Endellion

Back to the Wigmore Hall to hear the Endellion Quartet again Wednesday past, for the first time according to the record here since 16th February last year. My senior memory was that we had heard them much more recently than that, but checking my diary with their diary suggests not: senior memory problem again.

Furthermore, it must have been a later, not to say senior, booking as for, I think the first time ever, we were sitting in the very back row (X). The sound generally fine, despite being under the balcony, a little more rounded and blended than that which you get nearer the front. I suppose, a bit more like what you get from one's hifi at home. But, for a time, during the Beethoven I think, the first violin seemed a bit thin against his three colleagues. And at one point the cellist, David Waterman, clanked his cello with his bow, the sort of slip I have not heard from them before. As it happened, the lady next to us was a cousin of his, which prompted me to wonder, for some reason, whether he was any relation of Dennis Waterman, it not being a very common name. A quick peek this morning turns up nothing in their biographies to link them, but I do learn that the cellist, before becoming a serious cellist, put in six years philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge. I wonder how many top flight musicians can also boast of being real doctors of philosophy?

We noticed that the front cover of the programme was not the usual Wigmore Hall cover, rather an Endellion cover. It seems that, alone of all the people we have heard there, that they produce their own programmes and so get to choose the front cover. The contents are rather more Endellion/Cambridge flavoured than would be the case with a Wigmore programme, but there is some common material, including the size and general format, so maybe the thing is a collaboration rather than a completely independent effort.

And hall looked very different from the back with me being much more conscious of its length rather than its height.

Out to inspect the aquarium in the window of Pull & Bear (see 14th May). There was also a rather different sort of light show at the top of Regent Street, possibly at Tous, but we did not get close enough on this occasion to take a proper look. Made the train at Vauxhall with a couple of minutes to spare, which was good. Not so good to be hanging around stations late at night after a good concert.

Search keys: Haydn Op. 55 No.3, Beethoven Op. 135 and Schubert D.810.

PS: I have also learned about a place called Prussia Cove (50.1037104,-5.419131), near Penzance. Never heard of before, despite several holiday visits to that area.