We warmly welcomed Cyril Harrison back to our fold at our meeting on September 24. Bob Young, Bill Underwood, David Way and Clive Allen then alerted us to upcoming events before we sat back to listen to our own Tony Davies.

The subject of Tony’s talk was the composer Beethoven and he played a wide variety of his works. He explained that whilst growing up in South Africa, where his father was passionately fond of music, he tried to learn to play the piano but found the need to practice far too off-putting. Nevertheless, whilst on walk-about in London in 1959, learning to survive whilst cold and hungry, he was given a ticket by a kindly American to the Concert Hall where he started to fully appreciate Beethoven.

Tony played excerpts from some of the smaller works that demonstrated the dramatic contrasts in Beethoven’s music. At one stage he described how one piece was like building an aquarium and waiting for the fish – which appeared as the piano.

He played movements from a number of symphonies and we noted that those of us in the back row particularly liked the last movement of the 6th and that human voices are included in the 9th.

President Brian Melville thanked Tony for his wonderful presentation and congratulated him on his choice of the range of the great man’s compositions.

We meet next on October 1 at the Rowing Club Boathouse when we shall hear about a Touch of Nature followed on October 8 about the Vale Wildlife Hospital.

CHRIS DONOUGH