up rather tired rolling stock at Sutton and a long change, involving getting lost in the street market and a lift at Elephant & Castle. I had forgotten that such things still existed on the tube. Unsure of our directions outside Moorgate, but, as luck would have it, we spotted the distinctive mid-rise blocks of flats on the Barbican estate and could head for that.

Picnic'd in the Barbican Centre where we were rather irritated by the noise coming from some bar above us.

Row F left in the more or less full Milton Court turned out to be spot on on this occasion. Schubert D.959 sonata excellent, played without score. I thought he might have made four mistakes, nothing serious, Schubert D.957 Schwanengesang also excellent, Padmore having a tremendous voice and with Biss helped along with a foot operated ipad. I wondered what happened if he forgot to turn the page, there being passages where he did not seem to be using it much. Perhaps just tap the foot twice. He also seemed to be very hunched over his piano, which we thought likely to cause him back problems in due course.

Padmore made the claim that Schwanengesang was a deliberate, closing compendium of what he could do from Schubert, not something thrown together post-mortem by his publisher at all. A claim which seemed reasonable enough, particularly the bit about the importance of the ultimate Taubenpost in breaking the despair and tension of the penultimate Doppelgänger. That said, the Taubenpost had lost some of the tremendous impact of its first outing, noticed at reference 3, despite Padmore's best efforts. I am reminded, once again, of the novelist who wrote about the never-to-be-recovered impact of hearing something great for the first time, something which has perhaps happened on this occasion. It doesn't always. On the other hand, I still get the not very nice sense of the singer using the pigeon to spy on his beloved, not quite the same as keeping in touch. Fortunately, a sense which only surfaces when I look at the words.

And having done my revision the night before, I did not use the words at all during the performance. BH was using the programme, so, with hindsight, perhaps I should have bought two. Cheap enough at £2. A quick glance at the words from time to time might have made things even better, spying notwithstanding and even though I had found the evening before that following the words was often confused by repeats. In any event, this programme will be retained for the next hearing of the Schwanengesang, from Bostridge, in a few days time. In the meantime, I note that there was another Wuja Yang picture on the back, it being clear this time that she is representing Steinway.

As it happened, Mitsuko Uchida was sitting a few seats away. She is due to do the Winterreise with Padmore at the Wigmore in December, so perhaps she was taking his measure in performance. She was also very quick to notice the arrival of the ipad and it will be interesting to see if she uses such a thing herself. Tickets just arrived. In the interval I will try to find out whether my brother ever met Padmore, their both having been in the same part of Cambridge at roughly the same time.

We passed on the conversation with the artists, offered after the concert. But it did occur to me that the tiresome format, conversation of celebrity A with presenter B, does mean that celebrity A does not have to do much homework, with the framework and prompting being provided by B. Perhaps A would not do it otherwise. Contrariwise, I remember that a chap I once worked for, Mr Ramprakash, did a very good job at improvising a talk on top of a few more or less banal questions from his audience, in this particular case, his own clerks.

Decided to avoid the bandit country of South London and got home via Stockwell.

PS: at Sutton we were interested to come across an advertisement for some houses on a development grandly titled 'Priest Hill Heights', being on some land at the back of Nescot, perhaps sold off to pay the inflated salary of the boss there. 'Heights' seems to be the latest estate agent word to make you think of posh. See references 4 and 5.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/a-thought-experiment-about-adaptation.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/brahms.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/last-stand-at-wiggers.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/chief-executive-greed.html. I see that I have moved on more than 30 trolleys since this post of just about a year ago.

Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/trust-again.html. The agent here has worked another good word into this mix: 'gated'.