Cool Down the Pace, or not

 

 

The new CD player/radio to furnish the new reading/listening room upstairs was due to arrive tomorrow, which was fine. Then it was due to arrive today which was a problem because I might not be in, as per below. But then it arrived yesterday, as soon as it would have if I'd had Amazon Prime.

It's a featherweight thing. It's hardly anything at all compared to the radiogrammes that took up half of long ago sitting rooms to play shellac 78's or LP's of Harry Lauder, Myra Hess, Mario Lanza or Gracie Fields and still sound crackly. Younger people by now wouldn't be able to conceive of the need for a record player at all but for me, and still some of my generation, there's a need to 'have it' rather than have a subscription to a service that says it will provide it. Top marks to Alexa who had no trouble finding Mama Told Me by the Jess Davies Band the only time I asked her, him or it for anything but it might not have absolutely everything. 

When you remember how long it could take to set up an old 'music centre' before you could try it out with Martin Rushent's latest Human League studio adventure, this thing got unpacked, set up and got working in less time than it had taken earlier to look through the 2.45 at Fontwell and decide to have a tenner on the horse that came second. 

I'm traditionally Johnsonian in steadfastly refusing to refer to any rules or instruction book when putting any such thing together but soon realized that the short cut was not to assay any attempt at such a short cut. The first thing I played on it was Spem in Alium, no new record player being expected to play anything less for its first effort, and then I tried out Let Your Yeah be Yeah, on which the bass line and genius arrangement were not only clear enough but the main interest.

But, tuning in to Radio 3, it was unlucky to be doing so at the time of some, no doubt glorious for those who like it, performance of Mahler's 'Resurrection' Symphony no. 2. It might take some time for me to dissociate my use of headphones in that room from the drag of that overblown music. I'm prepared to give Wagner the benefit of all the doubt there is when he's compared with much of Mahler, and all the Bruckner I've heard because even I, with all the time in the world, can't be sure I have enough time for that.

Music shouldn't be hurried up only to display virtuosity if there is good reason to play it slower to linger over and relish it. It's not always the 60 metre indoor dash or the downhill 5 furlongs at Epsom or Goodwood. But we none of us have got all day.

I'll be taking the Harnoncourt Brandenburg Concertos upstairs next, probably with Petula Clark. Once it's been established that it's a suitably removed eyrie in which to consider such things, I can hardly wait to make those Haydn Piano Sonatas, as below, the music in residence.