Gavrylyuk

We should have been off to the Wigmore Hall on Monday to hear Cedric Tiberghien do, amongst other offerings, Schubert's 'Wanderer Fantasy', but some weeks ago we were told that this was not to be and that we could have Alexander Gavrylyuk (of whom I had not previously heard either) do, amongst other things 'Pictures at an Exhibition', of which I had heard even if I knew it not at all. We persisted on the grounds that we ought to stray out of our fairly small comfort zone from time to time. We enquired of Wikipedia to find that the piece seemed to have a far bigger existence arranged for an orchestra, or at least something other than the original piano. But this time we would be hearing the piano version of something for which there were also orchestral versions rather than an orchestral version of something which started out as a piano quartet (see 12th April). Poked around on the shelf to find I had a record of an orchestral version and gave it a whirl, to decide that it would not be very helpful as preparation.

In the event, the concert was tremendous. Started out with a Mozart Rondo (K485) followed by three short pieces by Rachmaninov (Op. 32 No.12, Op. 23 No. 5 and Op. 34 No. 14). All good. And then a very stirring rendering of the pictures. The audience, including us, got well steamed up. Much enthusiasm when it came to clapping. Followed by a short encore which I was not so keen on - but I was pleasantly surprised to have found that I liked what I had expected to be a piece of show-off music, something which one gets rather a lot of at the Festival Hall and which I do not generally like.

Gavrylyuk rather an odd looking chap who reminded me very much of President Putin. See http://www.alexandergavrylyuk.com/.

Sufficiently excited after the concert to give the nearby '2 Veneti' a try, a restaurant (see http://www.2veneti.com/) we had often clocked but never tried. Very good it was too, and not as expensive as one might have thought by looking in from the outside. I had a tomatoish soup (something I do not care for from Heinz) and a sausage risotto, both good. They were generous with the bread, which was nice, even if the bread itself was not that clever. Washed down with a very decent carafe of red (which being somewhat smaller than a bottle suits better these days) and an excellent pudding wine (in my case) in lieu of coffee. A touch of humour in the form of sugar bowls which were porcelain versions of a slightly crumpled plastic cup, the sort of thing you might give yourself water in in a National Trust canteen.

Walked off lunch by an short expedition to the nearby Bell & Croyden to investigate medical tuning forks, the idea being that you set the thing off and apply the base to the part which is causing concern. If you can't feel it you are probably right to be concerned and maybe better pay a visit to the doc.. Ample supplies available but we retired without purchase to reflect. Interesting clientele.

Followed by a slightly longer expedition to Chappell's of Bond Street to see if we could get a parallel score of either the Brahms or the Mussorgsky, the whole business of musical adaptations being both intriguing and a welcome change from Christie adaptations. Marched down the lengths of New Bond Street and Old Bond Street where there were interesting passers by but otherwise drew a blank, so we caught a bus to Victoria. Home to find out that Chappell's of Bond Street actually live in Wardour Street, which had not occurred to us. We shall make it on another occasion.

PS: not pleased to find a small bug in the template which I use to display the blog. If you click on April, for example, it does not load the whole of April, just the first thirty entries or so. You can get the balance by clicking on the 'older posts' at the bottom, but that is not quite the same. You are not getting the entire calendar month on a single page.