A Civilised Experience.

Going To A Concert

 
27 May, 2007: Today, having had a relatively early night, considering (got to bed at 06:00 after Flogging With Irving ;) ), kvetch and I took Irving, the rubber chicken, to an afternoon concert given by the Irish Baroque Orchestra, at the Irish National Gallery.

I really wanted to go to this concert. I hadn’t been to an early music concert in a long time, and it’s music I like a lot. It’s one of the things that I haven’t really shared with kvetch yet, although he loves music of all kinds really. And I felt, after the dripping leather debauchery of the night before, I was sure I’d enjoy a tranquil, refined, civilised experience the next day to help me recover.

I’d spotted the leaflet advertising the concert at Yamamori’s a few weeks before.
 

Concert Leaflet
 
Normally I avoid concerts because the standard of performance is normally low enough to seriously interfere with my enjoyment of the music. But having spotted that Monica Huggett was a big part of this, and hers being a name I knew, admired, and respected, I felt confident that this experience was going to be a goodie. :) So, a few days before the BDSM night, I booked the tickets over the phone (having had trouble with the website booking).

Because of some trouble or other, I couldn’t pay for the tickets over the phone or on the website, but they booked them for me anyhow, and said I could pay on the day. This was just absolutely perfect, couldn’t be better. This way, if the next day found kvetch and me too tired to move, then we could give the concert a miss and not be out of pocket. But I did really really really want to get to this concert if at all possible.
 
 

The Journey

 
I’d been a bit concerned that we wouldn’t be able to get up and moving in time to get there, but with seemingly minimal effort, we got to the National Gallery well in good time. The concert was due to start at 15:15, we arrived at 14:50.

So, full marks to us for punctuality. :)

The journey began smoothly. Having ordered a taxi, it actually came at the appointed time and was still there when Wwe went out to meet it. That was novel. :p

Aside from a teensy little fire, the taxi journey was without incident, unless you count the driver talking rivetingly about how he goes mad if he sits in the house doing nothing, how he can’t sit in the house doing nothing because of having three children, and his impending move down to Leitrim, with occasional stays planned in Dublin, with his mother.

( I refrained from mentioning how sad I thought it was, to yet again hear about a fully grown Irish man who still regularly lives with his mother. )
 
 

Kind Of Dull-Yet-Obligatory Weather Report

 
The sun was shining, even if there was a bit of a chill in the breezy air.

 
Weather for Sunday 27 May 2007, from http://www.rte.ie/weather/

Today’s Weather
Cool and breezy this afternoon and early evening with bright or sunny spells with scattered showers. High temperatures of 12 to 14 Celsius. Some of the showers will be heavy, with a risk of hail or thunder. Breezy with fresh and gusty northerly winds.

Tonight’s Weather
Becoming mostly dry tonight with clear spells and any showers confined to coastal areas. Winds decreasing light to moderate overnight and it will turn cold with lowest temperatures of 2 to 5 Celsius and some ground frost in rural areas.

 
So much for welcoming in the summer.

If I’d had any nuts at all that day, I’d've frozen them off.

It was cold enough for me to wear gloves, and need them.

I mean, just look at it, the temperature doesn’t show, but you can see it’s a bit iffy out there to say the least:
 

Iffyness

 
( even as I write this on the following day, it’s pouring with rain and hail, the pounding on the roof and windows sounding like a huge invasion of who-knows-what with many multiples of scurrying feet. )

( Frankly, I really don’t want to know what has that many feet, if it’s all the same to you. )

 
 

The Irish National Gallery

 
Having arrived in good time, we went inside to collect and pay for the tickets I’d booked by phone. The tickets were there under my name, which was reassuring. :) Somehow they’d reserved three tickets for us instead of two, but we only had to pay for two ( €16 each), as they graciously allowed Irving in free of charge. ;) I also bought a programme, and their Bach CD, which I listened to later and enjoyed very much.
 

At The Concert With Irving
 
I brung kvetch and Irving down to the front row, by the violins, as I thought it might be enjoyable for kvetch to experience the concert right in the thick of the action. One thing I noticed in front of us straight away when we sat down, was the weird alterations which had been done to what had been perfectly graceful sweeping, curved staircases, making them look, just, well, weird. Apparently, it’s very common for people to bitch about this. Since we were in such good time, I took some photos.
 

The Hall At The Irish National Gallery

 
Somebody told me that due to some safety law or other, all stairs have to be a maximum of such-and-such distance wide, and this alteration was done to comply with this law. I just have one thing to say about this alteration and this law in this instance:
 
 
Ew.
 
 
So anyhow, I got kvetch to read the programme notes on the pieces to be performed (Boccherini’s Sinfonia No. 6, Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges’ Symphonie Concertante op. 13, and Haydn’s Farewell Symphony), which helped his appreciation of the music.

And after the music started, I also gave him bits and bobs of things about who turns the pages of the music, to notice the bowing of one of the violinists as I’d mentioned that style of bowing to him before, stuff about the instruments being period vs modern, and so on.
 
 

The Look

 
So, we were there in good time, and I took some pictures, read the programme notes, and got kvetch to read them as well. When the orchestra did come out, I was very pleased to see that everybody was not poured into stiff, uncomfortable looking identical black outfits. They were each wearing something smart, black, individual, and comfortable looking, which complemented each of their own styles. Monica Huggett herself was wearing obviously very comfortable shoes.

Fantastic. :)

( plus she “looked” at me, which I’ll go more into later ;) )
 

Small Rant
 
I have SUCH issues with having been stuffed into uncomfortable outfits to play music in, just because they are “appropriate”.

EW EW EW EW EW.

As far as I’m concerned, what’s “appropriate” is what’s comfortable to play in, looks reasonable, and makes the wearer feel good to wear it.

Ok, Small Rant over.

( I knew I was going somewhere with that rant. Eventually. Bear with me, nearly there…… )
 
 
The Point
 
I looked and saw a comfortable, smart, stylish group, full of energy and individual expression, all working as a team to perform great music. Being able to see their comfort and personal style very much added to my enjoyment of the experience.

And that works for me. :)

 

According to the programme, RTÉ Lyric FM was going to be recording the performance for transmission at a later date, but try as I might, I couldn’t see any microphones anywhere. kvetch and I turned off our mobiles anyway. :) I also saw no recording engineers anywhere. I hope they did record it, though, because it was a wonderful concert and I’d love to hear it again, and perhaps get a recording of it.

( I couldn’t find any reference to that concert on the RTÉ Lyric FM website either, unfortunately )

 
 

And Now For The Music

 
Loving it
 
Every piece they played was done with vim and vigour. There was plenty of dramatic flair to be had in the use of dynamics, enough to have made the performance suitable for a film score. Quite often I find that performances of early works don’t take advantage of dynamics as much as I think they should, and as a result, while still sounding quite lovely, they lack that dramatic expression which I often think belongs there. And also perhaps, the ensembles are often too large.

On this occasion, the ensemble comprised four first violins, four second violins, three violas, two celli, one double bass/continuo, two french horns, and two oboes. The french horns and oboes were period instruments, and all the stringed instruments had gut strings, and period bows. This gave everything a very (what I imagine to be) authentic sound. Also, the “A” they used was a bit short of A 440Hz, though I can’t tell you by exactly how much. It wasn’t very far short, certainly not as short as I’ve heard on other occasions.

The symphonic sound was impressive, given the smallness of the ensemble. The acoustics in the room, however, at least from where we were sitting, were splendiforous. :D I have a feeling that there might have been a bit too much echo if Wwe’d been sitting in the back. It was quite a large room.

I felt that Monica Huggett’s direction was packed full of enjoyment, and appropriate depth of expression, without too much descent into what I regard as inappropriate, maudlin, tempo manipulation. I often hear performances of early works which have people playing with the tempo in a way which I feel is far too Romantic in style for early works. Whilst there was some tempo manipulation, it was kept to a minimum.
 
 
Weak Points – Claire Duff
 
I thought the Symphonie Concertante was the weakest performance of the three works. The second soloist, Claire Duff, sounded nervous. Her bowing sounded shaky and lacking in confidence. She was making regular errors in intonation, and also her violin was clearly not as high quality as it could have been. This seemed to result in a kind of weedy, thin sound from her, and compared unfavourably not only with Monica Huggett’s performance, but also with that of the orchestral soloists (members of the orchestra who accompany the soloists without the rest of the orchestra during the solo sections). The orchestral soloists, and indeed every orchestral player sounded fairly faultless to Me, on the whole, which was fabulous. :)

As I could work it out according to the schedule, this was the last of three performances of this programme, so everybody would have been fairly well rehearsed and confident, as indeed they sounded.

Another thing about the performance of the Symphonie Concertante was that, at times, Claire Duff’s weak performance lost strength and precision of tempo during some of the trickier passages. As a result of this, synchronisation was lost between herself, Monica Huggett, and the rest of the orchestra. It sounded like Monica Huggett was trying to cover up for this by doing similarly in her solo sections, but really, the end result was that things got kind of messy sounding. The rhythmical feeling was too often lost for comfort. I didn’t think the playing with the tempo was for musical reasons, but for technical ability reasons. I have a pet peeve about players who slow down or speed up because of their own shortcomings and not because it’s the right thing to do for the music. The players are meant to be expressing the music, and not the other way round, in my opinion.

I can’t say I find it acceptable when I hear a musician’s struggle with the instrument. I don’t think I should be noticing which sections are technically trickier than others. I think I should be enjoying the path the music travels, and not be regularly distracted by hearing a performer struggle with their instrument and consistently make mistakes in similar passages, as Claire Duff was doing.

The orchestra had been on a small tour, and had already performed these works in front of audiences twice before. I can’t find any reasonable excuse, no matter how hard I look, for the shortcomings in the performance of this piece. At times, it just wasn’t good enough.

In the programme, it lists Claire Duff as being on the board of directors for the ensemble. And, I wonder to myself, if her presence on that board is a contributory reason why she had this opportunity to perform a solo part? Based on the evidence of her performance, I wouldn’t have thought she would otherwise merit such an opportunity. Perhaps it was a one-off bad case of nerves for her, who knows. But I didn’t hear any of the other players making the kinds of intonation and rhythmical errors that she was making.

Of course, none of the other players were out in front doing the solo part either. Nevertheless, there was a lot of room for improvement there, I felt.
 
 
Overall Impressions – Still Loving It
 
Having said that, I must say that otherwise overall, the technical and artistic standards of the performance were amongst the best I’ve ever heard in Ireland. It was such a pleasure to be able to enjoy an energetic, vigourous, cheerful and mostly accurate performance, without being annoyingly distracted (too often) by the technical shortcomings of the players.

I mean, sure, Claire Duff’s solo performance aside, there were a few blips with the horns, but then, that’s partly what live performances are all about. :) So, aside from the performance of the Concertante, the Boccherini and the Haydn were both exceedingly enjoyable. Irving the rubber chicken would have had a great time if he’d been a sentient being. :p

( that’s probably why they didn’t require him to pay for a ticket, actually :p )
 
 

Afterwards

 
After the concert I was left feeling invigorated, refreshed, and relaxed. Which is just as it should be, and what I was hoping for. Mission accomplished. :)

A trip to the loo delayed our departure long enough for us to be leaving at the same time as the orchestra, whom we bumped into on the way out. I was pleased to be able to take the opportunity to have a few words with Monica Huggett, whose work I have admired for a long time. I told her how much I enjoyed the concert, how I’d enjoyed her work over the years and how this had been my first opportunity to enjoy her performance in person.

I also indicated how much Irving had enjoyed it, which got a laugh. :D

The concert inspired me to perhaps get back into early music, or at the very least, add an early music sound to what I do currently. So, the next day, I found the orchestra website, and wrote to them asking about who made their baroque bows, and where they got their gut strings from. It’s now nearly July and I haven’t heard anything back from them. I guess I won’t. Oh well.
 
 

One Of Those “And Finally” Thingies

 
And finally, you know how I mentioned that I’d been sitting in the front row with kvetch? And you know that image of me standing outside with the programme in one hand and Irving (a little the worse for wear after a hard night’s flogging) in the other? You can see that I’ve got one of my corsets on, the one I wear most days, with cleavage on view.

I don’t think it was my imagination that Monica Huggett spent more than the usual amount of time admiring the view of me from where she was standing, in front of me and slightly to my right.

(We were down the front on the left)

(kvetch noticed her noticing too)

If I’d been feeling more assertive and less tired from the leatherfest the night before, I’d probably have made some kind of move, but as it was, I didn’t have the energy.

On reflection, I think that was rather unfortunate. Ahhh, for missed opportunities. ;)