koincidence korner

Today, on our way to Staples to pick up a case of paper, we called in at a church rummage sale; it may come as a surprise to some that I was able to walk right in through the doors without the heavens being rent from side to side, etc., but there you are.

There wasn't a huge amount of worthwhile stuff on offer except a pretty substantial stash of Musical Heritage Society LPs; for those unacquainted with it, the Musical Heritage Society -- still going, when last I looked, though obviously these days with CDs rather than LPs -- is a kind of record club selling, at surprisingly reasonable prices, unusual classical recordings. Oh, they do all the standard stuff, although generally by non-headline orchestras and conductors from unexpected countries, but what make folk like me drool on coming across their records in, say, church sales are the arcane items.

Like, today, Solo Pieces for Double-Bass and Piano, played by Thorvald Fredin and Lars Roos.

Onto my heap of 14 other LPs it went. (They were 50c apiece, chortle.)

I suppose I must have been aware that music has been written for double-bass and piano, but it's not something I've ever very much thought of: I'm pretty certain I've never actually listened to any before today.

So here I was this evening enjoying Fredin's and Roos's performance while reading the book I'd just pulled from the guilt shelves, Janwillem van de Wetering's mystery Just a Corpse at Twilight. And in the latter I found, on page 29, our hero Henk Grijpstra listening to an album of music for -- you're way ahead of me on this, aren't you? -- piano and double-bass.

Granted, his album is jazz (by Bill Evans and Eddy Gomez) while the one still going on in the background as I type is yer classical, but . . .