In truth, not all of the music pleased us, but most of it did and it was fascinating to watch Evelyn Glennie play so many different percussive instruments at such close quarters.
Here is a little vid of her playing the Vivaldi Concerto she played us that night – albeit from a different occasion and with a bit more of an ensemble in the vid:
We also booked the late night concert the same night – I seem to recall we arranged for a rather tasty platter of cold compilations at The Wig between the gigs. Yum.
The late night concert, which was served up in the restaurant, was less to our taste – click here or below – but never mind:
But actually I was brought up with some early Baroque madrigals ringing in my ears – a reel-to-reel recording, made by my father, from the radio, of Monteverdi’s Madrigals of Love and War.
The extraordinary BBC genome Project allows me to find the concert in question so easily it is almost embarrassingly easy – it was broadcast on 4 June 1974 at 21:50 – click here. I wouldn’t have heard the recording on that day – clearly, but dad probably played it to me pretty soon afterwards and I remember listening to it a lot that summer. The concert had originally taken place in October 1973 – a few weeks after I started secondary school.
But I digress…
…except to say that I had never heard any Madrigals of Love and War live and was keen to hear some – hence my particular desire to book this concert.
Thursday evening is not (and in those days certainly was not) Janie’s favourite night to go to a concert. Nor is Monteverdi one of her favourites.
This concert conformed Janie’s view that Monteverdi is not really for her. All too noisy and the male singing is a bit shouty, she claims. I sort-of know what she means, without agreeing with the conclusion.
Janie did enjoy some of the instrumental music, though…
…here is a vid of some other folk playing the opening number we heard that evening – Falconieri’s lovely Ciaconna in G major:
This was an opportunity to hear two genres of Indian music in one concert. I don’t think that we’d seen Amjad Ali Khan before this concert – although I had heard my father’s recordings of him playing with Ravi Shankar.
This concert was part of his residency at the Wigmore Hall, which I think was a new idea back then.
The first half of the concert was singing in the Carnatic (Southern Indian) tradition. This was interesting but not as relaxing and delightful to our ears as the sarod music performed by Amjad Ali Khan himself in the second half.
For some reason the Wigmore Hall on-line stub for this concert is incomplete and has errors in it (at the time of writing – February 20180 – here is the link anyway.
So I have uploaded the information sheet, which I am sure is accurate:
We’d seen them perform before and had even previously seen one of their concerts at which Andrew Carwood explained the sectarian political backdrop to the music in those Tudor times…
…it must have been like the politics of Brexit but with capital punishment in place of the earhole bashing.
No wonder these Tudor composers took solus in lamentations and such Jeremiad material.
As usual with such concerts, it was fascinating to hear the contrast between the lesser and the better known composers; Tallis and especially Byrd being the better known and better represented composers on the night. The better known fellows deserve their status in my view; certainly for this type of music.
At a very geeky level this is an exciting Wigmore Hall concert, because this was our first concert of the 2011-2012 season, which was the first season that Wigmore Hall archived fully on-line.
In truth, Brad Mehldau concerts tend to be a bit geeky anyway. The fellow has so many influences and blends so many styles in with his jazz piano, the concert is almost like a music quiz.
Back then, I was less fascinated by the mandolin than I am now at the time of writing (January 2018)…
…but I have long been intrigued by the instrument and it was very interesting to hear it used as a jazz pairing with Brad’s inimitable jazz piano style.
I think technically Brad was no longer the curator of the Wigmore Hall jazz seasons by the time this concert came around, although it might have been, technically, the tail end of his 2010/2011 commitment to the venue.
I seem to recall that I enjoyed this concert more than Janie did…
…I also seem to recall that we both felt that we had “done” Brad Mehldau now, this being the third of his we had been to, unless the concert works or partner musicians were the main attraction for us…
…what could be a more fitting conclusion than a late night concert at the Wigmore Hall?
Back then, I used to describe Lord’s and the Wigmore Hall as the last two places on the planet where stewards refer to me as “young man”.
Now (as I write in late 2017) I’m afraid that not even the stewards at those two places call me “young man” any more.
But I digress.
This was a lovely short concert of Paco Peña and friends making glorious music together.
I’m pretty sure that Janie picked me up and whisked me back to Sandall Close after the concert – this was our penultimate weekend there. Another story.
We had the joy, honour and privilege to see the marvellous Hespèrion XXI that spring, little knowing that it was to be one of the last few concerts Montserrat Figueras was able to give.
The concert was entitled Mare Nostrum, a celebration of early music cross-fertilisation between eastern and western traditions of music, spanning from Byzantium to Al-Andalus and Sephardic traditions of music.
Available for download by clicking the image or through all major outlets
I also remember being slightly irritated on the night that none of the music we heard was available to buy on CD, as the relevant music was to be on a “forthcoming” CD. I would have been more sympathetic had I known that Montserrat Figueras was struggling with her health at that time.
I satisfied my crazy craving for Hespèrion XXI music at the time by procuring:
I resolved to seek out the Mare Nostrum album when it came out, but of course clean forgot about it and then went through a phase of not buying music, because I had so many CDs.
But today (29 December 2017), recalling how wonderful that 2011 concert experience was and how moving we had found this east-west fusion early music, I naturally could not resist the temptation to download the Mare Nostrum album. I’m so glad I did.
Janie and I have been thoroughly enjoying listening to the music and recalling that very special concert from 2011.
We have seen Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI several times since. We always enjoy those concerts, but feel very lucky to have experienced their live sound while Montserrat Figueras was still on the scene.
I love a bit of Corelli under almost any circumstances, but these adaptations of Op 5 concertos for the recorder have an especially soulful and melancholy timbre.
In the absence of Janie, I snapped up one of the CDs during the interval, as I was so sure she’d love the sound, which she did. We still both listen to this recording rather a lot. Indeed we are listening to it as I type.
Also available as a download now, from Amazon (click the pic) or elsewhere
It isn’t all that often that book to go to the Wigmore Hall on my own. But I really liked the look of this concert and Janie really didn’t fancy a special trip into town on a Monday evening, even for the Wigmore Hall. She was, at that time, normally still working long Monday clinics at her place.
The diary suggests I had worked a long day myself that day, ending up at Lord’s late afternoon, perhaps for a meeting about the Middlesex business plan. I’ll guess that it was the day of the AGM and that I therefore skived the Middlesex AGM that year for this concert.
What dedication to the early music cause and oh boy was it worth it.
The upshot of Janie missing out on this one was probably, in the longer term, good news. Since then, if I say that I shall nevertheless go alone to a concert that I really fancy, Janie usually then relents and agrees to come with me.
We fancied this concert, which melded Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with Piazolla’s Four Seasons Of Buenos Aires.
So despite its scheduling in the Sunday coffee morning slot, which throws our tennis plans awry, we gave it a try.
A different, wrinkly audience on a Sunday morning. Some perhaps as keen on the gratis coffee (or a glass of sherry if you prefer) as the music.
The music was performed serviceably (I think we’ve heard the Piazolla Seasons done with more flare since) and we were glad to have experienced the Wiggy Coffee morning thing…but it isn’t really our type of gig.
