The Times yesterday reports “gibbons dance like humans, study shows”.
I didn’t study anthropology for three years without learning that humans dance like gibbons, except for me. A partner once told me it was like dancing with a playful baby octopus. I am not auditioning for Strictly but I would like to go to a silent disco and jerk around with the sound turned off.
Likewise, yesterday evening I went to an exhibition but didn’t see any pictures. (Later today I am going to see the new big show at The National Gallery: Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers.) Last night’s exhibition was at the Cadogan Hall. There is a lot to be said for the CH. It is close to Sloane Square station and there are three good restaurants on the square (“piazza, Charlie, piazza” – The Italian Job): Le Colbert, The Botanist and Côte and possibly the Royal Court.
It was an interesting programme last night. First the prelude to Mussorgsky’s opera, Khovanshchina. The only opera of his I have seen is Boris Godunov and it’s not a favourite. The prelude is short and pregnant with possibilities for the opera ahead. It is called Dawn on the Moscow River and I don’t think it is supposed to evoke Dawn taking a morning dip. After that, Bernstein’s Serenade with Esther Yoo centre stage: “the model of a violin soloist in the modern age. Intelligent, articulate and self-possessed, she is so much more than a technical virtuoso.” I hadn’t heard this before and sense it is seldom performed now. There was a strong Yoo fan club in the audience and as an encore she played Yanky Doodle Dandy – more accurately an excerpt from Souvenir d’Amérique, composed in 1943 by Henri Vieuxtemps for his first American tour.
After the interval we heard Pictures at an Exhibition. The exhibition is in St Petersburg in 1874 by Viktor Hartmann. The music must be familiar to you – each movement is like meeting an old friend. There are ten pictures and Hartmann’s theme reaches its apotheosis in the suite’s finale, “The Bogatyr Gates“.
It’s Hartmann’s design for a grand entrance to Kyiv to commemorate a failed assassination attempt on the tsar, Alexander II.