set against a future need

Last booked Festival-related thing of the year today with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in the Usher hall. As I'd been playing about with my external hard drives after I got home to try and squeeze all my previous-camera pictures onto the 2.5" portable from the 3.5" power-supplied desktop for easier poking-at for Archive Blipping I hadn't left myself very much time to get to the venue, though wasn't quite as late as I was for one of the gigs last year when they'd started shutting the auditorium doors and ringing the bell. I only had to squeeze past two codgers to get to my seat and hadn't been going fast enough to be sweating too unpleasantly. The codger to my right asked if I was familiar with this particular orchestra and didn't seem impressed when I said that I thought I might have heard them once or twice in the previous few years but couldn't really remember. It's not quite the same as knowing if you've seen a particular band before as I tend to select classical concerts at festival-time by the music type or composer than the performers performing (except in the case of those who stick in the mind enough to know that whatever they do they'll probably do something interesting with it). Collegium Vocale Gent qualify for the latter as does the EU Baroque Orchestra since the other week. Today's Webern, Berg and Brahms wasn't particularly interesting and I was possibly sitting slightly too far forward to get the best clarity of sound (though I was ideally placed for the nice stereo-wafting pizzicato early on in the first piece) and winced with the loudness once or twice but it was certainly polished and capable. Even though smaller stuff tends to be stuck in the Queen's hall I definitely prefer chamber stuff to full-size orchestra as I prefer being able to pick out individual instruments and similarly preferred the smallish gut-strung sound of a smallish historically-informed group with a few weird instruments chucked in like the EU Baroque to the loud-but-standard string-heavy steel-strung group this evening.

There's usually something attached to one of the grimy grilles on one of the mucky windows on one of the manky buildings down King's Stables Road but this will have to do for today. As I forgot to send my entry for last month's work photo club competition and had to re-use a vaguely-topic-related blip (hurrah for Download Original) I'm going to try and make sure there's something applicable each month in case I forget again.