Another Thursday, another lunchtime recital

18th April: Zoe Lethbridge - flute and Julian Collings - organ, perform a programme of original works for flute and organ including works by Frank Ferko and JS Bach.

Looking at the options as one o'clock approaches, there's a choice between a single concerto by Brahms at Munster Square, or a selection of pieces for organ and flute at St Pancras Parish Church. The organ is obviously a more enticing prospect. St Pancras recitals start when the church clock strikes a quarter past one, so there's time to get there without bunking off work early, and collect the handout with a couple of minutes to spare. It's up there, the white-haired gent on duty tells everyone as they come in, pointing at an apparently empty corner of the balcony. You'll have to twist round in your seat to see.

That makes for a very odd concert and might explain why people are walking out as well as in. Usually the place is reasonably full, not full as in every seat taken, but maybe fifty people or so. Today the number stabilises at just nineteen people, including me and the man in charge, scattered around the place. Some of them actually are twisted round to see something, but mainly they are just sitting and listening. That's one approach to music: sit well back, maybe close your eyes, and absorb the music. The architecture of the church is interesting, so at least there is something to look at. What I like though, is to watch the performers and get a visual sense that the music doesn't just exist in a vacuum: to actually see the concentration and skill that go into making it happen. The way things are set up this time, that experience is tantalisingly close but never quite realised.

Up in the gallery, where the public isn't allowed to sit, is the organ and the keyboard console, which is a big wooden box set away from the organ pipes, with the organist completely hidden behind it. Our flute player is almost visible, a willowy figure with crazy long hair, but she's hiding behind the music stand and most of the time all you can see is knees and the end of the flute. After a while I get up and walk along the side aisle to see if there is a better viewpoint. There isn't. Once the organ gets going, though, the music makes up for all that.

Lunchtime recital at St Mary Magdalene Munster Square

Thursday 11 April: an unexpected treat today at the lunchtime recital series at Munster Square, often just a piano recital. Arriving late and unwrapping my sandwich outside to avoid annoying people with paper rustling noises, some rather amazing singing is audible as I push through the inner vestibule door. The door snaps shut behind me, fortunately with a muffled swish rather than a bang. When the song ends it's permissible to walk around the back and find a seat on the far side of the nave, trying not to make the chair creak too much. The front row is empty as usual: I choose an end seat two rows back.The singer is soprano Charlotte Richardson. She cuts a striking figure, standing in the curve of the grand piano with the stained glass and religious iconography as a backdrop, with her big hair and widow's peak, filling the huge empty space with pure clear notes, punctuated with the hisses and glottal stops of sung German, unexpectedly rolling the Rs. She's singing nineteenth century pieces by Liszt and Schumann, and rather later pieces by Richard Strauss, sixteen songs in all, all of them presumably unfamiliar to anyone except a true aficionado of the genre.

For me, it's a touch of the unexpected magic that sometimes happens when you go to a recital knowing nothing about the performers or the music, and find yourself not wanting the moment to end. The songs have lurid titles: "I cannot grasp or believe it", "He, the noblest of all", "Now you have caused me pain for the first time". She explains the story of some of the them: Strauss's 'Die Nacht', she tells us, is about a woman and "her fears that the creeping shadows of the night, that steal away all colour and life from her room, will also steal away her lover..." Romantic histrionics, then, best appreciated in a language you don't understand. My sandwich remains half-wrapped, uneaten until it's time to go outside into the rain.

Lunchtime concert at St Pancras Parish Church

Piano and flute, yet again: a favourite combination for church recitals. One of the nice things about these concerts is being able to sit up front if you want to, seeing what's going on as well as hearing the music. The musicians sitting rigidly still or swaying to keep time, the contrast between delicate, complex fretting movements of the fingers, and the pianist hammering vigourously on the keys in the loud parts, then a hand poised in readiness for what comes next while the other hand plays alone - partly mechanics, partly deliberate dramatisation of the music, perhaps also the performers' unconscious expression of their involvement in playing it. Russian pianist Pavel Timofejevsky and Japanese flautist Kiyoka Ohara played chamber music pieces with the flute dominating, or perhaps I should say providing the leading expressive voice against the piano backdrop. A mixed programme: CPE Bach (son of JS) was forgettable but the rest was better. Schubert's "Arpeggione" sonata, Saint-Saens' Romance for Flute and Piano, and two of Roland Revell's delicate Trois Pensées - which seem to be completely unavailable as a recording, only as sheet music.

On this occasion I got a seat in the front row and took a photograph during one of the breaks for applause. It's the only time I've taken a camera - it's rather bad manners, as well as detracting from intent listening, which is really the only way to appreciate classical music - but just for once I wanted to capture the two performers, the Yamaha grand piano, the amazing spiral stair up to the pulpit and an equally amazing driftwood figure of Christ on the cross, in the background. Here it is.

Lunchtime concert at St. Pancras Parish Church

St. Pancras Parish Church hosts regular lunchtime concerts every Thursday. These are about an hour long and tend towards two or three performers playing classical chamber music, often of the difficult twentieth-century kind. Classical music is not at all what I normally listen to, but the atmosphere of the church and the evident dedication of the musicians adds up to a kind of magic.

The church is an impressive neoclassical building featuring a row of caryatids facing the Euston Road. The steps and entrance portico are used by a flower seller and rough sleepers, though not simultaneously. After the nearby Tavistock Square bus bombing in 2005, bunches of flowers were piled high on these steps.

Last week pianist Maria Razumovskaya performed Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. This was the original piano version, not the version orchestrated by Ravel. A grand piano on casters had been wheeled out in front of the altar for the occasion. Inside, the pews were maybe a quarter full, with space to spread out. Ms Razumovskaya is a recent graduate from the Royal Academy of Music in London, and she is evidently an accomplished performer. In contrast to her publicity photographs, she played with great seriousness, eyes half closed, not the slightest hint of a smile at any point. The drama built up along with the volume. She pounded that piano, making more noise than seemed possible. Pictures at an Exhibition has been criticised for clumsiness, even for ugliness, but she made it work. What could have been an uncomfortable half-hour on a hard wooden pew passed all too soon.