I spent most of last week in Brussels, giving a talk, creeping around in the office of my hosts and sitting in on some of their meetings and catching up with their (good) news and their (even better) gossip, and wandering about in Brussels taking photos.

One of the things I like to do in unfamiliar cities is buy a classical CD as a souvenir, so when, on Wednesday, I chanced upon an all-classical CD shop I went in and said: I've got a huge classical CD collection, but I'm looking for a souvenir of my stay here, what can you suggest? The man suggested this CD of the string quartets of the Belgian composer Joseph Jongen (1873-1953). (Scroll down to the fourth CD listed here.) The price was under a tenner in my English pounds. It wasn't a label I'd ever seen before. The man said the music was "interesting". I like string quartets, both the things themselves, and the noise they make. Done. This nice man sold me precisely the kind of thing I wanted him to sell me. Go capitalism.

And they are interesting. The first (1894) is very definitely late nineteenth century, and the second (1916) is equally definitely early twentieth century, but both have many individual moments. The first movement of the second in particular reminds me very much of Ravel, and in particular of his string quartet (completed in 1903). I am now listening again to the first one, and that reminds me of Brahms, although not so much his string quartets, more the fruity sonorities of the quintets and sextets.

That's all I'll say about these pieces now. It always takes me a while to get to know music of any interest or complexity. I don't even know if Jongen's second quartet was his last. I guess yes, but am not certain.