Carducci three

The Carducci String Quartet gave the last of their three concerts at Dorking at the beginning of the month, on this occasion without either Haydn or Beethoven.

We arrived quite early, so sat for a few minutes in the spacious corridor running down the side of the swimming baths next to the hall. A handsome corridor, and we wondered how it was so much time, space and money had been given to it. Not at all like the rather utilitarian, municipal swimming baths of our younger days, mostly dating from between the two world wars, or perhaps from the reconstruction of the 1950's.

Onto to the small hall, which was pretty full. Our chairman lamented the fact that while he could fill the large main hall for a colliery band, he was having trouble selling enough seats there for an orchestral concert later in the month. I felt slightly bad about not supporting this last, while taking full advantage of the string quartets. Maybe out in the sticks, one supports what is going, without being as fussy as one can afford to be in London?

The quartet started out with three computers and one score, moving up to four computers after the first piece. No idea why the first violin did this. I also learned that the computers were organised by page of paper score, presumably the result of scanning pre-existing paper scores, rather than resetting them for computers - which I had, without thinking, assumed was the case. Operated by a foot pedal while playing, presumably one pedal for forward and one for backward. Possibly awkward if one had a very long repeat.

Music a bit mixed on this occasion. Mozart K458 did not quite fly on this occasion. Which it did do on the occasion back in 2016, noticed at reference 2. Shostakovich No.8 was very good. And while Dvořák No.12 after the break was good enough, I was left thinking he had used too much material and that he would have done better to make more of less. While it too had done better on the occasion back in 2018, noticed at reference 3. Perhaps I was having an off day.

[A 19th century painting by Adolph Menzel of a woman wearing a snood, lifted from Wikipedia]

Intrigued by an older lady in front of me, sporting a discrete black hair net. Which led onto a discussion of snoods, chignons and buns, which I had got all muddled up. Not least because the first of the three, the snood, was a sort of big hairnet, as snapped above, while the chignon and the bun were styles. I had thought the chignon was something used to give hair on top of the head some shape. While actually it . is the bun that can be enhanced with an insert.

Outside to a pale blue, late afternoon sky, complete with large, gibbous moon.

Back home, I actually took a look at the programme and learned that the Shostakovich had been prompted to writ this quartet by a 1960 visit to Dresden, which probably stirred up memories of the siege of Leningrad. From where I associated to an image of concentration camp prisoners lined up for roll call in a transit camp near Dresden, full of hate for all things German, as massed bombers flew over on their way to bomb the city. They were glad that many of the guards had families there.

I think the image came from a short book by Paul Steinberg, 'Speak you also', who had been rounded up in Paris in 1943 and who had survived. I run the incident down to page 151, in the penultimate chapter. He writes that they could feel the ground shake as the bombs fell some minutes later, some ninety miles away - which seems rather a long way away. But he does not write of families. I wonder whether I have conflated his account with another, as I have several memoirs from this time and place. The one I have checked so far did not include Dresden, but I will check the others. 

Steinberg writes that this kind of hate does not last. But I wonder: I have heard of a number of people of my parents' generation, people who had not suffered in the way that he had, but who, nevertheless, had difficulty with anything German or Japanese for years after the war, perhaps for the rest of their lives.

PS: despite the large premises, more or less opposite the Dorking Halls and the large advertisements in concert programmes, we have still not visited the Dorking Brasserie. First thought was maybe one day. But then, checking up, I found that it is not the restaurant I thought it was at all, rather discretely located next to the Baptist Church in Junction Road, some way along the High Street from Dorking Halls. Either they have relocated, or my brain conflated the restaurant which is opposite the Halls with this one.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/03/carducci-two.html. The second concert of the series.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/11/st-john.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/04/sacconi-three.html.

Reference 4: Speak you also: a survivors reckoning - Paul Steinberg - 1996.

Reference 5: http://www.wollheim-memorial.de/en/paul_steinberg_19261999. The short version, including what strikes me as the curious phrase 'camp elder' and its glossary entry left, which fail to gloss what we are told of him in reference 4.