Return visit

Having visited Holy Trinity at Sloane Square getting on for four years ago (see August 25th and September 15th 2010 in the other place, http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/), another visit, more or less by chance, last week to hear Pergolesi's 'Stabat Mater'. A chance driven by there being a gap in the schedule, the continuing interest in choral music and by browsing the calendar for Cadogan Hall, a place which I am sure we have visited at least once, but for which there is no record, so it must have been before October 2006. A calendar which claimed that this piece included 'the most perfect and touching duets to come from the pen of any composer', so tickets were bought there and then.

Took a while to decide on how to get there, but we eventually settled for train to Vauxhall then tube, which worked fine. Get to the church to find that the concert was really a fund raising event for the attached school. We take our seats (plenty of leg room for once) to admire the fine east window, nicely illuminated despite it facing east in the fading light and to listen to a smooth introduction by the curate (don't think this is the right word these days, but he was a priest, not the priest-in-charge) - a lot longer and a lot smoother than that offered a few days ago at the South Bank (see 9th April).

Music appropriate to both place and season, being a lament by Mary for her crucified son, with the words being taken from a medieval Latin text. A soprano and a counter-tenor, accompanied by two violins, a cello and a small organ, musicians in full period dress - mid 18th century that is - and real candles for good measure to augment the electrics. Impressive and moving.

The church was fairly full and the people seemed a bit more substantial than those whom one might expect at a fund raiser at our own Stamford Green School. They managed not to clap between the numbers of the lament which I was pleased about, finding such clapping very intrusive. But insubstantial, or at least bad mannered, to the extent that somebody known to the soprano saw fit to take pictures a couple of times during the performance with her telephone, holding it up above her head for the purpose. I thought at the time I would have tapped her on the shoulder had I been sitting immediately behind, rather than a couple of rows behind her; now I am not so sure whether that would have been the right thing to do. But I still think it a bit poor. White wine offered for afters not up to much either.

On the way home, our taxi driver did not sound very Epsom and turned out to have come from a very long standing print family in Bermondsey, a family which never had it so good again after Murdoch smashed the print unions, with this member reduced to driving night taxis out in the sticks. We learned that the real villain of the piece was Eddie Shah, the man who brought printing technology up to date, but who also, as far as I recall, went bust in the process.