Wednesday 10 June 2009

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.

9 comments:

  1. ...and thank you for such a nice piece! I especially like the juxtaposition between something as dainty, ephemeral and impressionist as Schubert with the lumpen ugly opaqueness of Senor Crow

    and its nice to be reminded of the Trout Quintet, a piece that we were regularly exposed to at prep school, but which I havn't listened to since - I must dig it out and give it a re-appraisal 20 years on!

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  2. Oh do, Worm - it's quite wonderful.

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  3. Schubert is jolly good - as long as there is no singing.

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  4. Singing, that is to say, by anyone else..

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  5. The Welsh rugby player Haydn Tanner died last week. He was named partly for the composer just as his sometime rival for the Wales no.9 shirt Handel Greville was named (more completely) for another.

    Sport stars named after classical composers! My, how we have fallen, Armani and Lexus being two of today's inspired choices. Anyway, I think Schubert would make a fine first name.

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  6. ...especially if his last name was 'Dip'

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  7. Or if Tanner changed religion and became Haydn Sikh, that'd be good.

    This is giving me ideas. How about Rachmaninov for a boy? It certainly has grandeur.

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  8. Ha! By the way, I've just posted on the mighty and diminutive Haydn here . He was a boy wonder too.

    Handel Withe-Kerr?

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  9. A (very) interesting take on the Trout Nige is Benny Goodman and the Budapest Quartet, Benny, naturally on clarinet, would have tickled Schubert pink, not one of the rainbow colours of course.

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