We treated the Mainelli family to this concert. Xenia was learning the harp at school at that time.
In any case, it looked like a lovely concert, which indeed it was.
Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall resource for this concert. For some reason the on-line resource says that the first piece was a Handel arrangement – I’m pretty sure it was the Concerto in D minor by Allesandro Marcello, as stated in the programme.
We met and ate in the Wigmore Hall restaurant before the performance – I think possibly taking desert/coffee/drinks at our table during the interval as well.
To get a feel for what this concert sounded like, here is a video of Xavier de Maistre performing Recuerdos de la Alhambra, by Francisco Tárrega, which I recall was a bit of a highlight at our concert.
I think everyone in our party had a jolly good time – the eating, drinking, chatting and of course the music.
No doubt about it – Bobbie joined me for this one. She was keen to see the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under the auspices of the great Czech conductor Libor Pešek. I was keen to see how he would deal with one of my favourite works, Smetana’s Má Vlast.
Strangely, although the national papers promoted this concert widely in advance, none chose to review it by the looks of it. Typical.
Here’s one of the sea interludes performed by the very outfit we saw:
Here’s Stephen Hough with the BBC Symphony from the first night of the Proms 2013 with the Rachmaninov Paganini:
Here’s Libor Pesek and The Royal Liverpool mob playing their four movements of Ma Vlast in Libor Prom order:
Alternatively, if you want to hear that recording in full in Smetana sequence, I have made it available on this playlist – click here. Do not be put off if you see a seemingly erased link – you can hear it whether or not you have a YouTube Music account – you just get adverts of you don’t.
In truth I couldn’t bring to mind Skocná – Dance of the Comedians, but James Levine & the Vienna lot brought it all back to me:
I’m really not at all sure that Entry of the Gladiators belonged with this concert, but that’s what they did. The piece was originally written as a serious piece of military marching music, although how anyone with that moustache composing that piece expected to be taken seriously, even back then, I cannot imagine.
On reflection, I think the use of that piece as a second encore was a mistake. When Libor Pesek suggested that they play a second encore, one of the scouse musicians loudly expressed his discontent with the traditional local expletive, but unfortunately Pesek thought the fellow said:
