Sacconi two

Last Sunday back to the Dorking Halls for the second of the three concerts given by the Sacconi Quartet. String Quartet No.2 from Glass, K.387 from Mozart, Op.106 from Dvořák.

Rather to our surprise we liked the Glass and did not enjoy the Mozart. For some reason, neither of us seemed to get into gear with it. Dvořák started rather jangly, but the last three movements were fine. Perhaps we had taken too large a lunch, having failed to remember on this occasion that light lunch is what is needed before an afternoon concert.

But I did catch the first violin using his foot pedal to work his computerised score.

I did wonder about the odd configuration of the tail piece of the cello, reminding me of the business with cello used by the cellist of the Škampa String Quartet noticed at reference 2 and followed up at reference 3. With a trick of the memory meaning that I was looking for the Pavel Haas Quartet rather than the Škampa String Quartet and only tracked the business down by investigating violin shops in the vicinity of the Wigmore Hall with Bing. Perhaps I will manage to catch the cellist in the margins of Sacconi three to come.

And I thought there was something of the viola concerto about the Dvořák. Perhaps the violist was feeling a bit pushy this day. I remember some of the sort happening once before, perhaps in the Royal Festival Hall, when a famous cellist, probably a Russian, deigned to play in a string quintet. I also seem to remember something about his liking the lighting to be very low, candles even, although this last seems a bit improbable.

Despite lunch, we thought we would try for tea and toasted tea cake at the Burford Bridge Hotel, now operated by Mercure (having flooded a few Christmases ago) - where the Hungarian waiter did not have a clue what I was talking about and I had to resort to showing him a picture turned up (with impressive speed) by Cortana. He promised to talk to his chef about the matter and in the meantime offered a perfectly respectable slice of some kind of chocolate cake. Tea good.

On the way out we were intrigued by the map of the area which had been printed onto the fabric covering a folding screen in the reception area, illustrated above. The second or third time we had come across maps of this sort, with this being a particularly neat bit of work. Much harder than printing a custom map onto rolls of wallpaper.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/sacconi-one.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/back-on-bullingdon.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/more-tuition.html.