We are just catching up on BBC lunchtime concerts, played each weekday to an empty Wigmore Hall. Yesterday’s was a real treat for us, a Bach programme played by Angela Hewitt. The introducer (one of only 2 or 3 human beings in the hall apart from her) said she had played there first 35 years ago, and I was astonished to count the years since we first heard her to find it was just before that, 2 Bach programmes in the East Midlands in the early 80s (one in Alfreton, another at Lakeside in Nottingham) for which she had been booked before fame followed her. Hearing this recital, I could easily become a fan of empty concert halls, no coughs, no premature cries of bravo, just besutiful silence around marvellous music. But it would be uneconomic of course, and churlish to deny hordes of fans! We shall take advantage of the chance to rehear this before the month online is over. The link to the concert is here, a must-listen if you can.
I wrote in an earlier post about our return to the Val du Séran, the lovely music centre run by Stéphane and Chantal Fauth in the Ain département not far from Geneva. Rather to our surprise the chamber music planned for this month went ahead as restrictions on movement were relaxed, so Mary played cello in a piano trio with Stéphane on violin and a very good pianist Johan Hernalsteen.
Unusually the concert last Sunday was played for a socially distanced audience of 20+ in the entrance hall of the house - the players performed from the balcony, using an electronic piano since the one in the music room could not be moved there. The programme was Knud Jeppersen's Petit trio d'été, and the Haydn 'Trio tzigane' in G major, plus a little encore, an arrangement of Gershwin's Summertime. A great success, and a proper tribute to Stéphane's 80th birthday that day.
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