When she was seated in what was now becoming a favoured stool and he had poured the drinks, gin and tonic for her and plain tonic water for himself, she broached the subject of dinner.
"I really don't want you to go to the trouble of you cooking me another meal, however good the last one might have been, but I really cannot face eating in a pub, or a restaurant, for that matter, tonight. Perhaps another omelette or frittata, that would be quick and simple."
"Or Chinese, perhaps?" He suggested. "Or a seafood risotto? I have some crayfish tails in the freezer and some vongole, clams in their shells, which I brought back from Rome before Christmas; in a jar, it is true, but you try buying fresh clams anywhere except in an Italian or French coastal market. Yes, risotto it shall be, unless you have acquired a distaste for rice over the past thirty years." She smiled at the thought of someone of her extraction finding the staple food, the basic accompaniment to almost the entirety of Indian cuisine, somehow distasteful.
"I shall use Arborio rice both because I should but also to avoid my still lamentable attempts to cook Basmati, for of all your mother's excellent instruction! When would you like to eat? Eight? Or is that too early, too late?"
"Eight will be fine," she replied. "I doubt that you cook basmati any worse than my mother did; false modesty does not, nor did it ever, become you! It's five-forty-five now, so can we go and listen for a while to those awesome speakers of yours?"
"Sure, you know the way."
She was surprised to see him, on entering the lounge, start to move one of the chesterfields around. He positioned it about eight feet away from the speakers and slightly off centre so that the seat on the left hand side of the long sofa made a virtual apex of an equilateral triangle; the two angled speakers making the other two points of a perfect triangle.
"You sit there," he said, indicating the leftmost seat while he carried one of the occasional tables to the space to the left of her seat. A coaster for her gin and tonic appeared as if from nowhere. "I have heard this before so you can have the best seat. Some Vivaldi? It's old hat now perhaps, but I have an excellent recording of the 'Four Seasons' where the violinist's virtuoso passages really do make sparks fly." She nodded and sat down, careful to ensure that the glass of gin and tonic was centred on the coaster.
He walked to what she had thought were bookcases lined up against the wall and threw a number of wooden panelled doors open; there were row after row, shelf after shelf of jewel cases; there must be thousands of CDs in there, she thought. Muttering to himself under his breath, he scanned shelf after shelf looking for the correct CD until, finally, after about a minute pr so of searching, he found what it was that he was looking for and took it from the shelf.
"It's always an advantage," he said. "To store your CDs alphabetically by composer and then alphabetically by title but it's not very useful if you happen to forget that the particular CD which you are searching for has the title in Italian. It takes a while to go through a hundred or so spines that all have Vivaldi written on them!"
He walked across to the chrome cages and started to flick switches on the back of each cage. She could see the dim light of the valves through the mesh as they glowed with the electricity flowing through them. He ejected the CD tray from the player and carefully inserted the disc into the machine.
"Just need to wait a minute for the tubes to warm up." When he was satisfied that all was to his liking, he pressed the 'Play' button on the CD player and returned to the chesterfield, choosing the seat next to her. She playfully squeezed his knee in mock anticipation.
She had not attended too many concerts in her life; Wolverhampton was a little off the beaten track for established orchestras or ensembles to play there and amateur players never seemed to capture the essence, the richness of the music. She preferred to listen to her little stereo at home, a recording of von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, or Vivaldi as performed by the Academy of St Martin's in the Fields on traditional instruments or simply an anonymous concert by a composer that she had never heard of, let alone heard, on Radio 4. What she heard that evening truly astounded her; spread out in front of her, the soloist slightly in front of the orchestra and to one side, the orchestra itself in two, or was it three, ranks was an experience so close to that of a live performers in the same room as to be indistinguishable from the reality of the concert hall. She closed her eyes. Never had Vivaldi sounded so wonderful. The orchestra was not confined to the space between the two speakers but somehow had grown to be much wider, closer to its real width on a stage and how was that illusion of three dimensionality achieved, that depth; it was so awfully real.
She sat silent throughout the entire performance, eyes wide shut, her drink forgotten in the majesty of it all. As the final strains of 'L'inverno' died away and she opened her eyes once more, all she could utter, in breathless tones was: "Wow! Wow!"
"See, I told you that it was good," he said. He was sporting a grin that threatened to split his face apart. She took a few sips of her drink and held it in her lap as if further alcoholic solace would be needed sooner rather then later. She was clearly exhilarated, although most people suffered from the same lack of comprehension about how good it could be compared to their own music player or hi-fi.
"I am sorry," she said. "I just don't understand how it can sound like that. It had depth, space, every instrument was not only distinct but seemed to occupy its very own, clearly defined space; how is that possible. It was as though the orchestra was actually playing in the room."
"A combination of two things," he said. "One is your ears', and your brain's, staggering ability to not only pick up in what direction a sound is coming from but they can also tell how far it is away from you. Most of the time, we don't take much notice of the subtle differences between the sounds; it's only when someone tries to purposefully capture the depth and width of a soundscape, that your brain is forced, impelled, to take notice, it can't help it once the impetus is there. The second reason is the quality and fidelity of the recording techniques and equipment used and whether it is truly a live performance, whether in the studio or the concert hall, and then how accurately the equipment you play the recording on captures the fidelity of the original recording. Not all recordings sound as good as this one, in terms of the illusion of space and I'm not sure if sampling rates and digital media haven't made matters worse instead of better.
"We've probably got time to play a little Prokoviev, Romeo and Juliet, on vinyl!" He added after a short pause.
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