We started with umbrella confusion, having got them ready on the strength of adverse weather reports, but failing to actually take them with us. As it happened, while there was rain in the course of the evening, none of it fell on us.
On the strength of the same weather reports, we had decided against picnic, opting instead for the Pret at Vauxhall tube station. One of the many large branches of this chain which seem to be popping up in prime spots in London. I thought my sandwich satisfactory, if a little dear, and while eating it I took in the various posters, one about how natural the milk from their cows was and one (contrariwise) about all the trickery they went in for to maintain a consistent coffee product, to keep it on an even keel.
Tube to Green Park where we spotted some young ladies who were far too expensively turned out to be in regular employment. From there onto the Running Horse which included a number of loud young men among their customers: were they salesmen from one of the fancy car shops round about or client advisors for one of the banks? A board hung on one of the nicely panelled walls claimed home made ice cream, which seemed a touch improbable. Would the cook in a pub really want to be bothered with knocking up ice cream as part of his prep. in the morning? Maybe you can just buy a machine these days, which would just about admit the phrase 'home made'. All in all, Running Horse rather loud and we passed several establishment which might have suited better on our way across to the Hall.
We also passed a very impressive crane, to be illustrated shortly.
One chap in the audience sported a yellow miniature score, probably Edition Eulenberg, the sort of thing that lots of music buffs carried about years ago, but quite rare now. The chap in question thought that this was because people were not trained to read music at school any more.
For the first time for a while, one phone went off during the proceedings. Plus there were a few fidgets in range. Plus the concert, which while good, was also a little too long for us. One early Beethoven (Op.18.6), one stocking filler and two late Beethoven's (Op.135 and Op.132) turned out to be too strong for us. I think we would have got on better without the stocking filler, although it was not without merit - being the world premiere of a new work by Matan Porat, present in the audience, in our very row, and who bounded up to the stage at the end to acknowledge the applause. Long hair, casually dressed and looking nothing like his mug shot in the programme. Or if they did not like to drop the stocking filler, trade down one of the heavy Beethoven's.
First and second violin swapped after the first piece, with Vera Martinez-Mehner taking the lead for the last three. She did not appear to be altogether comfortable with the way that her top had a tendency to slip off her shoulders, which was slightly distracting.
Two of the four used computer scores while the other two used large format paper scores. Large format presumably to reduce the amount of page turning - as from where we were sitting there seemed to be lots of music rather than lots of large print.
Just caught the delayed 2222 from Waterloo, which was good, as otherwise it was a half hour wait, which can seem a long time when one is tired. We might even have been reduced to stopping off at the Halfway House at Earlsfield.
PS: Op.132, with its famous slow movement in the Lydian mode, is the quartet which features in Huxley novel 'Point Counter Point'. See, for example, reference 2. Or reference 3 for the Takács version earlier in the year.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/cuarteto-casals.html.
Reference 2: http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Huxley_Point_Casebook/marovitz.pdf.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/beethoven.html.
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