The violist Krzysztof Chorzelski gave a short introduction before the concert and he said how draining they find it to play the  Op. 95; and I’m not sure that the  Op. 127 after the interval caught fire in quite the same way (though in any other circumstance you’d say it was the terrific performance you’d expect from the Belcea). But the first half of the evening was perhaps the most stunning live performance of any chamber music that I’ve ever heard. I’ve been to a lot of concerts by the truly great Lindsays in their heyday, but this more than bore comparison. Extraordinary indeed. The recordings when they come should be something else.

Meanwhile, let’s contain our patience! Here’s some other recordings to recommend, that can be mentioned in the same breath — the new two CD set of Schubert from Paul Lewis, the D. 850 Sonata, the great D. 894 G major, the unfinished ‘Reliquie’ D. 840, the D.899 Impromptus — and last but very certainly not least the D. 946 Klavierstücke (try the second of those last pieces for something magical again).  By my lights, simply wonderful. I’ve a lot of recordings of this repertoire, but these performances are revelatory. Which is a rather feebly inarticulate response, I do realize — sorry! But if you love Schubert’s piano music then I promise that this is just unmissable.

[Added later. You can also, for the next few days, listen to them playing the Schubert Quartettsatz and "Death and the Maiden". More great stuff. Thanks, BBC!]

It can be irritating though — can’t it? — to hear tell of great concerts that you’ve now missed (and couldn’t have got to anyhow). So let me mention something else which is quite wonderful in a different way, the Pavel Haas Quartet’s Dvořák disk. Hardly a discovery by me! — it’s the recently announced new Gramophone Recording of the Year. But it really is astonishing. I’ve always thought the old performance of the “American” quartet by the Hollywood Quartet was in a league of its own (one generation from the shtetl, is it fanciful to hear the tug of a vanished Europe in their playing?). But this new recording from the young Czech quartet is at least as great. I’m bowled over.

Though strictly speaking, I’m not retired till the end of next month. But apart from wrapping up a couple of reports as chairman of examiners, job duties are all done. And I’m on track for getting out of my office in the next couple of weeks and making room in my study at home for what I want to move there. I guess I could now just pack up the remaining office books, perhaps four medium boxes worth of them, and stash them in the garage. But that would be a Bad Move. Best not to keep postponing decisions. The trouble is, however, that I keep getting sidetracked into actually dipping in and reading the things.

And there a few box files of old lecture notes to dispose of. Gosh: did I really once know about all that stuff? For instance, 30 year old intro moral philosophy lectures anyone? Am I really going to type them up and put them on the web? Would enough people be much interested if I did? No, and no. So into the bin with them. Easier said than done of course. That’s part of me that’s gone. But needs must.

All that sorting out takes time, too. So, as I said, a busy time. But in good way. And some of the sorting out at home has been accompanied in the most enjoyable way, listening to Haydn. At my retirement drinks party, I was presented inter alia with the boxed set of his complete symphonies (the Adam Fischer/Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra recordings — a mere 33 CDs to explore). Which is just perfect while fossicking about trying to decide  what books to keep, what to give away. So thanks again, everyone who contributed so generously. I started with Symphony no. 1 and am slowly working my way through. From the outset, a delight and very rewarding.

But then, on a quite different scale of length and emotional intensity, she is joined by Paul Lewis for a stunning performance of the Schubert Fantasie D940. And this is surely as good as it gets: two of the greatest Schubert pianists seemingly as one in their shared vision of the piece. Just wonderful.

But I got to see the quartet playing live for the first time tonight in the very intimate setting of the Peterhouse Theatre here in Cambridge (part of a series of concerts which includes the  remarkable prospect of Viktoria Mullova playing in this tiny space which seats less than 200 people). In their new line up — with a new second-violin — they played the first of the late Haydn Op. 77 quartets, the Grosse Fuge(!), and then after the interval  the first Rasumovsky. All jaw-droppingly good (though I confess I do prefer hearing the Grosse Fuge played as the culmination of Op. 130; coming at it without the preparation of the journey there, it can seem too extreme, too outlandish).

The Belcea’s Rasumovsky in particular was as good as I have ever heard, live or on disc — everything that that recent feeble performance by the Endellion wasn’t. Passionate, by turns driven and etherial, utterly engaged (and stunningly together given the very recent change in line-up, with an intense rapport).

Music doesn’t get better than a great quartet in full flow; and quartet playing doesn’t get better than tonight’s.

When we lived in Sheffield, we were spoilt by being able to go to see the Lindsays in their prime (and we also got to see other quartets visiting the series of concerts they organized, from the likes of the Tokyo Quartet, down to new young ensembles just starting out). Coming to Cambridge we missed all that a great deal. We tried early on going to see the Endellion, the quartet in residence here, but really didn’t enjoy the experience. But perhaps we were disposed to find fault and find them over-rated: and perhaps we were too swayed, as well, by the marked differences between the Sheffield occasions and the Cambridge concert in ways that were no fault of the quartet — the very much less intimate setting of the concert hall here, the stiffness of the antique audience.

Well, a fair number of years further on, with various people encouraging us to give them another chance, we went to hear the Endellion again last night. The audience was as stiff as before. And as for the music? … “lacklustre”, said Mrs LogicMatters. You can tell she is kinder than I am.

They played the Haydn Op 33, no. 1, lacklustre indeed at the outset, and only just about getting into it by the last movement. Then Shostakovich’s 8th quartet (which is a quite startling piece, and admittedly their best effort of the night — but Mrs LM had heard the Takacs Quartet play this quartet while we were in NZ, and she thought them in an entirely different class). Then after the interval the First Rasumovsky. Sigh. This was really pretty thin and unconvincing stuff (especially from the leader), with even the aching slow movement failing to grip the soul. If they’d been a recording they’d have been switched off long before the end.

Or is this unfair? I’ve just been listening again to the Vegh Quartet playing the Beethoven; heart-stopping eloquence. And within reach I’ve more stunning recordings by the Busch Quartet and the Hungarian Quartet, and equally stunning newer recordings by the Lindsays in two versions and the Takacs (not to mention three or four other pretty good versions). So is it that, those paradigms having become so  familiar, I’ve just become primed to expect almost impossibly much from a live concert? (Does the easy availability of the best performances of the last seventy or more years tend to spoil our ability to enjoy anything but the extraordinary?)

I really don’t think it is that at all. I’ve been, for example, to concerts by young quartets who perhaps have quite a way to go, yet which have been just wonderful — where you are swept along for a couple of hours by their vision of the music, by their intense desire to communicate with their audience, by the sense of a shared journey. But last night was not even close to that. The Endellion remained at a distance, bowed stiffly in their tail coats, and walked off-stage just leaving me deeply disappointed.

A bit of background first. I recently re-organized my very small study at home and bought a new iMac. And I’ve found myself listening to music a lot through the surprisingly-not-too-awful speakers on the computer. (I should say that, for someone with something like a thousand classical music CDs, I’ve put up with some really crap music playing systems, and the one I had in my study before rearranging stuff was pretty hopeless: even listening through the iMac’s speakers was about as good.) And I really liked a lot having the music coming from in front of me as I worked at the computer, rather than from shelves to my side. So I started investigating the options for improving things with desktop speakers actually designed for “near field” listening. The reviews for the B&W MM-1 are extremely good, with the price point being the only clear negative for many reviewers. I asked in the Apple Store, and — this is worth knowing, as it was a surprise to me — their “14 day open box returns” policy applies to everything they sell apart from software, including non-Apple kit. I knew from my experience of buying a 27″ iMac and then trading down to a 21.5″ that it really is a no fuss policy, and so it really is a no risk option to take home a pair of these speakers and try them out.

One or two reviews had  mentioned their performance on classical music at relatively low volume being particularly good: this recommendation certainly ticked the boxes for me, because that conforms exactly to my study listening habits.

But of course ‘classical’ could mean anything from Bruckner symphonies to early Venetian lute music (well, both are “classical” in the all-embracing sense that seems to be used in hi-fi reviews); and my tastes are nearer the latter — which is pretty exposing stuff. How do the speakers fare in practice on the kind of music I listen to? Here’s some reactions. The warm positives (just a selection of examples):

• Brendel playing Schubert impromptus (his later, digital recording): amazing, revelatory sound (whether playing the CD or imported into iTunes with AAC at 192Kb).
• Perahia playing the Goldberg Variations: similarly excellent.
• Felicity Lott singing Schubert (the old IMP CD): again, revelatory.
• Mullova playing Bach partitas — jaw-droppingly good quality sound.
• Lindsays playing Haydn Op.54, no.1 (which I happen to be listening to as I write this): extemely real, natural sound. Difficult to fault.
• Haydn, Symphony 35, AMA conducted Hogwood. Again quite excellent.

Sort-of-negatives:

• I happen to have 128KB MP3s of the Alban Berg Quartet playing Beethoven: these didn’t sound at all good. Not the speakers’ fault of course, but they do expose less-than-high-quality digital sources.
• I wouldn’t normally sit at the computer listening to opera, but I did try the speakers on some opera CDs. With the speakers only a couple of feet from your head, the opera seems to be taking place in an odd location and felt uncomfortable (you can in real life sit very up-close and personal to chamber music and even small classical orchestras, as you might do e.g. in the Sheffield Crucible Studio’s ‘music in the round’; but you want opera coming from further away! Oddly I preferred listening on headphones, where there is no definite location. I got the same effect with Solti’s recording of Schubert’s Great C major — but again not what I’ll be listening to at my desk.

So my summary verdict: if you want decent reproduction of chamber music, piano, song — small intimate music — then these small speakers made for intimate up-close listening seem pretty wonderful: as I suppose they should be for the price. They do certainly seem to live up to reviews like this one. As, as I said, I’m no hi-fi buff, and it wouldn’t have taken a great deal to beat what I was using before hands down and cheer me up: so your mileage could vary. However, I’m very happy with them. They certainly won’t be going back to the Apple Store …