A Big Thank You to Bob Crow

Bob Crow, leader of the RMT gang, having gifted us another of his periodic Tube strikes, I set out this morning to walk from Victoria to NigeCorp HQ. By chance I found in my radio an old cassette, ready primed on a B side - the finale of the Trout Quintet, followed by the Wanderer Fantasy. So, set the volume to 11 and off we go, striding through the London drizzle. Damn it was a fine walk with that accompaniment - the breathtaking finale to the greatest piano quintet ever written, and then that extraordinary fantasy, a piece of such dazzling virtuosity that Schubert himself could rarely get through it without stopping and swearing. But virtuosity is never the point with Schubert. The point, it seems to me, is melody, the possibilities of which Schubert takes further than anyone else, into realms where words are pretty useless. With him, the most fragile-seeming melody always - like tarragon - punches above its weight,and it's always there, whatever pianistic fireworks are exploding all around. As it happened, these two glorious, exalting pieces took me nearly the whole way, right into the last stretch of the walk, through Kensington Gardens. Strike beating? A walk in the park. Thank you for the music, Bob Crow.