Endellions

Endellion Quartet at the Wigmore last Friday, the first time we have heard them for more than six months (see reference 1).

Worries about trains and the weekend works at Wimbledon were quite unfounded, with trains between Epsom and Waterloo working normally all evening. The Raynes Park waiting room library even yielded two interesting looking books, one of them late of the Boot's lending library service with its distinctive green shield stickers and of which my mother was a regular subscriber back in the early sixties. I think her line was that one got to new novels quicker than if one waited for them on the council library waiting list - and it was still a lot cheaper than buying. I wondered whether any of these commercial lending libraries, the libraries which, as it were, paid George Elliot's bills, are still around? I ask the Harrod's web site about libraries today and all I seem to get back is a selection of perfume.

Back at the Wigmore, the Endellion gave us Haydn's Op. 76 No. 5, Janáček's String Quartet No, 1 (aka the Kreutzer sonata) and Schubert's D 887. A nicely balanced programme, with my coping with the rather strange (to me, despite having heard it at least once before. See reference 2) Janáček, rather well. Seemed to follow on well from the Enescu earlier in the week. Struck once again by the noises out of small wooden boxes effect which I sometimes get from string quartets.

The programme notes made much of the connections between the Janáček, the unpleasant short story from Tolstoy and the masterful violin sonata from Beethoven of the same name. Sad to say, I made no connections at all. Must do better next time.

Concert slightly marred by a certain amount of fidgeting and coughing in our immediate vicinity and rather a lot of coughing in the natural breaks. But at least there was a decent pause after music before clapping - something which the audience did not seem to understand about at our recent concert at the Dorking Halls.

But, in the round, Endellion deliver the goods once again. Plus economies of scale in that they offer very nearly the same concert at the West Road hall in Cambridge tomorrow.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=endellion&max-results=20&by-date=true.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Jan%C3%A1%C4%8Dek.