Hagen

Last week to the Wigmore Hall, mainly to hear the Hagen Quartet give us Beethoven Op.18 No.4, a favourite early quartet which we must now have heard many times. Once, by a bunch of students in a lunchtime church recital in Cambridge. Whereas we only seem to have heard the Hagens twice before, once in 2010 and again in 2013. Interestingly, on the first occasion we had the very Schumann played in this third concert and on the second we had the very Beethoven. Which all goes to show that it is not just pop bands which trot out the same stuff, gig after gig.

And with this band not running to a website, appearing to make do with Facebook. Unusual these days.

Got to Green Park and thought that the tube train we were on might be about to do a go-slow so jumped off - to find that Green Park was about twice as far from the Wigmore Hall as Oxford Circus, while I had thought it was about the same. Odd that I had not checked before. But we did learn that the substantial tree in Berkeley Square had been rather badly decorated.

Got to the hall to find it about two thirds full, so a lot less full than it usually is, at least for the mainstream concerts that we go to. Unusual flower arrangements, rather good, dominated by white anthuriums. That on the right seemed rather better than that on the left, but I was not convinced that the difference was not a product of our sitting on the left, rather than anything else. A couple of older gents. at the front were clearly interested in such things and were taking a close look.

All went very well. The Beethoven was on good form and the other two pieces, new to us, were good too - although we thought that 10 minutes was about right for the Webern. Irritatingly enthusiastic holiday makers took pictures of the quartet taking their bow.

We liked the Oxford Street lights. And we admired the elaborate, monster themed displays in the windows of John Lewis who had clearly spent a good deal of time, trouble and expense on them. According to the DT: 'For many, the release of the John Lewis Christmas advert heralds the start of the festive season, and 2017's eagerly-anticipated commercial features a monster hiding under a bed. Rumours of a cuddly, gruffalo-style monster appearing in this year's John Lewis advert circulated earlier this week when a mysterious ... Twitter account shared a four-second clip ... This imaginary monster, called Moz, has today been revealed as the official star of the £7m advert...'. So the punters are not the only ones to be spending lots of money at Christmas.

No aeroplanes to be seen at Wimbledon.

PS 1: later, I got to thinking about how Germans felt about being named for the villain of the Nibelungenlied. But then went back to reference 1 to be reminded that 'villain' is a bit oversimplifying things and that Siegfried's behaviour is tricky, not above reproach. There was also the (I think) new thought that if Hagen wanted to kill someone who has been dipped in magic potion (rather like Achilles before him), he is going to have to resort to wheezes which he might have managed without in more normal circumstances.

PS 2: all this has served to remind me of the weakness of the template used at reference 3, in that early posts get lost from regular view but remain accessible to search. So November 2010, for example, starts at the end of that month and comes to an end on the 8th of the month rather than the 1st. With the result that the blog archive is deficient to that extent. Annoying, and I shall be surprised if I ever turn up a solution that works for me. Did I know at the time or was I just sloppy, did not check as I went along, as I should have? See reference 4.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=german+lighting.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/hagenned.html.

Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=hagen.

Reference 4: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/.