I went to London today because I had a ticket for a lunchtime concert at LSO St Lukes. I booked it long enough ago that I'd forgotten what I was going to hear, and was pleased when I was given my programme notes on the door to discover that it was a string trio put together by Natalie Clein who is doing a mini-residency, performing the Goldberg Variations arranged by Dmitry Sitkovetsky for violin, viola and cello.
I'd arrived with plenty of time in hand in case the trains were delayed, and the concert hall wasn't open, so I went for a cup of tea in the basement cafe. Surveying my fellow concert goers it seemed to be true that classical music fans are an ageing breed. Many of them were alone as well, one per square table set with four chairs, until the last solo table was occupied and they had to start doubling up, with the ritual enquiry Do You Mind if I Sit Here, followed by no further conversation.
I felt a little mean not to have asked a friend, but I booked a set of four tickets spread over several months to make sure I went to some concerts and take advantage of the reduced rate for four or more concerts while saving on booking fees, and I simply couldn't face the hassle of trying to get anyone else to decide that far in advance if they wanted to commit to going to a lunchtime concert on a particular Thursday. I did mention it at last weekend's party to a friend who said we ought to go sometime, but she looked slightly askance and said she was busy that day. Probably people would rather plan things together rather than being asked to tag along at tactlessly short notice, but I would have asked her sooner if I hadn't been struggling to catch up with myself post cold.
The concert wasn't a sell-out, but the auditorium was almost full, and the eventual age of the audience wasn't quite so old as the sample in the cafe had suggested. If you work in the area with a finite amount of time for lunch, and aren't trying to make allowances for late trains, you presumably don't hang around in the cafe beforehand. Though I don't share the view that it's a problem if classical music appeals more to older people, so long as the average age of the audience isn't rising. Obviously if classical fans just get older and older until we're all dead then that is a problem, but if in their youth people want to follow Ed Sheeran before realising in their middle years that Schubert is more interesting, that's fine.
The string version of the Goldberg Variations was very beautiful, from the stately first variation through all the furious triplets and twiddly bits, slow bits and quiet bits, to the final variation where the music arrives where it started and knows it for the first time. I'm not convinced that Western civilisation has yet surpassed the height it reached with the music of JS Bach.
The programme notes made much of the famous orchestras that Natalie Clein has played with, the Philharmonia, Halle, Royal Philharmonic, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and more. The last time I saw her was three or four years ago and she was performing Dvorak's cello concerto with the Ipswich Symphony Orchestra, but that didn't get a mention.
One thing that struck me was how odd it was that musicians still play from paper music. In the era of tablets, when an app on your smartphone will identify a piece of recorded music accurately (down to which choir, not just the title) from a two second sample, as we stand on the brink of the age of the driverless car, musicians still balance printed booklets on stands and have to quickly turn the page between movements or in a little gap when they aren't playing. Why can't they have it scrolling before them on a screen, no page turning, no struggling to find fifty copies of the score for your choir because another choir in the region is putting on the same piece? Instead the entire repertoire could be available at the press of a button.
Afterwards I caught the two exhibitions at The Queen's Gallery before they close on 22nd February. In 1862 the future King Edward VII was sent on an educational tour of the middle east, planned by Prince Albert, who'd unfortunately died by then. It may have been a blessing for young Albert (the future Edward) and Victoria to get a four month break from each other, given that she blamed him for upsetting Albert senior and contributing to his death. It isn't clear from the exhibition how much the young prince learned about the state of affairs in the eastern Mediterranean, but he seems to have had a fantastic holiday, visiting the sites, shooting things and doing a mild spot of tomb robbing. His entourage included photographer Francis Bedford who amassed an impressive collection of pictures of ruins and vistas. Some are beautifully composed and framed, and all are technical marvels when you consider that he was using glass negatives which he then had to process in a mobile dark room made out of a tent.
The other exhibition is about gold. Actual gold blingy things, gilding in religious art, golden light, ingenious painted representations of gold. The Royal Collection has a lot of gold. There are some interesting objects, like the gilded wooden tiger's head taken from Tippoo Sultan's throne, but apart from wondering exactly how much a 19 kilo* solid gold Georgian tray is worth, they are mostly not so absorbing as the photographs next door. Or perhaps they might be if you liked bling.
*Or it might have been pounds. It is vast, engraved with the symbol of every honour George IV held at the time of his coronation, and hideous. In fact the only gold object I really liked as an object was a small jug made in the early Bronze age.
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