Lucas (2)

"The solo singing was wonderful. As Jephtha, James Gilchrist offered... virtuoso bravado..." So today's paper describes (with 5 stars) Tuesday night at the Barbican . And yesterday's Cheltenham lieder recital by that same tenor might, I feel, be described in similar terms.

It could be three years since I attended a Music Society event at the Pittville Pump Room, I'm rather ashamed to say. (Their programmes deserve more loyal support.) And I wasn't really looking forward to last night's mixed bag with any great relish, having been critical of a programme Gilchrist gave at our July 2012 Festival.

As it turned out, I was taken aback not just by the beauty of his voice, but the confidence and variety of tone he brought to his performance - settings of Shakespeare, Byron and Heine by Wolf, Mendelssohn(s), Loewe, Liszt, Grieg and Schubert in part one, and a glorious Dichterliebe after the interval.

The link to my illustration? Tenuous: Gilchrist started adult life as a doctor, and the portrait is supposed to represent another such, St Luke. It's one of the images in a garish-looking East window dating from 1850 in the Norman church I visited on Wednesday, All Saints, Salperton. The glass, "possibly" - Pevsner - by David Evans, is much eclipsed by two splendid late Kempe windows in the South wall.

Martinů

We took our Japanese student lodger along to the Cheltenham Music Society's concert last night, at which the Martinů Quartet played - not Martinů, but Smetana, and also (as an encore) a scherzo from a quartet by the little known (here at least) František Škroup. This second part of their programme we generally thought preferable to the first: Mozart K.590 and Beethoven Op.135. Not that there was much wrong with, in particular, the Beethoven: it's just that - having heard the Takács last month - we are currently feeling spoilt where pieces in the mainstream repertoire are concerned.

The quartet's cellist reminded me of someone: when I woke up this morning, I realised who it was, seeing a photograph of Elizabeth Gateley, my great-grandmother as a young, rather severe-looking bride. Not a musical lady, though, at least so far as I know, and certainly not Czech.