We snapped up a few tickets while the Festival was in progress and so ended up going to lots of concerts. Some of the family went to hear Mark Padmore in the Guildhall accompanied by Julius Drake and alongside Richard Watkins on the horn. Schubert’s Auf dem Strom used all three performers: a rather odd piece rather along the lines of The Shepherd on the Rock.
This year’s Mozartfest featured a number of concerts which didn’t contain any music by Mozart, and as well as Beethoven (including An die ferne Geliebte and the Op. 17 horn sonata) and Schubert there were Britten’s first and third canticles. My daughter isn’t really a Britten fan and wasn’t won over by them. The third canticle in particular, Still falls the rain, is rather hindered by its libretto.
The following day I went to a piano recital by Grace Francis in the Guildhall. This did contain Mozart, the Fantasia in D minor, a piece I well remember learning myself. Then a change of programme, substituting the Appassionata for Beethoven’s Op. 90. Like the Mozart, this sounded rather tentative in places, though she did not make the usual mistake in this piece of sounding as if she were trying to destroy the piano. By the time she reached Rachmaninov’s Corelli variations she was well into her stride. These were not well known to me but made a good impression. The recital ended with the bicentenary composer, Liszt: Sonetto 104 del Petrarca and the first Mephisto Waltz, the latter piece curiously un-waltzlike most of the time. This recital was recorded for Radio 3, and I shall look out for Grace Francis’ name again.