Tag: Wigmore Hall

Middlesex v Essex T20, Lord’s, Followed By Artemis Quartet, Wigmore Hall Lates, 26 June 2009

I often say that there are only two places remaining on earth where staff and stewards still call me “young man”: Lord’s and the Wigmore Hall.

So what better places to celebrate Janie’s birthday than both of those august institutions?

We’d probably booked the Wigmore Hall late night concert before we knew/realised that Middlesex were to play Essex in the T20 tournament at Lord’s that evening. Low marks to the cricket authorities for demographic matching for scheduling that fixture at that venue that night, but they probably won’t make that mistake again in a hurry.

Anyway, Charley “The Gent” Malloy was keen to see that fixture and suggested (once he knew it was Janie’s birthday and that we had a later evening engagement at “The Wig”), that we make that match a couples outing,  with Dot (Mrs Malloy) up for the idea of a T20 game and a picnic at Lord’s. So that’s what we did.

Cricket

Chas and Dot were able to get to Lord’s early, so they established a good spot at the front of the Tavern Stand for us. Their hopes and expectations for the match (as Essex supporters) were much higher than ours as Middlesex supporters. Essex had been doing well in the tournament that year, whereas Middlesex, despite being champions, had been consistently poor. So much so, I had written a scathing “futurology” MTWD match report of the Hampshire away match earlier in the week, before that match even took place.

But of course, as fate would have it, Middlesex played a rare decent match and spoiled Chas and Dot’s fun a bit:

Here is a link to the scorecard.

But it clearly only spoiled their fun a bit, as Chas said in a note the following Monday:

That was a super evening last Friday at Lords with all of us there; it was an absolute delight, although I suspect that the loss by Essex cost them dearly!

Music

The Wigmore Late concert was a real treat for Janie; she loves a bit of Piazzolla and this was a concert full of the stuff.

Here is a link to an interesting article from The Telegraph explaining why this quartet likes playing Piazzolla.

Dying for a Piazzolla?

It was a lovely concert.

It had been a long evening; I recall us going back to the flat feeling very tired but also very happy.

Calefax, Wigmore Hall Lunchtime Concert, 22 June 2009

After all the excitement of the cricket World Twenty20 finals yesterday,  we’d booked a day off the following day and a lunchtime concert at “The Wig”.

Calefax, the Dutch reed quintet, performing their (Raaf Hekkema’s) arrangement of the Goldberg Variations.

The concert was lovely. Different, but lovely.

It was a BBC Radio 3 lunchtime concert – not currently available on iPlayer at the time of writing but you never know unless you click here.

Still, if you want to hear a snippet, you need look no further than the Quodlibet below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpw1kb0KrGQ

Brad Mehldau, Wigmore Hall, 9 April 2009

Janie and I had encouraged the Wigmore Hall to bring in more jazz, so we felt almost duty bound to attend the first gig by a new curator of a jazz season, Brad Mehldau.

Even on an awkward Thursday evening.

Highly acclaimed, is Brad, and highly accomplished too.

This concert was Brad solo playing the piano – not as much to our taste as small ensembles. Perhaps not totally our style of jazz either, although we left the Wigmore Hall very much looking forward to seeing Brad and the rest of his trio in the autumn.

 

Famous Castrati Arias For Senesino And His Rivals, Wigmore Hall, 27 March 2009

Say what you like about Daisy, but she does like a nice bit of castrati.

So we made a second visit to the Wigmore Hall that month (a busy start there in 2009 generally in fact) to see this lovely concert, with Daniel Taylor providing the counter-tenor equivalent of castrati singing and Rachel Brown providing beautiful flute and recorder performances.

I found an excellent review by Robert Hugill – click here – which says plenty, including even an account of the encore.

Here’s what we saw:

Xuefei Yang, Wigmore Hall, 6 February 2009

Even by our enthusiastic standards, three visits to the Wigmore Hall within three weeks is going some.

Xuefei Yang is a superb guitarist, though and this was a very interesting programme:

A real mixture of stuff.

We really liked all of it. And we really liked Xuefei Yang too.

This concert was a very relaxing end to (by the looks of it) a pretty full-on working week.

Fretwork & Clare Wilkinson, Wigmore Hall, 1 February 2009

Just a couple of weekends after our previous visit, another early music outing to the Wigmore Hall.

Rather a different feel, this one, as the conceit of the concert was to mix early music with some contemporary compositions influenced by those earlier periods.

Central to the concert was Purcell, whose 350th birthday was that year and who therefore featured a lot in 2009 concert programmes.

Here is the full listing for this 1 February gig:

In truth, Janie and I got a lot more out of the early music than the contemporary stuff, although I always enjoy Arvo Pärt more than I expect and the Shostakovich was interesting too.

But Purcell was the star of the show, as was Clare Wilkinson, who specialises in singing this Renaissance and Baroque stuff; often with Fretwork.

Lovely stuff, it was, on a Sunday night.

Emmanuel Pahud, Trevor Pinnock & Jonathan Manson, Wigmore Hall, 17 January 2009

A very beautiful, flute-based, baroque concert. What more could one ask for at the start of a new year – our first concert of 2009?

All three are excellent musicians and they played beautifully individually and together.

This is what they played:

We went home very happy – I suspect with some Ranoush shawarmas in our hands.

Kenny Werner & Martin Speake Quartet, London Jazz Festival, Wigmore Hall, 23 November 2008

We have been enthusiasts of Jazz at the Wigmore Hall ever since we saw the Tord Gustavsen Trio at “The Wig” as part of the London Jazz Festival a few years earlier.

This Kenny Warner and Martin Speake concert was very good, although (to our taste) not quite as suited to the Wigmore Hall as the smaller, tighter sound of ensembles such as Tord Gustvsen’s.

But what do we know?

In this excellent review from Jazzwise Magazine – click here – Martin Speake himself says:

‘Even the handclaps sound good in this room’

It does thrill us to witness, so often, performers clearly in awe of the venue and so delighted to be able to play there. It makes us realise how lucky we are to live so close to the place, to be friends of it and to attend so regularly. As I write this note (10 April 2017) I am looking forward to a visit to the Wig this very evening…but for early music, not jazz this time.

Returning to the Kenny Warner and Martin Speake – we actually got the latter in the first half and the former in the second half.

We enjoyed both – I got more out of the Kenny Warner which had a Dixieland sound to it which pleases me more than it pleases Janie.

Still, a lovely way to spend a Sunday evening, especially when you have booked the day off work Monday.

Fretwork, Birds on Fire: Jewish music for viols, Wigmore Hall, 14 September 2008

Janie and I like a bit of viol music.

The Birds On Fire page of Fretwork’s own site – click here – sets out the whole concert and indeed details of the CD album they brought out in 2008, a few months before this performance.

Here are some reviews of the album from the Fretwork site.

The story of Jewish composers and musicians in the Tudor period is a fascinating one. In theory they were banned from England at that time. In practice, blind eyes were turned when the Tudor court wanted some of the best musicians in Europe to pop in.

In truth, the music was not, to our ears, the most pleasing Tudor period viol music we’d heard. Fretwork are and as always were top notch on this evening, but the modern Orlando Gough work inspired by the story and indeed some of the material, especially the songs, were not so much to our taste.

Still, it was beautiful and interesting and we were very glad we’d booked this concert.

Janie and I had booked the next day (Monday) off. My diary suggests that we simply used that day to sort out stuff and do our own thing. But whatever the plan, we do enjoy a Sunday evening concert that much more when we know we don’t have to work the next day.

Writing this Ogblog piece made me realise that I don’t have any Fretwork in my collection at all. I put that right, but not with Birds On Fire…

…I’ve ordered this one instead

Copenhagen Saxophone Quartet, Italian Baroque Plus, Wigmore Hall, 19 July 2008

Janie likes a bit of sax. So a quartet of saxophonists playing Italian Baroque at the Wigmore hall seemed right up our street.

At the time of writing, I have had a more recent sax quartet experience – click here – having retained only a vague memory of having seen a sax quartet before. This Copenhagen Saxophone Quartet experience was it.

Judging from their website activities page – click here – this appearance at the Wigmore Hall might have been the end of the story for this troupe, even if at the time of booking it might have seemed like a big break near their beginning.

The concert does have an instant encore listing, though, which I am delighted to link here, although (at the time of writing) I am the only person to confess to having been at the concert. I think there were quite a few of us in, but perhaps not the packed Saturday night the Wig and the quartet might have hoped for.

Which is all a shame, as they were rather good, as was their interesting choice of music. I remember them describing their instruments and the pieces they were playing rather well.

I seem to recall that the baroque pieces did more for us than the modern ones. I also recall feeling that saxophone might not be the ideal instrument for baroque music – all sentiments that returned to me when I saw the Ferio Quartet at SJSS in December 2016 – click here.

Anyway, this concert got us all relaxed and suitably prepared for the following day’s battle playing cricket at Bentley.