Imitations: Lawrence Power & Sergio Bucheli At The Wigmore Hall, Plus Other Activities, 24 April 2023

The theme of this rather wonderful BBC Lunchtime Concert at Wigmore Hall was imitations. All of the pieces had themes within them in which the music imitates some sort of natural sound.

Janie and I thought this was an excellent and very interesting concert. We very nearly missed it, as I, in an extremely rare omission, forgot to write this Wigmore Hall date in our diaries when I booked this back in February. It was only because there was a small change to the programme that I was alerted to my omission and fortunately we were both able still to make the date.

Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall stub for the concert, which lists the pieces, most of which were baroque period but a few of which were modern imitations. If that fails, the pdf programme can be found here.

The headline picture is sort-of an imitation too – that painting by Jan Voorhout was once thought to be Dieterich Buxtehude, the composer of the first piece we heard, but is now believed simply to be a domestic music scene of that baroque period.

The Wigmore Hall concert was streamed live and the stream remains available for three months after the performance – if you have reached this Ogblog in time click here to see and hear the concert.

Alternatively, if you are a podcastista and prefer to listen on BBC Sounds, click here – this link good for 30 days after the broadcast.

If you just fancy one little listen to some Baroque imitation, then the third movement of this sonata by Johann Paul von Westhoff, which we heard, should thrill your ears.

Continuing the theme of imitation, I suppose I spent the day “imitating” a young man. I have said in recent years that there are now only three places left where people sometimes call me “young man” without irony: Wigmore Hall, Lord’s and Gresham Society. Today I enjoyed all three.

After Wigmore Hall, I went on to lord’s for a cracking game of real tennis doubles.

Then on to the National Liberal Club for the Gresham Society AGM and dinner. For reasons known only to him (and in a style only Tim could muster), Professor Connell invited me to sit at the top table:

Would you care to join us on the top table tomorrow night?

Everyone else has refused and it will look a bit odd if there is no-one on it.

It would have been hard to refuse such a courteous request.

Tim Connell promised to keep the formal AGM bit to seven minutes but those around me suggested that he strayed into the 10-15 minutes zone, as usual.

Worse yet, despite spending the day in all three places where I am still occasionally addressed as “young man”, no-one had done so that day and no-one did so that evening.

Still, I chatted with lots of interesting people and enjoyed a good dinner.