Category Archives: 音楽 (music)

Hagen Quartet playing Beethoven at the Wigmore Hall

They played the third Rasumovsky Quartet (Opus 59, No. 3) and the Opus 130 (including Grosse Fuge).

Jun-Dai, Lucía, and Sandy at the Wigmore Hall at 19:30 on 19 April 2013.

Jun-Dai:
The fugue in last movement of Op. 59 No. 3 (which they played at breakneck speed) and the Grosse Fuge are both pretty exhausting to watch. It’s nice once in a while to see a concert of pieces that I know really well, and these are two of the more famous Beethoven quartets. I listened to my parents’ LPs of the string quartets many times growing up. My favourite was Opus 18 No. 4 (which I managed to destroy by leaving it out in the sun until it warped too much for the needle to stay in its groove), but Op. 59 No.3 always sticks in my head, mostly for the cello pizzicato opening of the second movement and for the fugue at the end. I never realised (until watching it) how much of the second movement is pizzicato for the cello.

Wigmore Hall is beautiful, and I’m glad I finally got to see it. I’d very much like to go back. The performance was excellent. Better seats would have been nice (these were the last ones left), but the balance between the instruments was better than I expected, and it was nice to be close enough to really see the players’ intensity.

More than anything, this concert reminded me how much I like chamber music. Seeing it does torture me a little inside, though, as I miss few things more than playing in a string quartet. I suppose seeing Schubert song cycles performed would have a similar effect.

19 April 2013Jun-DaiPermalink Leave a comment

Mozart Requiem at St. Martin-in-the-Fields

Lucía and Jun-Dai at St. Martin-in-the-Fields at 19:30 on 7 May 2011.

Jun-Dai:
My first surprise was that our tickets were for a spacious private box in the gallery. My second surprise was when two older ladies from Spain invited themselves to join us in our box when they saw that our box had enough room in it. We didn’t say or do anything to stop them, as we were happy to share our box, and happily, despite their beckoning, their friends evidently felt too inhibited to join in, at which point it really would have started to seem crowded.

The St. Martin-in-the-Fields church is a wonderful building, in an understated sort of way. Unlike many of the ancient cathedrals we’ve seen in England, there’s nothing especially dramatic or garish about the church, save for some gilding over the apse and on the colourfully painted coat of arms.

The orchestra was very small. For the first half of the programme there were six violins, two violas, two cellos, one bass, and a small organ. This was later enhanced by several wind instruments and a tympani for the Requiem itself, which occupied the whole second half of the programme. The pre-interval pieces were a mix of things. Some Mozart, some Handel, some Purcell. Not much of it stuck out to me, except for Dido’s lament (“when I am laid in earth”), a piece which always affects me.

Overall the performance was nice. I wouldn’t say it was special, but it was enough to transport me out of my daily concerns for a bit and so I found myself meditating on various things as I looked around the church (the gallery seats being an excellent choice for this reason).