I arrived a few minutes earlier than normal, hoping to get a seat stage right for a change, so I could see the pianist’s hands at work from behind. Too bad I hadn’t remembered that it was a string quartet playing, not a pianist. No wonder I could get the seat I thought I wanted, as the other regular attendees scurried stage left, where the quartet was to be positioned.

One advantage to sitting on the right side, I initially rationalized, was that I was near the little booth where Dave Schwan sits each week to host WFMT’s live broadcast of the program. Of course, during the music, he just sits there, not doing or saying anything. So it really wasn’t that special for me to be sitting near him (or for him near me, I imagine).

The Avalon String Quartet led off with Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes from Florence Price’s Five Folksongs in Counterpoint. That mouthful takes almost as long to say as the four minutes it took the quartet to play it. The selection reminded me that it will soon be St. Patrick’s Day, when no one will be drinking only with their eyes, although some will undoubtedly be blind drunk.

The second selection was Beethoven’s beautiful String Quartet No. 9 in C Major. I could see that at least one member of the quartet was using a tablet, instead of paper, to read the music. Beethoven surely didn’t see that coming, whether or not he was drinking with his eyes. (For an interesting article on issues related to this use of tablets, see https://www.inverse.com/article/10176-can-classical-music-escape-sheet-music-only-if-tablets-can-keep-tempo)