On the way we were interested to be sitting opposite a young lady, petite and unassuming in appearance, who quite quite openly reading ladyporn - that is to say the very fat paperback concerned with the special interest paint chart, a fat paperback which the NYRB claims is fairly badly written, about on a par with most of the porn written for men, but which has pulled off the trick of making it something that decent ladies can read without shame or even embarrassment. I suppose part of the trick is no pictures, pictures which are apt to get shocked reactions (if not actual shock) from people reading over the shoulder. Pictures which are also apt, I imagine, to detract from the interest of the porn, which I would have thought was much more fun consumed with the aid of the imagination rather than that of the photographer.
Arrived at the Wigmore Hall, where I. Cooper got off to a flying start with all four impromptus of D899. Terrific stuff, plenty of chiaroscuro. But last time, which I think must have been the Festival Hall, the things had a religious, sacred quality. In the rather smaller and more brightly lit Wigmore Hall, they had lost that; impressive, but no longer sacred or sublime. Was this a function of the space or the playing? Or both? I read in the NYRB (where else) that, according to the late Charles Rosen, a good pianist will adapt his or her playing to the acoustics of the space. A reason, inter alia, why a recording in the home will never be as good as good live.
Then into the A minor sonata D784, where, I am sorry to say, despite the thing getting off to another flying start with the first allegro and despite the revision of the previous few days, I got a bit lost in the middle.
Then after the break we got the twelve écossaises of D781 (12 écossaises which google seems quite certain is actually 11 écossaises). Played without any perceptible break, at least to me, then into the main course, the D850 sonata, again without any perceptible break. I think that this was a mistake. If she did not want applause after the 3 or 4 minutes of écossaises, fine. All she has to do, assuming that she does not want to do it herself, is to get the MC to say so at the same time as he is reminding us about mobile phones (I wonder why he does not have to go into the fire exit drill which usually precedes commercial training courses, where fire drill would be far less important than it would be in a crowded concert hall? Full in this case). But not pausing to make sure we had no time to clap was not the way forward.
I think the best thing to have done would have been to omit the écossaises; the program was quite full enough without them. But if they were to be kept, there should have been a short pause between each and a much longer pause before launching into the sonata. The sonata needs to be framed in silence; expectant silence at the beginning and appreciative silence at the end. Just as a picture should be framed by its frame or a film should framed by the opening and closing sequences. It took me quite a while to adjust after the rushed start, again despite the homework of the previous few days.
PS 1: one could get into discussion at this point about the way that much of what passes for art these days does not bother with frames, despite the whopperormous price tags. But I resist.
PS 2: the écossaises are rather jolly but very short. The illustration is the score for pretty much the whole of the first one. Might have been better played a little quieter.
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