![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiYesterday we headed in to London. We had tickets for a concert by the Budapest Cafe Orchestra, but were hopeful of getting in to the British Museum's Troy exhibition. No such luck on the latter; it was sold out for the day. Instead, we went up to the prints room, showing the de' Barbari View of Venice, drawings by Piranesi and late nineteenth/early twentieth century French prints. One or two of the Piranese drawings looked like Escher with their convoluted and repetitive staircases and bridges, but without the logical contradictions. I particularly liked the Riviere View of the Eiffel Tower (#3, La Tour en Construction Vue du Trocadéro) that was on display, with a Hokusai print for comparison shown alongside.
Later we headed south of the river, met up with F and failed to get a table at our planned restaurant, but made do with the perfectly acceptable GBK next door. It does feel as though making reservations for everything has become much more the norm in the past few years, but the commitment is two-way and removes flexibility from plans. Anyhow, we headed even further south, to St Luke's, Battersea, for the concert, which was also a sell-out. I can't remember exactly where I heard of the BCO - it may have been on In Tune (a certain Sean Rafferty supplied a brief testimonial in the programme), or else independently R may have forwarded me a link to one of their YouTube videos, or both; in any case I'd been on the look-out for a concert at a venue within reach. As the programme explained, "the Budapest Cafe Orchestra shares as many blood cells with the folk of Hungary as the Penguin Cafe Orchestra does with the web-footed fellows of Antarctica." But, interestingly and more pertinently, an observation from BBC Celtic Connections says "[the BCO] are musically connected to the culture rather than culturally connected to the music". The music was a fun, adapted mixture of Balkan and East European folk, klezmer and gypsy, with some re-engineered classical thrown in, including a hat-tip to Taraf de Haidouks, a rendition of Misirlou featuring the saz, an arrangement of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, the Concierto de Aranjuez, and, for violin, double bass, guitar and accordion, possibly the strangest arrangement of Mahler's Adagietto I am ever likely to hear, proving that great music can be adapted endlessly and retain its greatness. Engineering work and tube strikes made the journey back rather onerous, but it had been worth the effort.
Later we headed south of the river, met up with F and failed to get a table at our planned restaurant, but made do with the perfectly acceptable GBK next door. It does feel as though making reservations for everything has become much more the norm in the past few years, but the commitment is two-way and removes flexibility from plans. Anyhow, we headed even further south, to St Luke's, Battersea, for the concert, which was also a sell-out. I can't remember exactly where I heard of the BCO - it may have been on In Tune (a certain Sean Rafferty supplied a brief testimonial in the programme), or else independently R may have forwarded me a link to one of their YouTube videos, or both; in any case I'd been on the look-out for a concert at a venue within reach. As the programme explained, "the Budapest Cafe Orchestra shares as many blood cells with the folk of Hungary as the Penguin Cafe Orchestra does with the web-footed fellows of Antarctica." But, interestingly and more pertinently, an observation from BBC Celtic Connections says "[the BCO] are musically connected to the culture rather than culturally connected to the music". The music was a fun, adapted mixture of Balkan and East European folk, klezmer and gypsy, with some re-engineered classical thrown in, including a hat-tip to Taraf de Haidouks, a rendition of Misirlou featuring the saz, an arrangement of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, the Concierto de Aranjuez, and, for violin, double bass, guitar and accordion, possibly the strangest arrangement of Mahler's Adagietto I am ever likely to hear, proving that great music can be adapted endlessly and retain its greatness. Engineering work and tube strikes made the journey back rather onerous, but it had been worth the effort.