Grosse Fuge

On Sunday to the QEH to hear the Emersons do three string quartets: Haydn Op.33 No.2, Ravel and Beethoven Op.130 with Op.133, aka the Grosse Fuge, with the Emersons most recently having been heard in April at the Wigmore Hall (see reference 1). On this occasion the three smaller instruments stood, rather than sat, but the violins continued to swap, with the thin violinist getting two goes at going first. Nicely turned out in smart, dark lounge suits and highly polished black shoes; a turnout I think I prefer to the tail coats affected by some, which are now sufficiently old-speak to look quaint rather than smart. They used music and they did turn the pages, but I think this was more a prop than a necessity. They could, at a pinch, have managed without, certainly for the Beethoven which I imagine they have played many times before, say twenty times in concert, which would be an average of about once every two years in their near 40 year run as a quartet. Not to mention what Amazon suggests to be a string of recordings of same, dating from the mid 1990s.

In April I thought about the difference between having a concert with three quartets from the same stable, as it were, and three from different countries, with this November concert being in the latter category. But it worked; the quartet managed to move us from one to the other without strain. Part of this, according to the interview reported in the programme, was that for the Ravel the contact point of the bow was further from the bridge, creating a different palette. I don't suppose I would have been able to tell the difference, even if I had read this bit of the programme beforehand, which I had not, but given that there were quite a lot of young people in the audience and that I thought it likely than a proportion of them were string players themselves, I wonder how many of them fully appreciated this contact point.

But the high point was the Beethoven, on this occasion well-capped by the mighty Grosse Fuge, rather than the originally published ending. The Emersons really do know their stuff.

Emerged from the full house, to find the foyer full of something for children, which did not strike quite the right note. A bit like emerging from Sunday service at the village church in Miss. Marple to find morris dancers going at it in the church yard.

The low point was getting home. We had already had the bus experience, from Epsom to Wimbledon, via all the railway stations in between, which took rather a long time (even longer than the online timetable, which we had bothered to check, had suggested) as the road network rather cuts across the rail network and which meant that we arrived at QEH with a quarter hour to spare rather than an entire hour. Which was not too bad, but arriving back at Waterloo after the mighty fugue to find no trains to Epsom on the indicator board at all, we settled for a train to Surbiton. From where we got a taxi, and being by then tired got unreasonably cross when the driver attempted to take us via Malden Rushett, which was still closed, and which we thought that, as a black cab driver with the knowledge, he ought to have known about. This netted him an extra tenner and we did wonder about whether he had done it on purpose, carrying on a long winded and very quiet conversation with us so that we focused on that rather than the route and so missed the turning which we would have usually taken, avoiding Malden Rushett altogether.

Home to pasta with onion & tomato sauce, enlivened with a portion of saucisson sec from Sainsbury's. And seasoned with a drop of Felsner Gruner Veltliner 2013 from Waitrose, this month's wine of choice.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/razumovsky.html.

Reference 2: http://www.emersonquartet.com/.