Live music

More than a year ago we were booked to see the Benyounes Quartet with Jeremy Young at Stapleford Granary.  It was cancelled due to the third lockdown.  

I was offered a refund, but elected to leave the money the Granary, with a view to booking something else eventually, or in the worst case, and write it off.  A couple of months ago, The Granary finally managed to reschedule the concert, and wrote to those of us still with money owed, offering tickets.  Initially, I though we would be unable to go as we rather expected to have moved - or at least be on the cusp of moving by today.  

When our sale fell through, I contacted the organiser to see if the option to attend was still open - and today we finally saw the quartet, with Jeremy Young on piano, perform Mozart's Piano Concerto No 20 arranged (by Mozart himself) for string quartet, and Brahms Piano Quintet.

There was an excellent verbal introduction to each of the pieces, though I would have loved this to be written down so I could refer back to it, and both pieces were well performed.  Jeremy Young made the point in his introduction to the Piano concerto that it was not written to be performed on a modern Steinway, and I felt that often the piano was too powerful for the quartet in this piece.

But the Brahms was stunning, and was much more evenly balanced.

All in all, an excellent evening.  We had eaten a late lunch/early dinner before driving down to Cambridge, so we were peckish when we got home - after a slightly tedious diversion through the centre of Newmarket because part of the A11 was closed.  We drank a healthy tipple from the half empty bottle of Cointreau with our drinking chocolate and bedtime snack.

In other news - well, there wasn't really any other news, and the only photo I took was of Jeremy Young, the pianist, and Zara Benyounes, the first violinist during the final applause.