An Italian Job

St. Luke's again on Thursday.

Started off pleased to find that they have now gotten around to replacing the more or less dead oak trees on Epsom station approach, possibly quercus robur fastigiata, this last being gardening speak for tall thin oak trees, in fact fastigiated oak trees, with fastigiate meaning to make pointed like the top of a gable, from the Latin via the French. It is the right time of year for such an operation and this time they have finished the beds off with half rotted wood chippings, rather than with pea shingle. I suspect this will result in more mess, but we shall see. We shall see also whether anyone bothers to water them while they get established next spring. See reference 1.

Bullingdonned from Waterloo Station 3 to Finsbury Leisure Centre, with the only point of interest being a young lady on a fixed wheel bicycle, favoured by hard core gents., but not seen before under a lady. She jumped all the lights that I saw her at, so while she might have had the bike she did not have the manners.

Ruminated over my bacon sandwich at the Market Café on whether the Café was owned by the same people as had the mediterranean flavoured restaurant opposite. Had they just bought up the place from the retiring greasy spoon flavoured owner? Once again, rather quiet for a lunch time; maybe they lost clientèle during their makeover.

And so to St. Luke's to hear a young Italian pianist on an Italian flavoured piano, a Fazioli, give us the Beethoven Op. 26 piano sonata and the Schubert D935 impromptus. The pianist was properly dressed in a rather Italianate style. And as regards the piano, my comment last year that 'the Fazioli piano did very well, imparting, together with the pianist, a slightly edgy, nervous flavour to the piece, which served it well' (see reference 2) serves well on this occasion. I don't think I have ever heard better impromptus.

But was the Fazioli more like the sort of piano that Schubert would have used than a Steinway, with its full and very smooth tone? Are the Fazioli, the regular modern grand and the Schubert-times fortepiano all equidistant from each other in some sense? Could Schubert afford a decent piano at all?

As it happens we have heard the other set of impromptus on a Fazioli before (see reference 3, also http://vimeo.com/106798327. Not quite sure about performing rights at vimeo, but trying to find out did remind me that I once used to know something about what google seems to know as large cardinals).

One of the ushers told us that the piano had arrived at around 1030 that morning, just a couple of hours before the off - but they did have a Steinway in reserve. We wondered first who footed the bill and second whether one would, as a matter of course, tune the thing on arrival.

And the blog tells me that our acquaintance with the various impromptus now runs to just over five years, having been started on the road by my near contemporary, Imogen Cooper.

Back through Earlsfield, on this occasion, where I did not manage a single aeroplane in the rather cloudy sky.

PS: memory playing tricks again. On Thursday, I clearly remembered Fazioli pianos being customisations of Steinways; take a Steinway and tweak it a bit for the discerning pianist. But examination of wikipedia this morning tells me that Fazioli might be a young company, a mere thirty years old, but it does make its pianos from scratch. I wonder where the brain got hold of the Steinway story?

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=bowser.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/last-evening-visit.html.

Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=fazioli.