Some people go away for foodie weekends or mini-painting holidays. I spent last weekend in Millport. It is a small town on a small island in the Clyde which was, in the past, a holiday destination for the Glasgow masses especially during the last fortnight in July (when all the factories shut for their annual holiday.)
These days everyone flies Easyjet to Spain for the sunshine. But for the likes of me ... well ... it was Costa Clyde last weekend. And the sun shone!
These days everyone flies Easyjet to Spain for the sunshine. But for the likes of me ... well ... it was Costa Clyde last weekend. And the sun shone!
And this is where I stayed. Full location details are here. My little room is dead centre in the above photo (which I took with my iPhone). The rooms were built to house nuns. They have long gone but there is accommodation here on a B&B basis (details here). I stayed 3 nights as part of a Music Appreciation weekend. (It wasn't called that, but that, essentially, is what took me there. Also I knew the man in charge of the weekend junket.)
Some people collect stray cats. This fellow collects pianos, well, actually, keyboard instruments as one is a harpsichord. So nothing for it, but we - 13 of us - spent the weekend hearing about the pianos he has there. The finest of the collection was the Bösendorfer (a grand piano with the elegant and subtle sound of a Steinway). The piano's home is in the Cathedral.And while we were at it, we were given a blow by blow (forgive the pun) demonstration of the Frederick Holt organ (1867) which was obtained from Logie Pert Church near Brechin (east of Scotland) and installed in the Cathedral after a great deal of work restoring it (work done by Wood of Huddersfield).
This is his restored Erard built in c. 1875 but using the design and techniques of 1850, i.e. wooden frame with iron braces (not cast iron frame) and not overstrung, i.e. strings are all vertical, side by side, not 2 crossing layers which is what you see in all the pianos of today. (See how the wires cross in the photos of the inside of my piano here. This is a previous post on this blog.) This previously neglected paino was restored by Roy O'Neill of Helensburgh and is in the common room of the guest accommodation wing.
The weekend finished with an afternoon recital by this chap - Graeme McNaught. Actually he also played the Erard for us on Saturday night.I had never heard of this pianist before and when he said, talking to us at our little chamber concert in the common room the previous night, that the piece he had just played - Wedding Day at Trondheim by Edvard Grieg - he first played aged 9 years old, my jaw dropped! Yes, I see from googling for information (see here ) he is, indeed, up there in the stratosphere! He is a big Schubert fan - fiendishly difficult stuff!
1 comment:
Your friend sounds like a real artist. My father also liked pianos – there was one in my bedroom, one in the guest room, one in the living room and one in the den. If all the pianos were played at once, my mother would run out screaming in the back yard (we were not artists!). Sometimes my father would try to play an old violin he had, that would make the cats running too.
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