I had an interesting day today. A fellow guitarist I 'met' over the 'net, Ivor, invited me to his house. He lives in Middlesex, right at the boundary of London, in a nice but small-looking suburban house (at least from the outside). After we entered and I met his wife, he showed me his garden, which had to be at least double the size of the interior of his house (he told me that he calls his house the 'Tardis', after Dr. Who's hideout which has an interior 100 times larger than the exterior).

Ivor is 71, although he looks in his 50's. After a light lunch with his wife, we got down to the business of checking out his guitars and playing for each other. The thing we have in common is that we both take lessons with Carlos, although apparently he has been playing for almost 50 years, before taking up classical guitar seriously in the past year or so. He has at least 3 concert guitars (at least, he showed me 3 of them), and it was interesting to try them, as I have essentially not touched any other guitar apart from my own in the past couple of years. Still, it must be said that I still prefered my own guitar, which I guess is probably because I have been accustomed to it for so many years.

Ivor is very well-travelled, and he has been to the Far East many times, and this is reflected in the furnishing of his house, which isn't large, but very nice. We swapped stories with each other, and I was there for a few hours, just playing for each other and talking about music.

In the evening, I met up with Jane outside the Royal Academy of Music. She had managed to get a couple of tickets to the first round of the London International Piano Competition, which was being held in the Duke's Hall in RAM. It's been some time since I went out for a concert or recital, and here was the prospect of listening to a half-dozen of the most promising pianists from all over the world. The Duke's Hall isn't a very large hall, but it certainly has an atmosphere, with paintings of musicians lining the wall, large chandeliers overhead and a full-scale pipe organ just hidden away behind some partitions. A Steinway concert grand piano was the solitary object on the stage, and we took front-row seats just to the left of the piano, which allows a good view of the pianists' fingers.

There were 5 pianists in the session we went to; the first was Lithuanian girl, and there was a German guy, two Russian pianists (one guy and one girl), and one girl with her nationality listed as Israeli but with a Russian name. Each pianist has about 30 minutes of music to present, selected from a given list, although there were no repetitions of repertoire among the competitors of the present session.

It's extremely interesting to be able to listen to several different pianists one after another... in normal concerts, the listener has to contrast the musician with others from memory. Overall, all the competitors were superb pianists... but the difference in their styles were definitely there. The Lithuanian girl and Russian girl were in my opinion the best of the evening... both were technically superb, yet played with feeling and panache. The Russian guy was a bit of a robot unfortunately... he was clearly nervous, and the nervous energy transfered well into Lizst and Bach, but when he play a Schubert sonata, it was totally obvious that he didn't have the delicacy and lightness of touch to play it properly. The German was not bad, and I enjoyed his Romantic approach, but he seemed to be in love with his sustain pedal, which totally ruined his Bach.

Overall, it was an enjoyable evening, and I will probably be going to the grand finals in about 10 days....