Maria Marchant, today's recitalist, had just begun when I arrived, so I watched and listened from behind a glass door before being let in at the end of the first movement of Maurice Ravel's "Le Tombeau de Couperin". The piece has six movements and is a memorial to six French officer friends of the composer, each killed in the First World War (though the fourth movement is for two brothers killed by the same shell). Regular readers of this blog (hello Claire, Steve, Phil, Katie...Mum...have I missed anyone?) will know that my classical music knowledge is maybe not what it should be - I'm learning all the time - but as live music experiences go today was right up there. The whole piece was probably only about twenty minutes long, and at first the music merely drifted pleasantly around me. Then I realised three movements in that I was hooked and, even with my classical pianistic ignorance, I had a sense I was watching a very special young musican (subsequent research revealed Maria Marchant as something of a top rising star). The sixth and last piece was likened in the programme notes "to an army of foot-soldiers which slowly advances before the work draws to its triumphant, terrifying and brilliant close" which I thought was pretty much on the button. Breathtaking stuff. The audience applause at the work's conclusion had a significant edge of enthusiasm over the usual polite recital applause (I'm developing an acutely accurate internal clap-o-meter). Next time I'm in Fopp I'm going to buy Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin...I think they sell classical music.
When I was back down in Green Park tube an hour after arriving, there was another busker playing a Beatles song ("Yesterday"). I don't think he was the same guy. He had no clown-effects and was whole-heartedly a man.
mariamarchant.com
(can you read that...? I'll crop it closer...)
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