Lawrence Power and Sergio Bucheli at Wigmore Hall

 Lawrence Power and Sergio Bucheli, Wigmore Hall, Apr 24

It was my first visit to London since lockdown and it showed when I went the wrong way twice before finding the right road from Victoria to Wigmore Hall. So devoted am I to the work of Dietrich Buxtehude that I'll happily undertake a 14 hour day to hear a five minute Chaconne but there was more to it than that.

The theme of imitation explained in the programme notes was more evident in some pieces than others. The Buxtehude up first wasn't necessarily intended to imitate freshness and the open air, not only in the violin but something reminiscent of the theme from Tales from the Riverbank in Sergio's lute part, but if words can often mean what we want to understand by them then music is much more so.

Two parts from the Suite in G from Ayres for Violin Book 2 by Matteis were lachrymose before Lawrence switched mood for the jigging and reeling of Ground after the Scottish Humour.

Fazil Say's Viola Sonata was a world premiere so we were among the first to hear how it stretched minimal musical ideas to nervy limits through some wizardly technique of pizzicato and glissando in its first movement before the raw dance energy of its second. It's hard to say if such excursions in contemporary music will still be being performed at Wigmore Hall in three hundred years time when fashions will have shifted many more times.

Two pieces by Westhoff explicitly told us what they were imitating. I was happy enough to hear the violin's impersonation of a lute when listening for 'liuto' but, not having read the notes, was equally convinced of the countryside in 'campane', but it was bells, as in 'campanile' so, as with my insensitivity to synesthesia, it matters less what you make of it. You can enjoy it without getting it right. 

In between those, as ancient and modern traded places throughout, was Errollyn Wallen's carol, Peace on Earth, its outlandish idealism expressed in restrained long lines over a lute accompaniment that may or may not be related to the Cavatina hit single by John Williams but it was good to have Errollyn in her most mainstream mood from all the many and various things she does. While one can safely invest on identifying Vivaldi when you hear him, nobody could accuse Errollyn of having a distinctive sound.

Cassandra Miller's Daylonging, Slacktide, commissioned by Lawrence, was the most extraordinary piece on a wildly various programme. The last time - the only other time- I heard her work it also prompted an above average response but I can't put that response on any scale between positive and negative, only visceral. I don't really want to drag anybody in as a comparison but I might have guessed at Laurie Anderson. It was far beyond what Yoko Ono might be capable of. Again, while it made me think of oppressive summer heat it was, in fact, 'about longing to reconnect with others'. Spell-binding, not least for wondering when it was going to end (for better or worse) as Lawrence dutifully unearthed unworldly effects from his viola. If I still wanted to identify with anything vaguely comprehensible in the avant-garde, as I liked to after The Faust Tapes in 1973, I'd be thinking of making Cassandra Miller my favourite composer but I'm not young any more and I'm better off with the doo-wop of Hi, We're the Miracles. 

Sergio took up his other instrument, guitar-like but maybe a vihuela, for some Paganini which sounded less like a contract with the devil and more baroque than we expect from Paganini but, coming out on the other side of Cassandra Miller, one can be excused for having lost one's bearings. 

Luciano Berio would have been a huge price to have proved to be my preferred option on the menu and with its muezzin, actually Sicilian, tape voice, sonorous viola and disembodied folk tune it did okay but, no, not really. I wonder if the viola, being so unkindly overlooked in between the violin and cello, doesn't attract the wrong sort of composer who think they can somehow do something with it. But we were taken back to the courtly formality of Marin Marais before his Le Tourbillion seemed to have to make a headlong dash to get all the notes in before Radio 3 had to go to its Afternoon Concert. Sitting close to the brilliant Hannah French, delivering R3 from just a laptop and a set of headphones, I thought she looked concerned.

I think they went off air sharpish which meant only those there heard a particularly fitting encore, for two friends who first met in Gloucester - Sleep by Ivor Gurney which was, of course, wistful but because it's Ivor Gurney, you know it's not imitation, it's real and it's about Gloucestershire and I've been there so I know. Except it didn't sound especially like Gloucestershire to me.

I was on safer ground in the afternoon at the Aladdin Sane 50 Years exhibition because I completely 'get' David Bowie, and T. Rex, and know all about them. Like Five Years is the first track on Hunky Dory.

- No, on Ziggy Stardust.

We had an entirely theoretical fiver on it but my recent form on the turf translated into even being able to get established facts from 1972 wrong. 

We could at least agree that our History teachers at school were terrible but I had to give one of them the credit for telling me that 'lack of knowledge can't be disguised by fine writing'.

It won't get you top marks in 'A' level History, no, but - I don't know- I've been getting away with it for the most part for quite some time now, such as it is. I'm not even convinced that getting things right is the answer as long as you thought you had a good time. And I did.