Anthony Gritten at Lunchtime Live!

 Anthony Gritten, Portsmouth Cathedral, Nov 16

Although it delays the delivery of this crucial reportage from the front line, a couple of drinks after a lunchtime recital makes it more of a day out. The forlorn downside of arriving in The Dolphin opposite Portsmouth Cathedral is the knowledge that one will have to leave again and so it's best to live in the moment. 

One subject for discussion there was what was the Beatles' worst record. My friend should surely know better than to ask by now but for once my answer was unusually succinct.

The latest one, obviously.

Nobody produces masterpieces all the time, she almost quite rightly said.

Not even Shakespeare. It was said he 'never blotted a line' but I think he did. It was J.S. Bach that didn't.

Anthony Gritten's fluent, authoritative Prelude and Fugue, BWV 552, entirely justified our gamble on the inclement weather as it sashayed its way over its groaning ground bass until reaching a middle section that was O, God Our Help in Ages Past until taking off in another direction and then ending in majestic splendour.

It's not easy beginning with one's best shot. I was very interested in Anthony's programme note about his six and a half hour anniversary recital of Buxtehude, presumably in 2007, and I'd have been glad of a fragment of that. While Schumann's 4 Skizzen für den Pedalflügel, Op.58, explored the stops - woodwind, something akin to harmonium- they were 'sketches' until a danceable Allegretto which aspired to something more comprehensive.

Max Reger's Choralphantasie über 'Wie schön leuchtet uns der Morgenstern', which we got close enough to translating into How lovely shines the morning star to impress ourselves if nobody else, crashed in, promising all kinds of fireworks but then took the scenic route through its melodious theme until bringing this Autumn's Portsmouth lunchtime series to a blazing finale that might still be ringing round the clerestory when it all comes together again in January.

--

January wasn't always Spring but who's to say these days. The season from January to March is called the Spring Series, though, among which likely dates for one's diary could be Karen Kingsley on 25/1 and an appalling dilemma that occurs on 14/3 when Adrian Green, tenor, no relation, teams up with my friends, the Ivory Duo, during the sporting highlight of the year at Prestbury Park, Cheltenham. I've only got four months to decide where my priorities really lie.