Excellent concert, this. Sonnerie was a superb but fluid ensemble, led by the indomitable Monica Huggett.
On this occasion they comprised Monica Huggett, Gary Cooper, Wilbert Hazelzet, Pamela Thorby, Catherine Latham, Katherine McGillivray, Catherine Martin, Emilia Benjamin, Alison McGillivray and Sarah Groser.
Here is the playlist from the gig:
Jean-Philippe Rameau – Pieces de clavecin en concerts No 3 in A major
Georg Philipp Telemann – Concerto for Flute, Oboe d’amore, Viola d’amore, Strings and Continuo in E major
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi – Concerto for Violin, Strings and Continuo in D major (“Il Grosso Mogul”) RV208
Georg Philipp Telemann – Concerto for Flute, recorder, Strings and Continuo in E minor
Johann Sebastian Bach – Sonata No 1 for Violin and Harpsicord in B minor BWV 1014
Johann Sebastian Bach – Concerto for Harpsicord, 2 Recorders, Strings and Continuo in F major BWV 1057
Here is a clip from an earlier but lovely recording of the E major Telemann piece, which includes Monica Huggett with the Academy of Ancient Music
While here is a lovely video of Ensemble Odyssee playing the Bach concerto we heard that evening:
We both went straight from work and both had early starts the next morning, so I guess we supped light at Sandall Close after the gig.
The log reminds me that we ran into Rob Pay, Susan Pay & Jay Jaffe at that show. In those days, Rob & Susan lived very near to my place, but my place was a building site that autumn and I was staying with Janie in Ealing at that time.
As for the play, I recall that Mike Alfred’s Method & Madness project was a bit Complicité-like, without quite the oomph (and certainly not the longevity) of Complicité.
The piece was basically adaptations (by Mike Alfreds) of a few Isaac Basevis Singer short stories.
Nick Curtis in The Standard was not very impressed:
The diary suggests that it was a long/late-finishing show, so I suspect that we picked up shawarmas after this show on the way home. The diary also tells me that we went to Gary [Davison]’s birthday lunch the next day. The diary is silent on where we went but in those days Gary tended to hold that event at Lemonia in Primrose Hill.
A memorable evening at the Proms, just a few days after our previous memorable visit. A rare midweek booking for us, but the promise of Evgeny Kissin, Zubin Mehta and the Bavarian State Orchestra was too tempting to miss.
Again we had The Duchess (Janie’s mum) with us.
The programme was two big pieces:
Frédéric Chopin – Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor
Anton Bruckner – Symphony No. 8 in C minor (1890 version, ed. Nowak)
I hadn’t seen Evgeny Kissin before but had heard about him. Janie thought he was excessively flamboyant – a complaint she has about many star pianists.
Anyway, here is a video of Mehta conducting Kissin performing an extract from this piece some years later – this time with the Israel Philharmonic rather than the Bavarian State Orchestra:
The Duchess thought Kissin’s cadenzas were absolutely wonderful but she thought him “rude” or “self-centred” doing encores ahead of the interval on a night with such a long programme. Takes one to know one.
The encores were Chopin’s Polonaise in A flat major and Scherzo in B flat minor, seeing as you asked…
…OK, you didn’t ask. But my mum loved that Polonaise and she would have got all excited about the young Evgeny Kissin had she been there and heard him play it a bit like this:
In truth, we did hear some people saying that they would have to leave before the second half, because they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get home, which was a real shame for those people.
While stretching our legs during the interval, we ran into my cousins, Angela and John Kessler, who were very keen on Kissin and also eagerly looking forward to seeing Zubin Mehta and the Bavarians wrestle with Anton Bruckner for 80 minutes or so after the interval.
The Duchess seemed most displeased that we had run into some people that we knew, preventing her from being the centre of attention for five minutes or so.
The Bruckner was certainly worth the wait. I had seen this symphony performed several times before but sense that this evening was the best performance I have seen.
Here is an extract of Mehta conducting the Bruckner Symphony, but on this occasion with the Berlin Philharmonic rather than the Bavarian State Orchestra.
Returning to our memorable evening, here is Erica Jeal’s review of that evening from The Guardian. Good to see Kissin and Mehta getting three stars while Whitney Houston only got two.
While Michael Kennedy in the Sunday Telegraph seemed less sure about Zubin Mehta than we were, comparing him, perhaps unfavourably, with Bernard Haitink and Günter Wand. I’m a lucky fellow, as I have seen all three of them conduct Bruckner 8.
Knowing that the concert would finish late and that we both had an early start the next day, I sense that we did not go out to dinner after this one. Janie had probably prepared some cold compilations for us to munch, with a glass of wine, when we got home.
Janie also very sensibly had arranged for Jill Wooton to come and give us both a massage at home on the Friday evening. Two nights out with The Duchess in five days, with plenty of work in between, we sure both would have needed the massages and sure both had earned them.
Diary says that we went to Andrea’s BBQ party on the Saturday evening (a rather good one at her house in Shepherd’s Bush, if I remember correctly) and then to Mum & Dad’s for tea on the Sunday. We didn’t hang about back then.
Another quirky and memorable concert at The Proms. We took The Duchess Of Castlebar (Janie’s mum) with us to this one, as we thought she would like the Piazzolla. Possibly she did. You didn’t tend to get positive feedback from the Duchess back then and nothing has changed in 25 years, as I write in 2024.
Janie and I were fascinated by this concert. Janie was already keen on Piazzolla and this helped cement that interest.
Here’s what we heard:
Giya Kancheli – V & V
Arvo Pärt – Tabula rasa
Antonio Vivaldi – The Four Seasons, No. 1 in E Major, RV 269
Astor Piazzoll – Cuatro estaciones porteñas, Verano porteño
Antonio Vivaldi – The Four Seasons, No. 2 in G minor, RV 315
Astor Piazzolla – Cuatro estaciones porteñas, Otoño porteño
Antonio Vivaldi – The Four Seasons, No. 3 in F Major, RV 293
Astor Piazzolla – Cuatro estaciones porteñas, Invierno porteño
Antonio Vivaldi – The Four Seasons, No. 4 in F minor, RV 297
Astor Piazzolla – Cuatro estaciones porteñas, Primavera porteña
Peter Heidrich – Variations on ‘Happy Birthday’
Alexander Bakshi – The Unanswered Call
Fiona Maddocks briefly wrote up the concert in The Observer:
Everyone who was anyone dined at Nobu back then…and so did we. I recall the meal being fabulous and I also realise that it was the first (but far from the last) time I tasted black cod in miso sauce. Exquisite.
Lammas – returning to the scene some years later
Back then we played tennis at Lammas Park Tennis Courts every weekend – much as we now play at Boston Manor. It was run by a chap named Larry and his belle, whose name escapes me. When things went awry between those two (not long after this party) things went rapidly downhill at Lammas Park until we had long since escaped and then the place got taken over by Will To Win (or initially one of its predecessors).
Anyway, this bank holiday party was billed as “party – bring wine”. Which we did. It was informal and fun I’m sure.
This was a super way to kick off a bank holiday weekend. Janie and I had taken the day off work. No sign in the diaries of us eating out – perhaps we ate at Sandall Close and then jumped in the car to go to Kensington.
Interesting concert – Janie is partial to a bit of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, so that would have been the clincher. The other three pieces were rare items, all of which were getting their Proms premier that night.
Francesco Durante – Concerto No. 4 in E minor
Antonio Vivaldi – Filiae maestae Jerusalem, RV 638
Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer – Concerto No. 5 in F minor
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi – Stabat mater
Here’s a beautiful recording of Andreas Scholl singing the Vivaldi piece (with a different orchestra), embedded from Andreas Scholl’s YouTube Channel:
I cannot find a review of the concert we heard, but I can find a most interesting preview in The Telegraph, including an interview with the Scholl siblings:
As Andreas himself says, the Royal Albert Hall is far from perfect acoustically for baroque music, but it does have a unique atmosphere of its own. This concert was a good one.
Everything that needs to be said about this day at The Oval has been described beautifully by Daisy (aka Janie) on the King Cricket website, published a short while after the event (18 February 2025).
If anything ever befalls the King Cricket site, you can read that report here.
My only quibble with Daisy’s piece is her opening line – “I had never been to a professional cricket match before” – as I considered the world cup match, Zimbabwe v Australia, at Lord’s, a professional match:
No doubt Daisy will try to blame me for feeding her a duff line, but I don’t suppose anyone who knows about anything will expect me to take that sort of blow on the chin.
Just in case anyone out there wants to know what actually happened cricket-wise in the England v New Zealand test at Lord’s, click here to read all about it.
…I discover in Daisy’s diary, unquestionably in my handwriting…
Move Geddy To Country Quarters
(Ealing)…
..immediately after, in Daisy’s own writing, “10:00 Shola tennis”.
We were having a bit of tuition from Shola that summer at Lammas Park. This paid dividends for us in ways we would never have expected, when the Lammas Park set up went tits-up a few months later and Shola helped us to find “refugee status” at the then yet to be refurbished Boston Manor courts, where we play to this day (25 years later).
But I digress.
Move Geddy to country quarters was a temporary measure. I had bought the Clanricarde Gardens flat that summer and arranged for the very talented (but ultimately volatile) Gavin to refurbish the flat for me.
This was to be a bit of a tester for me and Janie. We’d been going out together for seven years by then. Could we live with each other for six weeks. I mean, it was only going to be for six weeks…
…but naturally those six weeks turned into four months…
In truth I remember little about this play/production. I logged it without comment, which doesn’t help.
Super cast and crew. Stephen Moore, Charlotte Cornwell, Gemma Jones and David Horovitch, directed by Robin Lefevre.
John Gross in The Sunday Telegraph gave it a modest review, which doesn’t help the memory much, 25 years later, other than making me feel better about the fact that I remember so little about it:
My diary reminds me that I went to a lunchtime party at Theodore Goddard’s offices (at the invitation of Graham Stedman) to witness the total solar eclipse, which the celestial bodies had obviously arranged to honour my father’s 80th birthday.
I think I made my way to Woodfield Avenue by public transport from that party, while Janie brought the car having spent the earlier part of the day working. I’ll rephrase that: I spent the earlier part of the day working by dint of being “looked after” by our company lawyers, while Janie had a more regular working morning in the company of several pairs of feet.
In those days, Janie obviously still thought of crossing the river to visit my parents as a major expedition beyond her normal boundaries. Her appointment diary entry reads:
3.00 pm – leave London for Peter’s party.
…in Streatham, which, apparently, is not in London. Anyway…
…the party went swimmingly well.
I’m struggling to remember who was there and we only have a handful of photos from that party, which were in “Mum’s Photo Box”, identifying only a few of the guests.
Pam and Michael Harris were there, as evidenced pictorially. The neighbours were there, in the form of Eardley and Adrienne Dadonka, plus John & Lily Hogan. Peter Harris (no relation) from next door confirms that he was away, unfortunately. Norman and Marjorie Levinson were there, the pictures prove. I remember Lionel and Dina Aarons being there. I’m sure that Stanley and Doreen Benjamin would have been there if around, as would Malcolm and Delia Cedar, John & Angela Kessler (my cousin, Dad’s niece), Len and Jacquie Briegal (cousins and close friends from Mum’s side), plus Leatrice Levene (Arnold had recently died back then). But I have a feeling quite a lot of “the usual suspects” were away.
I think there were about 20 people there all in all. The size of the crowd didn’t matter – Dad was no Trump (a little August 2024 topical joke there, as I write 25 years after Dad’s event). Dad had a great time as evidenced by the couple of photos I have inherited. I wonder who took them? They are the only pictures I have of the Woodfield Avenue living room from that angle, pretty much as it looked for most of mum’s life and nearly half of Dad’s.
I’m so glad that we did throw the party Dad wanted on that auspicious day. Dad wasn’t really a party person, but most of the time he did know how to have fun.
I know who took this picture of Dad: Me. August Bank Holiday Weekend, 1977.
