Handel Street
Coming back to our digs after a few hours at the Tate Britain, I saw this sign:
He’s probably my favourite composer; his arias for low voice led me to six years of voice lessons, every minute a pleasure. On Monday evening we’ll go to a concert at the nearby Foundling Museum in celebration of Handel’s 330th birthday, performed by the Academy of Ancient Music.
So, yes, this morning we ambled down to buy theatre tickets for tonight — a musical based on the Kinks (John’s choice) — and paused in Covent Garden to listen to an energetic string quartet play Vivaldi:
Then to the Tate where I used to go a fair bit when I lived in Wimbledon in 1977. I loved the Rothko room in particular but today I wanted to look at Turners after watching Mr. Turner on my birthday. And how glorious — the light, the pigments and textures…
I kept seeing things I’d loved as a young woman — the Spencers, the Sutherlands, a quiet Gwen John hung across the room from her brother Augustus’ s portrait of a Canadian soldier — and I realize now mine was a Modernist sensibility in the making. Those were the images which spoke to me and I still understand their vocabulary.
