A week of great concerts (that is, two concerts) has me rejoining the waltz, even though strictly speaking I still don't have time for dancing or blogging this month.
First, on Thursday, Manny Ax's piano recital in Angel Place. An interesting, beautifully conceived program in a mature and equally beautifully conceived performance. Perhaps I'd agree that the originally programmed Chopin might have pleased even more than the Liszt, but the combination of Schubert and Liszt did seem really right. And the gracious performance of the Impromptus made me feel positively ashamed of my own "bashing through" these pieces as a student. (For some reason I never actually studied them properly, just sight-read them in perpetuity for pleasure. The "pleasure", I suspect, was exclusively mine, hence the shame.)
Then, on Friday, Ax was the soloist in Mozart K482. What can I say? Everything was perfectly judged and in good taste, well-accompanied too. Ax played his own cadenzas, and I took greatest delight in his 3rd movement cadenza for which he had prepared orchestral obbligati. This might be thought a tad anachronistic (it suggests what Beethoven did in the cadenzas for his Piano Concerto, Op.61) but Mozart would surely have approved. The concerto (well, Wednesday night's performance) can be relived, together with the rest of the concert, via BigPond. Don't bother hunting around on the main page, go straight here. Also on this program: a little 'gothic' Schubert overture with shades of Weber, Sibelius 7, and Richard Meale's luminous Clouds now and then. In the Meale I was surprised to see first violinist Georges Lentz sitting at the celesta. But then, as my neighbour pointed out, this was really rather apt, given that Lentz-as-composer is deeply immersed in things celestial. There was so much to enjoy in this program, including witnessing a genuine talent in the impossibly young-looking (but actually mid-twenties) conductor.
So it's been a good week, musically – and just as is the case when I've eaten a really fine chocolate, I feel that I won't need to attend another concert until July! Which is just as well, since Thomasina continues to burn candles at both ends, and it was a burning candle that brought about her namesake's untimely demise.