It was a rather wet evening which occasioned some discussion as to appropriate outer clothes, my having some rather odd, not to say silly, aversion to using the cloakroom. I am happy to spend two or three hours travelling to hear music for one or two hours and then fuss about waiting two or three minutes to get my coat back: all odd indeed. But, continuing odd, we settled for one rain coat, one waterproof jacket and one folding umbrella, which as it turned out, did well enough.
Entertained on the way in by a pair of 15-16 year old young ladies, one of whom scarcely drew breath between Epsom and Waterloo. They started with a survey of parental silliness on the occasion of going out, running through the gamut of things that parents worry about. Hats, scarves, sandwiches, gloves, spare stockings, emergency telephone numbers and so on. Then onto the joys of driving lessons and winding up with an extended discussion of body piercing and the various things that can go wrong. Like the navel ring which was punched through the stomach wall near the naval rather than actually through the navel, and looked, we gathered, very silly in consequence. BH thought that a lot of this entertainment had been put on for our benefit.
Arrived at the now rather cluttered ante-chamber which meant that there were few free seats, but at least we were spared some warm up act.
Wine & coffee taken, on into the chamber proper, which ended up about one half to two thirds full, with a large gap in the right hand front stalls, where we sat in rather isolated splendour and where there would have been plenty of room for more coats, bags and baggage than we actually had. We couldn't see the hands but, perhaps because of the raking seats, the sound (of the Steinway) was terrific. You really got to hear all the various threads of the music, although that may, for all I know, be as much the result of the pianist's touch as the chamber's acoustics. But I did like his stage manners - which included playing the whole lot from memory.
Bach good, Schumann would have been better had I done a bit of preparation, now in hand after the event. Webern much better than expected, and we both liked it rather better than the Kurtág reported on 22nd January, but I did wonder whether one could make rather more of a performance of it, perhaps drawing on the Spooner effort reported on 25th January. Schubert excellent; as good a Wandererfantasie as we have ever heard. The rest of the audience (average age rather less than that at a usual Wigmore, some rather sloppy dress) thought so too. And it certainly made my Richter disc sound rather dull - a fault, I am sure, of my music system rather than anything to do with Richter. Plus the very positive effect of attending a ceremony, an effect hard to reproduce in a small upstairs room of a standard three bedroom suburban house.
In the loud bits, the lid of the piano vibrated, vibrations which were magnified in the reflected image (the highly polished lid picking up the lighting somehow) on the screen behind the piano. A distraction for some seconds.
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