Sacconi three

Last Sunday back to the Dorking Halls for the third and last of the three concerts given by the Sacconi Quartet. Haydn's Op.54 No.3. Janáček's string quartet No.2 (Intimate Letters). Dvořák's string quartet No.12, Op.96 (American).

This time we remembered to go easy on the lunch and settled for a spot of something red - I can't remember whether is was salmon or trout. Loch farmed and fed on the finest possible pellets. With the result that we greatly enjoyed this concert.

The Haydn quartet seemed to me to be more of a violin concerto - but was none the worse for that. While the two Czech efforts were very good too, in rather different ways. Both more so than I had expected, with my recollection of the latter being that I did not care for it, although today I can find no trace of ever having heard it before, at least in the last ten years. Very odd. Perhaps I am getting in a muddle with the New World Symphony with which it did seem to share various bits and pieces.

The second violin continued with her physical expressiveness.

We were sat next to a young lady and when I observed she was a bit young for what was mainly a pensioner audience, she explained that she was the viola playing girl friend of the cellist, Pierre Doumenge. All very complicated as they both worked musician times and places and she lived in the Netherlands. I tried out my cello problem on her, and while she had vaguely heard of such a thing, could only offer generalities about musicians getting very picky about strings, tones and all that sort of thing. But she did talk about mutes, which I shall now follow up. See reference 3 for the problem.

Tea and cake to follow in the café in Dorking Halls. Not bad at all and certainly a lot cheaper than the Burford Bridge Hotel we tried after Sacconi two. We also picked up a copy of the programme from which the snap above was taken. As far as we could make out, we thought that it was a private affair, a family celebration of a coming of age event (from a dancing point of view) for one of the young ladies of the family. The event was described as the Bharathanayata Arangetram of Selvi Hamisha Srishkantharajah, and was put on by the Kalaniketham School of Fine Arts, of Croydon and Wallington. A number of those involved did not appear to be students, rather professional singers, dancers or musicians. We will see whether my Facebook skills can get the real story from reference 5.

Dorking Hall clocks were all an hour out as management have not yet mastered the art of summer time. Presumably clocks in more modern buildings are all synchronised and do summer time without human intervention - like my telephone, my computers and our central heating. And what about the ancient clocks on the platform at Tooting Broadway? See reference 4.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/sacconi-two.html.

Reference 2: https://twitter.com/pierredoumenge. According to Bing, Doumenge, standing in for the regular cellist who is on maternity leave, is keen on photography, but his twitter suggests something of a foodie.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/back-on-bullingdon.html. The cello problem's first outing. There have been more since, but without resolution.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/clock.html.

Reference 5: https://www.facebook.com/Kalaniketham-228944763886972/.