I went to London today for the first of my bloc of four concerts that I've booked at LSO St Lukes (between now and next June) to take advantage of the reduced rate when you book four or more events at the same time. I could happily have chosen more than four, but you have to be realistic when you live in north Essex, and the lunchtime concert is in EC1. Today's performance was by members of The Nash Ensemble, forming a string quintet with a second viola, or at least three fifths of the line-up were from the Nash Ensemble, since it only runs to one viola, and the cellist was not their regular cellist Adrian Brendel. Never mind, it was very good.
The first piece was by Max Bruch, and was thought lost after his death until a copy turned up in a private collection in 1991. That's quite romantic, and it was a romantic, very pretty twenty minutes of music. That was followed by Beethoven, grand, stirring and all the emotions you'd expect from Beethoven. I was blessed with exemplary neighbours this time, who did not fiddle with their programmes, or their anoraks, or do anything except sit still and listen. I do like LSO St Lukes. It is great being able to get an hour of world class chamber music and programme notes for ten quid (or eight if you book four concerts), and the cafe gives free refills of coffee if you take your cup back. Altogether it must be one of the nicest and most civilised places in London.
I booked myself a ticket for Rembrandt at the National Gallery in the afternoon, to make full use of my day in town and train ticket. The exhibition has reviewed very well (with some caveats about the gallery space which we'll come on to), and Rembrandt's star is shining brightly enough that I didn't fancy my chances trying to walk in off the street without booking. It was crowded, as I expected, at about the upper limit of being tolerable, though most people were being considerate about not standing with their faces four inches from the canvases to look at the brush strokes so that nobody else could see. I like Rembrandt van Rijn so much that I will endure a fair amount of crowding and waiting my turn to see his paintings, more than for many painters.
The National Gallery has borrowed some fantastic works, but they aren't all that well displayed. Lighting is by overhead spots, which gleam ferociously off some of the oil paintings so that it's very difficult to find anywhere to stand where you can see the picture and not mainly reflected glare. The overall light level is kept quite low to protect the works, but captions have also been kept to a minimum with a detailed booklet being provided instead, whose brilliant white pages shine obtrusively in the overhead spotlights as visitors walk around with their open books held at chest height in an attempt to read about whatever it is they're looking at. Meanwhile the small graphic works are quite difficult to see at all, because it's so dark, and because you feel inhibited about standing too close to them when so many people are trying to see them. Two of the largest canvases are hung in a room that isn't big enough, so I never managed to see all of the Portrait of Frederik Rihel on horseback, because when I stood at a sensible viewing distance there were always twenty people between me and him, and when I worked my way to the front of the crowd the wretched lights made his face or else the horse's head dissolve into a white blur.
It's all worth putting up with for the sake of seeing the self portraits, and the heartbreaking picture of the Roman Lucretia after she's stabbed herself. At least Frederik on his horse is part of the permanent collection at the gallery, so I could go and see him another time when it would probably just be me and a couple of foreign students, but Lucretia was on loan from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, so once she heads back there I'm unlikely to see her again.
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