Emerson

Last week to St. John's to hear the second of two concerts of Beethoven's late quartets given by the Emerson String Quartet. On this occasion we got Op.132 and Op.130 (with Grosse Fuge).

Three diversions on the train. First, not for the first time, I was struck by the amount of use of the phrase 'O God' among young females, the vast majority of whom had no religion and no gods, at least not of the spiritual variety. But I was then slowed down by thinking that I, despite having come from an atheist family and having been a stout atheist all my life, use the phrase 'O Lord', at least in inner thought quite a lot too. Curious. Second, by a footballing family who looked as if they liked a drink, thinking it appropriate to take a boy who looked to be of primary age from Worcester Park to a big football match at Wembley (Tottenham vs. Real Madrid) on a school night. Third, prompted by something in the 'Standard', we got to thinking about what it was about the Japanese which made them more apt to commit murders involving butchering the resultant corpses than us in the west. No answer on that one, not even to the point of checking whether the allegation was true.

The 88 bus carried us from Vauxhall to Horseferry Road in short order, leaving us plenty of time to take our picnic in the basement of St. John's. A basement which was crowded and we felt a bit uncomfortable eating our grub rather than theirs, but we did buy some wine. Perhaps next time we will eat their grub.

While waiting for the off we wondered about the cross beam illustrated, not matched at the organ end. Was it a structural afterthought, brought on by spreading of the completed building? Or was it just a fancy curtain rail? We voted for the latter. We also noticed, not for the first time, the anthropomorphic carvings of the Corinthian capitals, certainly as seen from below. Some of this being captured in this illustration.

Row G seemed just about spot on. Near enough to get good sight and sound, but far enough for the sound to have been blended a bit. I find it too raw if I get too close. An Australian couple next to us, in Europe for a month, and, by the sound of it, taking in a good bit of culture. They thought that there would be merit in my idea that one should carry orchestras around their continent in one of their road trains, fitted with windows and other conveniences (see references 3 and 4), but were not too keen on Sydney Opera House: great from the outside but not so great from the inside. And I dare say that there is more going on in London than in Sydney, with my uneducated guess being that it is somewhere between Montreal (good) and Ottawa (bad) in that department. For some reason, I wanted to mention Cape Leeuwin (see reference 2), but it was not until the interval that I was able to recover the name of the place from Cortana. I plead guilty to wanting to show off what few Australian factlets that I could muster.

For some reason, one seems to talk to people more at St. John's than one does at the Wigmore Hall. I remember once reading that geometry is very important in large shops, so perhaps there something about the geometry of the two places. Or perhaps something in one being a medical area and the other being a government area? Or in the basement café seating being more promiscuous at St. John's?

As noticed last time, good stage presence, but this time sitting rather than standing. With the two violins swapping at half time.

Excellent sound from the Emersons, particularly striking me on this occasion with their power when playing quietly, oxymoronic though that might sound. And I thought that the Grosse Fuge was as good as it gets, including some moments which I can only describe as incandescent, some of which might have involved discords. While the lady from the Guardian was not impressed at all, only giving them two or three out of five. BH thought it might be a sex thing.

But I did think that the alternative ending for the second quartet was the wrong thing for an encore. The point of an alternative ending that it was alternative, not additive. If they felt they had to have an encore, something short and completely different would have been better. My own choice being for no encore after such a thing as the mighty Grosse Fuge.

We had a concert bore behind us working hard to impress his lady companion. Working so hard that he forgot to turn his phone off, which then went off during the encore.

We had a football fan to drive us back to Vauxhall and he started off about Manchester City's fine victory over Naples. It took me some seconds to realise that he thought that my wearing the Manchester scarf meant that I was a fan; perhaps I need to be more careful. But I was impressed by the efficient way my telephone was able to tell me about the game, including a neat graphic of the many goals.

PS: a couple of days later, we had hearsay from the gallery corroborating the Guardian lady's allegation that the quartet were out of tune. A more charitable interpretation might be that there might be different opinions about what tuning is appropriate for any one piece. On which more shortly.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/grosse-fuge.html.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=leeuwin.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/faust.html.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_train.