Category: Music

Gresham Society Soirée, Including Þe Fair Weather Canticle, 12 December 2022

Gresham Professors Singing The Gresham Professors’ Song, With Thanks To Basil Bezuidenhout for the pictures and the “live music” video

Was it really three years ago that we last enjoyed one of these soirées? Yup. Last year’s event had to be postponed at the last minute.

The only good news about that delay was that the Gresham music professor, Jeremy Summerly, who was unavailable to attend in person last year, was available this year. Splendid news in particular because his deep knowledge about and insights into early music were especially welcome in the matter of the piece that I had “uncovered in autograph manuscript form”, just before the pandemic.

Long lost medieval canticle? We’ll return to this later

Fortunately for all concerned, we had professional musicians to entertain us for the first half of the show, before we Greshamistas got the opportunity to ruin everything.

Actually, before the professionals got the chance to entertain us, the noisiest amateur of us all, Michael Mainelli, piped us in to Barnard’s Inn Hall in the now traditional style.

Michael at full blast. Thoir an aire yer cluasan, folks

Someone once asked me if I ever duet with Michael. My reply:

What would be the point? You’d only hear Michael.

Mercifully for all our ears, the professional team of David Jones and Sofia Kirwan-Baez soon established a pleasant tone to proceedings, both treating us to their fine keyboard skills as well as their excellent voices, with Part 1 of the show.

Sofia has a fine operatic voice, which really came to the fore when she sang the Massenet and the Puccini. David always entertains, not least with his “party piece”, Lehrer’s Elements Song, in which he subtly switches from “Harvard” to “Barnard’s” for the punchline. Also a lovely rendition of Misty, although I can never hear that song any more without thinking of the Gresham Society visit to the London Mithraeum and my resulting Mithras version of that song:

The London Mithraeum With The Gresham Society, 15 March 2018

Part 2 of the programme was a different affair, of course, with some regular and irregular antics.

Tim Connell updated a couple of literary standards, deliberately lowering our intellectual and linguistic standards in so doing, aided and abetted by Frank Cox & Mike Dudgeon

Maths Professors Wilson & Hart taught us how to sing numerical carols. Turns out, it’s as easy as 1-2-3…as long as 4-5-6-7 and 8 are also in your repertoire, naturally.

Tristis opus non est beatus, as PC Wilson might put it.

As for my little offering, Þe Fair Weather Canticle, it had been long in the process between “rediscovering” and performing.

I supplied Professor Jeremy Summerly with a copy of the “autograph” and a demo recording, the latter you can see below:

Professor Summerly very kindly gave this opus more than its fair share of scholarly attention, helping the audience to understand the historical significance of my “discovery” with a professorial dissertation on the piece. Unfortunately, that mini-lecture, a masterpiece in its own right, was not recorded for posterity on the night, but I do have some of Jeremy’s notes, which I can share with readers:

Of necessity, discoveries of new sources in the field of early music are less and less frequent as time goes on. All musicologists dream of finding a source of forgotten music, even more so a fragment that might fill in significant holes in our understanding of music history.

Yet such a discovery has been made recently. It is hardly surprising that such a fragment might turn up on the site of a medieval coaching inn, and even less surprising that this inn should be located in Middle England.

The musico-poetic gem þe Fair Weather Canticle, like much early music, surprises us through its apparent modernity. Like the brightly-coloured decoration of a medieval ceiling, or the dissonant harmonies and boldly-contrasting texts of a medieval motet, there is something shockingly modern about this ancient canticle.

Scholars will need time to consider the implications of this newly-found piece within the pre-Baroque jigsaw.

Meanwhile, the words and music should be enjoyed for what they represent: a perplexingly polystylistic mesh of jumbled ideologies and opaque thinking.

Professor Summerly then went on to examine the words of the canticle, noticing some astounding…in some cases shocking…similarities between those words and the words of subsequently well-known songs from periods ranging from the 12th to 17th centuries. In one case, even the 20th.

Finally, Professor Summerly, being an expert on early music, provided some historical context to my performance on an original instrument, which he kindly described as:

a rare and fascinating example of a gittern-ulele, an instrument probably of similar vintage to the canticle.

The instrument has an exceptionally sweet sound in the hands of an appropriate musician…or so we are led to believe, if only such a virtuoso performer could be found.

In the right hands, this gittern-ulele would quite possibly be, to the guitar-family, what Paganini’s Il Cannone Guarnerius is to the violin.

As for the gittern-ulele performance you are about to hear, many of you will surely be moved to tears when listening to the sound of this extraordinary old git?”

It was hard for me to follow that introduction, but I tried, after a subdued start. Basil recorded the moment for posterity – for which I am grateful. It is not every day that my work is professorially conducted, but the triumphant chorus at the end benefitted greatly from Professor Summerly’s expertise, as I had my hands full at the time:

For those who would like to study the words or are crazy enough to try singing along with the vids, here are the words:

Sumer is icumen in, þe nymphs and shepherds dance
Bryd one brere, groweth sed and bloweth med
And don’t you know, amarylis dance in green–ee-ee-een.

Lightly whipping o’er þe dales, with wreaths of rose and laurel,
Fair nymphs tipping, with fauns and satyrs tripping
Mister Blue Sky is living here today hey, hey hey.

Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.

Hey you with þe angels face, bright, arise, awake, awake!
About her charret, with all admiring strains as today, all creatures now are merry…
(…merry merry merry, merry merry merry merry, merry merry, merry, merry merry merry merry merry merry minded.)

Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.

Hey there mister blue, who likes to love, lhude sing cuccu,
Nauer nu, ne swik thu, sing hey nonny nonny nu.

Mirie it is while sumer ilast, in darkness let me fast,
Flow my tears, fairwell all joys for years,
Never mind, I joy not in early, I joy not in early bliss.

Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.
Ba ba, ba ba ba ba, ba ba, ba ba ba ba, ba ba, ba ba ba ba, ba, ba x2

After the show, there was plenty of time for eating, drinking, chatting and making merry, as is the case at any good soirée. The Gresham Society Soirée is certainly always a good one.

Songs For Troubled Times – Music From Reformation England, Cinquecento, Wigmore Hall, 7 November 2022

We do like a bit of Renaissance music at the Wig. This lunchtime concert seemed just the ticket when we booked it months ago and still seemed like a coveted ticket come the day.

We had heard of Cinquecento but not seen them before, although it seems they have been around for some time.

Below is a mini taster of them singing some other stuff…

…while our concert focussed on English Reformation period composers: John Sheppard, Thomas Tallis, Christopher Tye & William Byrd.

If you have found this Ogblog piece within 30 days of the concert, you can still hear the BBC Radio 3 broadcast of it through this link to BBC Sounds.

The Wigmore Hall streamed this concert. The stream can be found through this link if you would like to see it – I’m not sure if you need to register or not to see/hear it this way.

We thought it was an excellent concert. This size of ensemble and style of music works perfectly, to our ears, in The Wigmore Hall. The Tallis in particular was a memorably wonderful sound.

Josquin’s Legacy, The Gesualdo Six, Wigmore Hall, 10 October 2022

The Gesualdo Six photo by Sprague-Coolidge, CC BY-SA 4.0

The Gesualdo Six is a wonderful Renaissance choir. However, I had a numerical problem with its promotional material when I first saw them in 2018…

Fading: The Hour Is At Hand, The Gesualdo Six, St John’s Smith Square, 28 March 2018

…which seems to be unresolved despite my pleas. The publicity material for The Gesualdo Six regularly shows seven people.

I’m not really one to talk, having recently been part of a six-person works-outing winning quiz combo known as “The FS Club 7”. But readers, many of whom are early music lovers, will surely know that the name is not a numerical claim, but a pun on the early music (i.e. some of it released even before the turn of the 21st century) pop combo, S Club 7.

But it is not my purpose in this piece to “bring it all back” in the matter of S Club 7’s ancient exploits, but rather to assess the wonderful world of Josquin’s Legacy, as sung by The Gesualdo Six.

While Josquin’s mostly late 15th century music formed the core of the concert, there were also pieces by his contemporaries, Jean Mouton & Antoine Brumel, plus several works by lesser known composers who followed a generation or so later.

It was a mixture of sacred music (both new and old testament liturgy) plus several regret/deploration pieces commemorating the death of fellow composers or patrons.

Here is a link to The Gesualdo’s promo vid for the album which this concert was surely (in part) aiming to help promulgate.

Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall concert programme.

The concert was a BBC Lunchtime concert, which, if you are reading this within a month of the broadcast, can still be heard on the BBC Sounds App – here.

The Wigmore Hall also streamed this one, so you can watch and listen here.

This was Janie’s first opportunity to see/hear The Gesualdo Six live and she was much taken with the group.

“The Gesualdo Six: great with singing, not so special when it comes to numbers.”

Not too bad a tag line.

The Mysterious Motet Book of 1539, Siglo De Oro, Wigmore Hall, 8 October 2022

The concert and talk were partly promoting this album – naturally we obliged on the day.

We attended this very tasty lunchtime concert and pre-concert discussion.

The noon-time discussion was between Patrick Allies, the artistic director of Siglo De Oro and Dr Daniel Trocmé-Latter, the academic whose work on the context and musical transcription of this “Mysterious Motet Book of 1539″initiated the project.

I found the information about the development of part books as printing became widespread in the Renaissance and the distinction between Protestant and Catholic liturgical music at the time of the Reformation fascinating.

“Cantiones quinque vocum selectissimae,” CRIM, accessed October 8, 2022, https://ricercar.crim.cesr.univ-tours.fr/items/show/3366

Less convincing, to me, was the “mystery” aspect of the project, the conceit of which is, if I might paraphrase, “why might a publisher such as Peter Schöffer the Younger choose to publish a music book of Latin liturgical songs from Milan…in Strasbourg, which was, by 1539, a strongly Protestant town?”

It is well documented that King Ferdinand of Germany granted Schöffer a specific privilege to publish these works. Further, as Daniel Trocmé-Latter himself states in his book on the Singing of Strasbourg Protestants, Schöffer dedicates the publication to Ferdinand with a glowing dedication listing the King’s many titles and exalting him. It seems reasonable to guess that King Ferdinand wanted Schöffer to publish this work in Strasbourg and that Schöffer might have received some favour or favours from the King for doing so.

Keep King Ferdy onside for goodness sake

I was most excited when I worked out that King Ferdinand I was the great-great-great-great grandson of Philip The Bold, whose musical adventures I had been scouring and talking about only a few weeks ago:

Philip The Bold: Wine, Tennis & Song – A Performance Symposium First Presented At The Real Tennis Society Conference During The World Championships,  Prested Hall, 13 September 2022

Much like his illustrious Burgundian ancestors, Ferdinand seems to have been interested in tennis as well as music. Ferdinand was also evidently impressed by Milanese cultural style in several ways, not just liturgical music. He was also, reputationally, a conciliator between Protestants and the Catholics in his lands.

Still, if the purpose of promoting this music as “a mysterious publication” is as conduit for wonderful concerts and premier recordings of several of the pieces form the motet book…bring it on! It’s a thriller.

Here is a link to the concert programme.

The music in the concert was lovely. Janie and I both loved it. They mixed and matched between motets from that 1539 book and some more familiar, later pieces, e.g. by Byrd and Tallis, by way of contrast and comparison, which worked well musically.

Siglo de Oro don’t put much in the public domain, but the sample below is downloadable from the website plugging the album, so you might as well hear Johannes Lupi: Apparens Christus below before you click through and buy the almum.

Lovely, eh?

Enough rabbit from me – it’s time to eat some dinner and listen to that lovely CD we bought as we left the Wigmore Hall.

A Sojourn To Prested Hall For Play, Talk and Watching Tennis & Stuff, 12 to 14 September 2022

I played some real tennis (& padel), I spoke at the Real Tennis Society Conference, I watched four sets of the World Championship (the middle day) and had a thoroughly good time.

The idea, from my perspective, was hatched in May, while I was playing in the Lowenthal Trophy Tournament at Queen’s.

Finally…Unprecedented Success At Tennis, The Queen’s Club, 11 May & 27 May 2022

Frederika (Freddy) Adam tapped me up (moments before the final I seem to recall) to see if I would produce something vaguely historical for the Real Tennis Society Conference during the World Championship in September.

Only if I can get myself a decent seat for the match that evening and a room at Prested Hall for a couple of nights.

A couple of weeks later, I somewhat idly (more in hope than expectation) checked out the match and room situation. One front row seat had popped back into the pot and so had a room for two nights at Prested Hall. I eagerly grabbed both and resolved to do something for the history conference.

The upshot was an immersive performance piece, which you can read by clicking here or below…

Philip The Bold: Wine, Tennis & Song – A Performance Symposium First Presented At The Real Tennis Society Conference During The World Championships,  Prested Hall, 13 September 2022

The Prested people (both in the tennis club and the Hall) are incredibly helpful. They arranged for me to play real tennis on the Monday afternoon when I arrived and padel on the Wednesday morning before I left. Both were very good games.

I met one or two of my fellow real tennis addicts at dinner in the hotel on the Monday evening, but the fun really started at breakfast on the Tuesday, where I found Freddy and Michael “Mikko” Lindell, one of the other conference presenters. Almost as soon as we started to chat, Mikko asked if he could draw me. Naturally I agreed. When I got back to my room after breakfast, about 30 minutes after that request, the headline picture (above) was sitting in my e-mail inbox.

Here is a link to the conference programme.

During my performance, just prior to playing an instrumental piece of music, I made a quip about suffering from pre-minstrel tension. As soon as I had finished, Mikko presented me with the following picture:

Janie is already working on getting this prized possession framed.

But we were mostly there for the World Championship, in which Camden Riviere was challenging Rob Fahey for the fifth and probably final time (Rob is now an astonishing 54), having toppled Rob in 2016 but somehow Rob had grabbed the crown back in 2018. This challenge, in September 2022, was the delayed March 2020 one.

Before the tennis was a reception, which was a chance to catch up briefly with real tennis friends who had come down just for the evening. After the tennis there was a loud and convivial atmosphere in the Prested bar/bistro – an atmosphere I can only describe as unique in the real tennis world…but then there is only one real tennis club in Essex.

The tennis that Tuesday evening was very exciting…at least it was in the end. The match was poised 2-2 sets after the first day. Camden won the first three sets on Tuesday evening with relative ease and was even 4-0 up in the fourth set of the night, when Rob somehow managed to start turning things around – astonishingly taking that set having saved several set point along the way.

Rather than read my prattle on this, better you read a proper journalist’s account – that of James (Jim) Zug – click here.

Actually James joined me for breakfast briefly the next morning before he flew back to the states and I scurried over to the padel court. It was a good opportunity to chat in person having exchanged e-mails in the past but not really chatted. Several other conferencistas were there at breakfast, which was a chance to swap metaphorical notes.

After padel, I packed and left, stopping off at Lord’s for one last look at county cricket this season – well it would have been rude not to.

On the pavilion/tennis side of the ground, I ran in to a few people who had been at Prested the night before. Then I wandered round to the new Edrich Stand, gracing it with my presence for the first time in glorious autumn sunshine. It was a fitting end to a very enjoyable short trip.

Middlesex trying to bowl out Glamorgan, second dig, in a crucial promotion battle

Guest Contribution: Mark Ellicott’s Response To His Summer 1982 Mix Tape

Mark Ellicott more recently (actually 2016)

In response to my “forty years on” piece about a mix tape Mark made for me in 1982…

Informal Contemporary Music Subsidiary Course At Keele In The Summer Of 1982, Tutor: Mark Ellicott

…which is probably worth reading before reading the following response…

…Mark responded with some fascinating reflections of his own about that music “forty years on”, along with his thoughts on what the follow-up mix tape should have been. I shall try to replicate that “thought-experiment mix tape” within this guest piece.

Ah Ian,

Every one of those tracks still gets a regular airing in my household! For me they have never aged because I’ve never gone through a prolonged period not listening to any of them. Anything by Grace Jones in that early eighties period always brings back memories of six in the morning in Freehold Street, Newcastle in the spring and summer of 1982 after a night at the 141 Club in Hanley  with the likes of Anna Summerskill, Mark Bartholomew, Vince Beasley and Jan Phillips, amongst others. Invariably all of us stoned / tripping and / or speeding. The ‘Nightclubbing’ album just tailor made for the wee small hours after a long night out just as everyone was coming down. It was THE album I most associate with that crazy summer term when I went through that cathartic metamorphosis!

The Grace Jones version of ‘She’s lost control’, originally by Joy Division, on that tape I made you was one of the more eccentric covers I’ve heard. Back in 1994 I had the good fortune to meet the great lady when she was booked to play at The Fridge in Brixton. It was touch and go whether she’d make it onto stage - she was several hours late I recall before the show eventually started - but I did ask what had prompted her to cover such a track by such a band. It transpired she knew nothing about the band, knew nothing about Ian Curtis’s suicide and had merely heard the original track before deciding there and then to do her own version. It ended up as the B side to her single ‘Private Life’. She was rather horrified when she found out about Curtis’s demise and that the song was about epilepsy - a condition he suffered from. 

The Roxy Music track ‘Both ends burning’ (from 1975) is etched into the memory because of their performance on Top of the Pops promoting it. Bryan Ferry dressed up as a GI with an eye patch dancing awkwardly as two heavily made up women, also dressed up in military garb, swung their hips behind him - looking vaguely glassy eyed in the eyeball department.

‘Violence Grows’ by the Fatal Microbes was always being played by John Peel. The singer was 15 year old Honey Bane, a schoolgirl who’d been signed up on the strength of her already provocative stage performances. This was a howl of rage from a time when there really didn’t seem much hope for young people as unemployment skyrocketed. Her indifferent tuneless vocal delivery for whatever reason just resonated. 

‘Atmosphere’ by Joy Division arguably my favourite track released just after Curtis’s death  a fitting tribute to the man’s genius. He was only 23 when he died - just imagine what might have come later on in his career had things been different. I wonder how ‘Blue Monday’ by New Order might have sounded had he gotten his teeth into it. I still recall John Peel announcing his death on air and playing ‘Atmosphere’ and being quite shocked. No one then could have imagined the cult status they would 40 plus years later enjoy. 

‘Typical Girls’ by the Slits just a wonderful piece of pop-punk-reggae by the original riot girls. Ari Up the singer (alas she died of cancer some years ago) was John Lydons (nee Rotten) stepdaughter. John married Ari’s mother Nora, a German heiress, back in the eighties. It’s a track that despite its 43 years of existence still sounds like it could have been recorded in 2022.

Mark then went on to suggest a follow-on mix tape:

Had I made a second tape for you that year it would have undoubtedly included the following. All from that 1982ish period. 

‘My face is on fire’ - Felt
‘Fireworks’ - Siouxsie & the Banshees
‘Temptation’ - New Order
‘How does it feel?’ - Crass
‘Torch’ - Soft Cell
‘The back of love’ - Echo & the Bunnymen 
‘Second skin’ - The Chameleons
‘Persons unknown’ - Poison Girls
‘Hand in glove’ - The Smiths
‘Treason’ - Teardrop Explodes
‘Requiem’ - Killing Joke
‘Dead Pop Stars’ - Altered Images
‘Alice’ - Sisters of Mercy
‘Eat y’self fitter’ - The Fall
‘Painted bird’ - Siouxsie & the Banshees
‘Let’s go to bed’ - The Cure
‘Capers’ - The Birthday Party
‘Nightclubbing’ - Grace Jones
‘The look of love’ - ABC
‘Being boiled’ - Human League
‘Pissing in the river’- Patti Smith
‘Walking on thin ice’ - Yoko Ono

OK, let’s give that mix tape a go. I have really enjoyed listening to these tracks and hope readers enjoy them too. Many thanks, Mark, for your kind note and further selections forty years on.

A Quantum Of Lunchtime Solace With Trio Mediæval At the Wigmore Hall, 4 July 2022

Picture by Tore Sætre, CC BY-SA 4.0

Blooming heck this was a great lunchtime concert. It is well described on the Wigmore Hall site – click here.

The above picture is somewhat deceptive, as only two members of the Trio are permanent members, the singer in the centre of the picture, wonderful though she might be, is Torunn Østrem Ossum, not Jorunn Lovise Husan.

We have seen the former perform with the Trio – click here for my article on that concert.

The latter is, it seems, a singer who lunches, in that she was also the third singer when we last saw Trio Mediæval do a lunchtime concert at Wigmore Hall, some four years ago:

Trio Mediaeval, Wigmore Hall Lunchtime Concert, 17 September 2018

They are supremely talented singers who fill that hall with a wonderful sound and a charming vibe. They sing with smiles on their faces. They make supremely difficult singing look almost effortless. It really was a joy to see them again.

This concert was based on their latest album, Solacium, which is centred around traditional Norwegian and Estonian-Swedish lullabies and hymns. It includes some modern works by Anders Jormin, Andrew Smith and Marianne Reidarsdatter Eriksen, all of which felt very much in keeping with the early music nature of the programme.

It was a BBC Radio 3 lunchtime concert, so if you are reading this article reasonably fresh (i.e. during July 2022) you can hear the whole concert on BBC Sounds – click here.

Beyond that date, I believe you can watch (and hear) the concert from the Wigmore Hall live library. I’m not sure if you need to be a registrant, a member or if it is just available to all-comers. (We are members). Here is the link to the Wigmore Hall vid, where you can spot the back of my head (and Janie’s) in the front row without too much difficulty.

It’s just a shame there were not more people in the hall to enjoy this wonderful music live.

Lunchtime Baroque At Wigmore Hall, Nevermind, 13 June 2022

Janie and I had a very tasty lunch of baroque music at Wigmore Hall, thanks to a young group of talented French musicians known as Nevermind, presumably because they think the name of their ensemble is not important.

More importantly, they introduced us to the compositions of Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729), who wowed The Sun King as a child prodigy and went on to become an eminent composer as well as performer. Along with many other female composers of earlier eras, she’s needed some rediscovering in recent years and by gosh she is worth rediscovering.

Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre by François de Troy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Imagine Corelli in a fantastically light-hearted mood, and he might just have composed a bit like Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, except that she was steeped in the traditions of the French baroque (e.g. Lully) and influenced by the Italian style, rather than upbeat Corelli, who would have presumably been steeped and influenced the other way around.

If you are reading this within a month or so of the concert, you can listen to the whole concert on BBC Sounds, by clicking here. I tried that the other evening and enjoyed the concert all over again.

Or if you want to watch and listen to the concert, you can view it on the Wigmore Hall Site “watch and listen” section by clicking here. I’m not sure whether or not you need to be a member or just subscribed to the e-list or what, but I think you do need a log in of some sort to see this section of the Wigmore Hall site.

In our tradition of running in to people we know, Janie and I ran into Claire Durtnall, whom we have known for decades…

Dinner With “The Back Knack Team”, 20 November 1992

…and who had picked up a last-minute ticket for that concert on the off-chance.

Claire celebrated the chance encounter with a triple-selfie or two – if we are lucky she’ll send one of them in and I’ll add it to this piece…

…update – Claire did indeed send pictures:

Claire, me & Janie taken selfie-style
Claire & me taken regular style by Janie

But this account really should focus on the simply delightful music we heard. Mostly trio sonatas, we were carried to a happy place for an hour in that way only beautiful music can achieve.

Fannying Around With The Castalian Quartet At The Wigmore Hall On Mum’s 100th Birthday, 1 May 2022

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel

When Janie trained with and then joined The Samaritans via Zoom during lockdown, neither of us expected one of the consequences to be a real life visit to the Wigmore Hall Green Room (now known to the cognoscenti as the Jessye Norman Room).

But it turned out that one of Janie’s cohort, Sini Simonen, is not only a good Samaritan but also a virtuoso violinist. When Sini let it slip that she and her quartet, The Castalian String Quartet, were due to appear at the Wigmore Hall in a few month’s time, Janie and I agreed that, if we were available that day, we would go.

As it turned out, “that day” was a coffee morning Mendelssohn concert on a Bank Holiday Sunday – click here for the Wigmore Hall rubric on the concert.

Of course we could go…of course we would go…of course we did go.

The day was 1 May 2022, which which also happened to be the 100th anniversary of my mum’s birth.

Mum would have loved the idea of us going to a concert on her birthday to see Janie’s musician friend/colleague perform. Especially as Sini’s instrument is the violin; the primary family instrument of Mum’s very musical family, explained to some extent in this recent Ogblog piece about the family origins.

Turn It Up To Max & Spit: The Baltic Origins Of My Mother’s (Marcus) Family Revealed

The links in the above piece to the exploits of my mother’s cousin Sid, not least his virtuoso playing of both violin and hand saw, are worth the price of admission alone. OK, there is no price of admission, but the stories are priceless.

I was also reminded of the very last time I went to the concert hall with mum, which was a lunchtime concert at St John’s Smith Square in 2011 – a groupie circumstance of mum’s making, to see mum’s unlikely young friend, the pianist Karim Said:

Charlotte Bonneton & Karim Said, St John’s Smith Square, 29 September 2011

I hadn’t done “the Green Room thing” since then.

Anyway…

…the Wigmore Hall concert on 1 May 2022 was an all Mendelssohn string quartet affair, but with a twist: we first heard Fanny Mendelssohn’s sole String Quartet, followed by Felix Mendelssohn’s 6th String Quartet.

Both were a very enjoyable listen – Fanny’s piece much lighter and easier on the Sunday morning ear than Felix’s. Felix was in sombre mood when he wrote his 6th, dedicated to his recently deceased and beloved sister Fanny – possibly also anticipating his own impending doom – he died soon after completing the work.

Impending doom? Felix portrait c1846

The concert was very well patronised – if not a complete sell out then surely the place was near to full. The performances were, deservedly, extremely well received by the Sunday morning audience.

Janie and I asked the elderly gentleman sitting next to us if he had enjoyed the concert.

Yes indeed. I prefer Fanny.

On balance, so did Janie and I.

Sini had said to Janie several times that we simply must show our faces in the Green Room after the concert, so it would have been rude to partake of the traditional Wigmore Hall sherry rather than visit the artistes in that hallowed room.

There were plenty of other groupies around in The Jessye Norman Room, but Sini greeted us warmly and we chatted for a while.

Before setting off for The Wig, I had discovered that the Castalian String Quartet had released an album this week, Between Two Worlds On Delphian…

…which was already picking up rave reviews, such as this one in The Scotsman – click here.

I also couldn’t help but notice that the album includes a couple of arrangements of Renaissance pieces – one by Orlande de Lassus and one by John Dowland, as well as a Beethoven late Quartet and a modern quartet by Thomas Adès.

Sini, with characteristic modesty, mentioned in passing that she has arranged the Renaissance pieces as an experiment. She also kindly pressed a copy of the Between Two Worlds CD into my hand as we said goodbye to her.

Following an enjoyable stroll around Fitzrovia and Marylebone, Janie and I listened to the album as soon as we got home. We can both thoroughly recommend it; in particular the beautiful sound of the Renaissance piece arrangements. Choral works of that era were often arranged for consorts of viols, of course; the string quartet being the direct progeny of the viol quartet.

It was an enjoyable day and such a fitting way to remember my mum’s 100th anniversary.

But there was one more coincidence to come – as I read the programme notes to the Between two Worlds album. The viola player on the album was not Ruth Gibson (whom we saw at Wigmore Hall) but Charlotte Bonneton. Wasn’t Charlotte Bonneton the young musician mum and I saw along with Karim Said that very last time mum went to a concert?

Yes indeed – it turns out Charlotte was The Castalian String Quartet’s viola player until quite recently – for some 10 years – perhaps already with the group when we saw her perform with Karim Said in September 2011. Perhaps Sini and/or some of the other Castalians were even there to support Charlotte that day.

I know the classical music world isn’t big – but it isn’t that small either.

Here’s to the Castalian String Quartet. You can read more about them through the link here and below.

Biographies

Christ On This Cross: A Meditation On The Crucifixion, The Cardinall’s Musick, Wigmore Hall, 11 April 2022

This was our first concert experience of live music since before the start of the Covid pandemic.

There’s nothing like a bit of “Lamentations of Jeremiah” and “Stabat Mater” to cheer us up in a time of pandemic and war.

Actually Janie and I are big fans of The Cardinall’s Musick. Also, we thought that one hour concerts would be a good way of getting back on the bike in terms of concert going – this is the first of a few we are going to see this spring season.

Here is a link to the programme we saw, which was a delicious mixture of Renaissance music suitable for the start of Holy Week.

Mostly familiar stuff, such as Byrd, Victoria, Tallis and Palestrina, plus some rarer material such as the Lamentations of Jeremiah by Gerónimo Gonzales – a composer so obscure that even Andrew Carwood couldn’t find him in the Grove or on Wikipedia.

But that just means that Andrew didn’t look hard enough – there are about 100 listings for Gerónimo Gonzales on Facebook. Our 17th century composer geezer is bound to be one of those – no?

The concert was broadcast on Radio 3 as a lunchtime concert and also was streamed, so you can watch it all on Vimeo if you wish – embedded below.

You can even, if you look very closely indeed, grab a glimpse of Ged & Daisy at the very front on the right hand side – my bald patch glistening next to Daisy’s mop of reddish hair.

We enjoyed a snack lunch at Euphorium in St Christopher’s Place, then went back to the flat for a while before venturing into Piccadilly/St James’s to Boodle’s.

Last year I gave an on-line talk for that club, under the auspices of Oliver Wise…

Playing The Odds: A Real Tennis History, Yours Truly In Conversation With Oliver Wise, Boodle’s On-Line Event, 21 April 2021

…who told me at that time that he would like to host us for dinner at Boodle’s. As with so many things in this time of Covid, it took quite a while to find a suitable and allowable date.

It was worth the wait – we had a delightful evening with Oliver, Sarah, Julian Dent (another fellow realist and distant cousin to Oliver) and Julian’s wife Kelly. Great grub too.

A fine end to a really lovely day off, with live concert music again, at last!