SAY SO

Somehow I took the wrong path in Regent's Park & ended up in West Euston instead of Harley street -- so walk to Wigmore Hall for Sunday coffee-concert took me 50 mins instead of half-hour -- it turned out to be young piano duo Simon Crawford-Phillips & Philip Moore playing music by Medtner op 58; Rachmaninov Suite no2; Oscar Strasnoy Bloc-Notes D'Ephemera [2001] & Wittold Lutoslawski Var on a theme of Paganini -- this played neatly into my preoccupation with Russian & e European music/dance -- the duo was good, I liked the way they changed painos between pieces, like changing ends at tennis.

Simon C-P seems to be the stolid serious still one and Philip the more demonstrative emotional flamboyant personality. The Medtner was thoroughly Russian in material and staid in harmony and rhythm -- I liked best the Waltz of the Rachamnainov Suite -- the strasnoty was welcome & had a nice conversational modern tone to it -- I'd like to hear more -- the Lutoslawski was brilliant and humorous playing on the familiar old Paganini theme. Then back to mothere's flat for Wimbledon Men's final on TV -- too easy for Federer.

I've read with pleasure 'Prokofiev on Prokofiev' it runs from his birth in 1891 to 1915, graduation from the Peterburg Conservatory. Not only a great intelligence at music / work, but a memoir written in the 1930s based closely on his diaries and family letters, with close critical review of his own early music. This has the advantage of largely excluding the colouring of reminiscence and at the same time comiung close to the text produced at the time -- prior to correction, reflection, and convenient hiding of deficiencies. The family life, the playing of games with other children, the delight in walking on stilts, erudition trained on detailed knowledge of the Russian naval fleet [much of it sunk in 1905 by the Japanese to Prokofiev's serious distress], rurla ligfe. travel on trains -- 3 days to Moscow -- & furhter to St Petersburg, the habitual recoirding of information and delight in cataloguing things -- all there. The regular textbook statement that he was a pupil of Lyadov has survived the evidence of this book that Lyadov was a lazy and unpleasant pedantic teacher of little help to him, while the reality of Gliere's coaching through 2 summers, tho not sufficient was obviously of permanent value. There's a lot about Glazounov and Rimsky-Korsakov as teachers and musicians. Throughout P is a permanent innocent about music, about professional musical life & intrigue, & about sex. Even at the end of his Conservatory days it had to be explained to him that 'Glazounov is away in Riga' meant Glazounov was suffering from another alcoholic binge. P's account of his childhood opera The Giant, with absurd childish plot and libretto, is one of the funniest things I've read. Anyway, I was off on Friday to Chappell's again and bought the 'Visions Fugitives', worked away at sight-reading them on one of the Yamaha electronics there.

The short 'Towards Ballet', 1934, essay by Adrian Stokes is my current reading -- that's, as in all Stokes, straining after an intellectual conspectus of the arts, and comes up with a mass of insights and acute perceptions. I'm going back to Travers and Emery's bookshop & up the ladder to buy the other Stokes book on ballet, that I saw on the top shelf last week.