Joe's Commonplace book

2011 - Beginnings and endings.

2011-12-30T07:39:00.000-08:00

Well my fellow sufferers, what a year we have had and still a day to go. But wait tis time to reflect and make firm resolve to do better in the year that cometh. First though let me detail what things have passed of note to me and mine.

Beginnings and endings are the stuff of end of term reports and this will be no different. Endings first. Sandy our aged coloured funny cat passed away after twenty or more strange years and not a few glances at the exit door along the way. We hope that Muessa and Apollo will last as long and provide us with good feline company over our next few years. They are an odd couple, and their friendship is strangely close although they are not at all related.

The most important ending was Rachel's decision to call it a day in the NHS. She had been a consultant at the Royal Berks for 32 years and felt it would be a good time to let someone else have the opportunity to start a similarly long career. The department gave her a splendid send off which was hugely deserved. Maurus Rimmer and Chandy Verghese also retired this year leaving Carl Waldmann as the last of the old timers. It's a different world now and Rachel felt it was time. She has also decided to stop working for Guiseppe at the shoulder unit at the end of March and her stethoscope (or whatever she uses) will be firmly put in the back of the drawer.

However for her 2011 was a year of beginnings as well - a fifteen month spell of office as Ladies Vice Captain at Henley Golf Club, which leads up to her taking over as Captain this coming March. Let me state publicly that I hope the sun shines on her year and every thing she tries to do.

For Robyn, 2011 was the year she finally got onto the PGCE course and 2012 will see her starting her teaching career, somewhere I hope not too far away as the daddy and daughter bond is still strong. The icing on the cake for her year was of course her engagement to Ed. No wedding dates have been proposed as yet but a very nice sapphire and diamond, platinum ring is being shown to all who ask to see - and some that don't.

Donald has felt the effect of the recession on his job selling wines into restaurants and has taken the bold decision to give this up and relocate to Paris where he feels his wine skills and knowledge will earn him a living while he polishes up his French. Good luck to him. The economic outlook in the UK is pretty dire and shows no sign of improving so Paris may be a change for the better.

On the home front, there was a real ending in the front garden as we took down all four trees, including a 50 foot Cypress that was about 60 years old. A new lawn and a slow replanting of trees and shrubs will give us a more maintainable plot and it certainly lets in a lot more light. There are a couple of untidy areas at the back that may need the same brutal treatment.

Our summer trip to the Sierra Nevada in Spain now seems an age away and holiday plans for next year are still very sketchy. Rachel's golfing diary is crammed and a major summer trip seems unlikely. This could be the opportunity to explore bits of the UK that we have never visited. A Christmas week walk up the Icknield Way and along the Ridgeway in South Oxon showed what was possible.

We have heard some great music again this year with the Philharmonia at Basingstoke being on top form especially in their ground breaking Bartok series. However a couple of other concerts remain in my memory. The Colin Currie group playing Drumming by Steve Reich was amazing and a concert at the Barbican by Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer and Zakir Hussain was something really different and difficult to categorise. Musiskas from Budapest playing the folk music that Bartok would have heard on his collecting trips was another great evening. One resolution for 2012 is to try and widen my taste in music although I doubt opera will feature. Venice Classic Radio has been my companion for much of this year wherever I have an internet connection. They play very little singing and that's fine by me.

However as the rain falls and darkness descends on this gloomy December day in Reading, Rachel and I can be thankful that we are still both in good health and have enough money to do what we want. Maybe next year will be the one where prosperity can start to flourish again in the UK and give hope to all those whose 2011 has been blighted by recession and austerity. Maybe we can do our small bit to help. Who knows?

Thoughts on the death of a cat.

2011-11-22T04:07:00.000-08:00

Sandy died yesterday at the grand old age of 20. She had been ailing for some months and took a turn for the worse on friday so we gave her a temazepan which sedated her and made her last hours peaceful. We had arranged for the vet to euthanaze her yesterday evening but she cheated him out of his fee and died in her basket in the kitchen with the pair of us watching over her.

Pets become very much part of the family and Sandy was with us for well over half the time we have been in this house. 'Part of the furniture' does not really describe it adequately as she and Pepsi became integral to all the arrangements we had to make from shopping for food each week to organising house sitters when we were away. They joined us every meal time and generally sat well behaved on a spare chair or at the other end of the table especially when the radiator was on in winter. We now have to train their successors, Muessa and Apollo to learn the same manners.

I have not had any close experience of death and dying, my mother was 200 miles away when she died and I had not seen her for several weeks and she died before I could get to say goodbye. I saw more of Rachel's mother in her final months and was shocked by the indignity of it all.

Just watching this cat go from a proud old lady who would wash and groom herself regularly to a pathetic wreck, a mere bag of bones who could not even find the energy to go outside anymore reminded me of this human death and quite troubled me. Is this how we all end up or will an accident or sudden heart attack take us when we are still proud and strong? Cats are obviously smaller and lighter than us and she was still able to jump from the table to the kitchen work surface until her last couple of weeks, so in the big scheme of things she did not suffer too long. Humans by contrast can live for decades in a kind of second childhood dependant on the care of others without any real purpose for living.

Sandy outlived three companions although Pepsi and she were together for 16 or so years. Is living too long as problematic as not living long enough. Mr.Punch in his short life brought great pleasure to all of us but memories fade quickly. Some humans outlive all their peers and end up not knowing why they are still alive. When you go to the funerals of your dead friends' children, you know something is wrong. And with the human race now numbering over seven billion and predicted to reach nine over the next fifty years, the problems of ageing will become even more intense.

I grew up with a tortoiseshell tabby called Sandy and I named the kitten that Robyn proudly brought home all those years ago in her memory. Will I live long enough to enjoy a third Sandy cat - who knows?

Bournemouth SO / Karabits & Hagner

2011-11-14T14:34:00.000-08:00

Kiril Karabits is growing on me. Tonight with the BSO he gave us a a real treat with the great Bartok Concerto for Orchestra from 1945. However before that we had a first half of Brahms although not his second Symphony which we have heard twice recently - is Brahms this year's Shostalovich? No it was the Hungarian Dance no.1 as an opener and then his violin concerto. The first piece was really too short but this did have the benefit of allowing us to see and hear Viviane Hagner sooner than we might - and that was a good thing.

Miss Hagner is of a German musician with a Korean mother and was unknown to me. However with Karabits she gave a superb performance of the Brahms violin concerto. In the notes to the first BSO concert this year I read someone as saying that there were four great Romantic German violin concerti, Beethoven, Mendelsohnn, Brahms and Bruch. We now have heard three of these live and the Beethoven twice on the radio is the space of a few weeks. Of all the performances this was the best. Karabits kept the orchestral balance perfectly and Hagner played with for me just the right amount of control and passion. First rate all round.

After the interval we were treated to Bartok's last great orchestral works. A five movement symphony in all but name and given a worthy outing by the BSO. Despite this being the Philharmonia's year of Bartok, in Basingstoke and at the Festival Hall, this was as good a performance as you could wish. The woodwind and brass were great in the 'game of doubles' in the second movement and the cynicism of the Shostakovich theme in the fourth was scary. The final great fugue proceeded with all sorts of tunes from Bartok's past and if we don't hear any more of the great man's works this year this will be a fitting ending.

Again Bartok didn't fill the Anvil but those who came gave a great ovation to all the players and the orchestra applauded Karabits at the end - a loveley touch.

A week of music

2011-11-14T14:12:00.000-08:00

What a musical week it has been? Three concerts with a wide range of music from Mozart to late Bartok and some outstanding playing to boot. And I had only just come down off the cloud after listening to Uchida playing Schubert.

The Anvil - Wednesday 26th October. The Philharmonia are here again to continue their ground breaking Bartok series - Infernal Dance. Under Esa-Peka Salonen they are giving us a series of concerts devoted to Bartok's masterworks and some of the other music that influenced him. Here it was Debussy with his Apres midi d'un faun. Completed in 1894 the author of the programme notes makes a convincing case for this being the start of Modern music, pre-dating The Rite of Spring by a quarter of a century. After this Yefin Bronfman gave us Bartok's last piano concerto written as he was dying of leukemia in 1945 for his wife Ditta Pastory to play. An amazing piece full of virtuoso playing and fiery climaxes from the orchestra it is in a sense a culmination of one strand of Bartok's work. Bronfman is more than equal to the technical challenges and the Philharmonia responded well to Salonen's quiet but effective conducting.

After the interval we were treated to a semi-staged performance of Duke Bluebeard's Castle. This strange tale of the impossibility of man and woman living together was a strange present to Bartok's teenage first wife. However the quality of the music and the readable surtitles made it a compelling event. With Sir John Tomlinson as Duke Bluebeard and Measha Brueggergosman as Judith the whole piece was magnificently performed. I give top marks to all concerned but am sad that the Anvil was only half full.

The Concert Hall, Friday 28th October. Oxford Philomusica presented an all Beethoven concert on their first (I think) visit to Reading. Formed about 10 years ago by Marios Papadopoulos they are now the Professional Orchestra in Residence at Oxford University and are a smallish orchestra of top class musicians. They started with the Overture to Coriolan and then accompanied Stephen Kovacevich in the 4th Piano Concerto. Kovacevich is now seventy and is looking his age, but it did not show in his playing with a well-judged performance of a piece that I guess he has played so many times before. Papadopolous and the Philomusica gave him the space and time and I for one had no complaints at all. After the interval we heard the 4th Symphony to complete a programme that was the same as the first public performance of these two great works. Beethoven played his 4th concerto on that occasion in Vienna and this was the last time he played with an orchestra in public. A great evening and well received by a full concert hall - although quite a few seats had gone from the front rows to make way for an extended stage.

The Concert Hall, Saturday 29th October. The London Conchord is a small group of chamber musicians founded in 2002 with Julian Milford on piano, Daniel Pailthorpe on flute, his wife Emily on Oboe, Maximilliano Martin on clarinet, Nicholas Korth on horn and Andres de Flammineis on bassoon.
First up was Mozart's Quintet in E-flat major, K452 which was a real delight followed by Poulenc's Flute Sonata. This is obviously a party piece for Milford and Paithorpe and is wonderfully quirky and humerus. I will go in search of more Poulenc if this is how he can write.

After the interval we had yet more Beethoven. Variations on Mozart's theme from Don Giovanni 'La Cu Darem La Mano' for flute, oboe and bassoon. A light-hearted piece where musical themes and jokes get passed between the players giving them all a chance to shine, although the bassoon is at a bit if a disadvantage. The concert finished with the weightiest piece, Beethoven's Quintet in E-flat major, op 16. Beethoven obviously knew of and approved of Mozart's quintet for the same line-up and here he produced an early work (1796) showing all the mastery of the sonata form and the creativity that would lead to his later masterpieces. The London Conchord are a very talented and creative chamber group and gave a finely judged performance to a largely full Concert Hall.

Mitsuko Uchida plays Schubert

2011-10-19T01:35:00.000-07:00

Thursday 13th October, Reading Concert Hall.

What is there left to say about Mitsuko Uchida - she is one of the very finest pianists of our generation. With the retirement of Alfred Brendel from the regular concert platform she has taken over the Autumn slot at the Concert Hall where for many years he delighted us.

Her program comprised Schubert's last three great sonatas and was a repeat of her concert given in Salzburg in August. This was a rare privilege for and speaks highly of the regard she has for the ambience of the Concert Hall.

It is a mighty undertaking for any pianist and only the greatest and best prepared will be able to carry it off and she did - magnificently. She has her own style of playing where each note is given its own due weight and duration. It has a precision that can at times seem ascetic - almost spikey - and certainly the first piece the C-Minor D958 was played with a controlled intensity where other pianists would have let a flood of emotion flow. In the next the A-major D959 she opened up and in the 3rd movement scherzo and into the rondo finale she opened up and began to let the passion be felt.

After the interval in the B-flat major D960, we were treated to the full force of her emotion. This, perhaps one of Schubert's greatest works took on a life of its own as each theme was worked out and replaced with a new one and combined with references to earlier pieces and glimpses of Beethoven perhaps. And to think that they were written in the space of a few weeks just before his death in 1828 and then neglected for decades.

During the interval two regular concert attenders decried Uchida's performance, declaring that she had no feeling. They drank their wine and went home missing what to me perhaps was the finest piano performance I have heard this year and maybe a few more. It came to me at the end of the concert that had the whole concert, all three pieces, been played at that level of intensity it might have been more than Uchida could deliver. It certainly would have put a strain on the audience to follow and become engaged in the emotion for two hours or so. A full Concert Hall was treated to a masterclass that night and I hope there were a few young pianists there who would be inspired to achieve such a level of perfection.

RPO / Little / Dausgaard

2011-10-11T09:40:00.000-07:00

Monday 10th October at the Hexagon, Reading.

After Friday's first concert of the Anvil's concert season, we were back at the Hexagon for the first of the Reading classical series. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra are back again in 'residence' for another season. This time it is four concerts over the winter and spring starting with a programme with Tasmin Little playing the ever-popular Bruch Violin Concerto No.1 conducted by the Swedish conductor Thomas Dausgaard.

The Hexagon was pleasantly full with a couple of coach and school parties making up the numbers. Unlike the Anvil, there seems not to have been too much of a fall of in attendance - or was it just the Bruch / Little effect?

Dausgaard is a name that was new to me and he looked typically Swedish - tall and fair and athletic. He is the conductor of both the Swedish National Orchestra and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, but neither of these bands are known to me in the way that the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra is.

The concert started with a tone poem by Sibelius called En Saga. I have to admit that I am not the greatest fan of Sibelius and was wondering whether this was one written when he was sober or not. It was all very clever but left me a bit cold. I wanted something more lively to get the season off with a bang.

The Bruch is so well known that like Capuchon playing the Mendelsohnn on friday, I was expecting more - raw emotion and fireworks. Tasmin Little doesn't play like that and I felt she short changed us a bit in some of the virtuoso sections especially towards the end. However the rest of the audience were in raptures. Also she did not get a bouquet from the Hexagon - have local authority cuts got this bad? I'm sure the audience would all pay a few pence extra for a nice bunch of flowers.

After the interval and here comes another moan - £2.30 for a half of lager, Hexagon - you're having a laugh - we were treated to Brahms Fourth Symphony. Again a lovely well-known piece written when he was in his 50s. It was his last symphony although he went onto compose many masterpieces in other genres. It is full of great Brahmsian touches and nods to earlier works by himself and Beethoven of course. The RSO played quite well but I felt that somehow something was missing. The horns made a few too many slips and there were quite a few ragged entries. It all sounded a bit under-rehearsed and as if Dausgaard wasn't really in control. If Charles Dutoit can do it and Ashkenazy certainly can why should Dausgaard struggle? Who knows what makes a great conductor?

One real pleasure was to discover that Rachel's niece Marie Lloyd was playing second clarinet and we met up in the interval to catch up on all the gossip.

Bournemouth SO/ Karabits / Capuchon

2011-10-10T08:29:00.000-07:00

Friday 7th, October at the Anvil.

Well a new concert season opens with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under their young Russian conductor Kiril Karabits playing a popular programme of Berlioz, Mendelsohnn and Prokofiev.

Berlioz's overture to his opera Benvenuto Cellini is a lively piece full of different moods and tempi and the BSO coped very well. It was a splendid way to get us all going again.

They followed this with a performance of the Mendelsohnn Violin Concerto. The soloist was Renaud Capuchon whom we last heard playing piano trios with his brother Gautier. Both Rachel and I felt the performance was a little way from the best we have heard. We had difficulty really hearing the soloist in the finale despite being very close in the side balcony. One trouble with really popular pieces such as this is that we expect perfection - we know them so well - and the very good sometimes seems not good enough. Capuchon comes from Chambery and we had invited our friends Monette and Jean-Pierre to come and visit and come to the concert. Perhaps it was fortunate that they could not make it.

After the interval Karabits started out in his project to play (and record?) all the Prokofiev symphonies. The second movement is a lovely lyrical piece that seems very familiar - as if it is part of something else. The whole piece is wildly joyful and the BSO and Karabits played with real style and gusto. I look forward to hearing more of this venture.

Sadly the Anvil was far from full - is this the recession beginning to bite. I saw in the Telegraph a headline saying that private pensions are down by 30% and given that the vast proportion of the audience are pensioners, this looks bad for concerts such as this. The BBC cuts will also affect orchestras such as the Bournemouth as they concentrate on in-house performances and cheaper chamber music. Watch this space.

Benedetti at the RSM

2011-06-02T02:44:00.000-07:00

The Royal Society of Medicine lives in a splendid building on Wigmore Street just across from the Wigmore Hall. The music society puts on three concerts a year and is able to entice really top performers to play to its audience of largely retired medics. I remember with affection hearing the Belcea quartet and also John Lill play here. The concerts take place in a medium sized lecture theatre which has a fairly hard acoustic and is steeply raked so whilst viewing is good, the sound quality can fall off a bit. However last night we arrived early and got good seats five rows back with a great view and an intimacy with the sound.

Nicola Benedetti, Alexei Grynyuk and the Cellist Leonard Elschenbroich put on a splendid concert comprising Beethoven violin and cello sonatas and Rachmaninov's second trio.

First up was Benedetti and Grynyuk to tackle the Violin sonata in C.Minor Op30 No2. Let me state at the start that I love Benedetti and I think she is a breath of fresh air in the musical scene. Not only is she very easy on the eye but she plays with a fervent passion that is engaging. However she has a muscular approach to the violin and sometimes produces a harsh sound. This might be suited to Bartok and Prokofiev but at times was a bit tiring in the Beethoven and would be a disaster for Haydn or Mozart.

Next Elschenbroich played the Beethoven Cello Sonata inn D major Op102 No2. He does have a lovely tone and parts of the sonata were divine. In particular the fugue towards the end of the piece was beautifully done and the interplay between piano and cello was just magical.

After the interval the three of them returned to play their party piece, Rachmaninov's Trio Elegiaque No2 in D.Minor Opus 9. Written in 1893 when he was only 20 it was in memory of Tchaikovsky who had just died and had been a great influence on and teacher to the younger man. The Trio is in one long movement and is of massive proportions and requires high levels of virtuosity and endurance. This is especially true of the piano part which in typical Rachmaninov fashion is very technical and often very loud.

After the performance I met Alexei Grynyuk and joked with him that he had a very small orchestra to accompany the piano concerto, but on looking it up I find that the Australian pianist Kogosowski has arranged it as a concerto for piano and orchestra and has recorded it as such.

However all in all a splendid performance from the three of them and warmly applauded by a full house. Any reservations I might have about Benedetti in Beethoven were long since gone as she needed all the strength and muscle she has for the trio.

RSO & Zuckerman at the Hexagon

2011-05-11T01:33:00.000-07:00

Pinchas Zuckerman is a legend. Since the early 60's he has been at the very top of the international music scene with his violin playing and more latterly conducting. His 1969 performance of the trout with Du Pre, Barenboim, Perlman and Zubin Mehta is a treasured memory and now available on youtube for all to enjoy.

However all that said, I do have problems with soloists conducting the orchestra at the same time. I have seen Ashkenazy do it very badly and Andsnes only just get away with it with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. Zuckerman played the Beethoven violin concerto in D major with the RSO and received a huge ovation at the end so many others enjoyed it all.

The RSO were again on good form. The strings tackled Elgar's serenade with ease and the conviction of familiarity and were majestic in Beethoven five. Zuckerman obviously knows well what he wants from these pieces and the RSO are more than good enough to respond. They accompanied him well in the violin concerto as you would expect. If the players don't know the piece by heart they shouldn't be doing this job. But the turning away from the audience and the vague hand and violin waving didn't really seem to achieve much apart from distracting the audience's attention to the music. But this is minor carping as it is a wonderful concerto and I suspect Zuckerman could not play it badly if he tried.

The case of the Beethoven Fifth symphony is odd. The original programme published last year had Sibelius 2 on the menu and I could find no reason for the change. However as I have blogged before, these concerts get given precious little rehearsal time and I have a suspicion that the change may well have been because the Orchestra did not have time to get it under their belts and so a tried and tested favourite was chosen instead. If so the change worked and they gave us a sparkling performance taken at a breakneck speed by Zuckerman (32 mins in total). It was a great live performance but not one I think you would want in your record collection. However again this is minor carping as it was a splendid evening and Zuckerman can come again any time he likes.

RPO, Wordsworth & Abduraimov

2011-03-28T11:17:00.000-07:00

The Hexagon, Saturday 26th March 2011,

We were looking forward to this concert especially for the return of Behzod Abduraimov to play the Chopin concerton in F.minor. Abduraimov stood in at the last minute two years ago when Jean-Philippe Collard dropped out, himself being a replacement for Martha Argerich. Under the baton of Charles Dutoit, the RPO were very good that night and Abduraimov then only 18 and looking about 14 played his heart out in Prokofiev having just won the London International prize.

How then had two years treated him? Had he grown into a potential world class pianist and would the RPO under Wordsworth give as sensitive accompaniment as before?

First off though we had Brahms' hugely popular Academic Festival overture. My suspicion is that it was under-rehearsed and some strange choices were made. In the middle of the piece we suddenly had the brass playing comb and paper or kazoos - or that was how it sounded - very strange. The final Gaudiamus was great fun though and Brahms never fails to deliver in the big set pieces.

Then the Chopin. As we are always told this is an early piece and is really Concerto No.1 not 2. Abduraimov was superb. Flawless in the first two movements with a touch and sensitivity that I have not heard for many a year. The third movement is odd and I don't know it that well to tell what it should really sound like but this young man has already grown in musical stature even if not in physical one as well. Is he the new Askenazy? Will he follow in the footsteps of Richter and Brendel? Time alone will tell but it is obvious he has the talent.

After the interval we heard Elgar's Enigma variations and this confirmed what I suspected a the start. Wordsworth may smile and make pretty gesture with the baton, but the orchestra was not listening. My contact in the BBC concert orchestra who knows about these things is of the view that the big London Orchestras never have enough rehearsal time and it is a miracle they get anything right at all. His view of Wordsworth who often conducted the concert orchestra was really not printable. The Enigma variations are sufficiently well known for most folk not to notice the odd fluffs and mis-timings.

Come back Dutoit - all is forgiven.

CBSO and Jennifer Pike at the Hexagon

2011-02-19T04:00:00.000-08:00

I have not heard the CBSO before but obviously we are all aware of the great strides they made under Simon Rattle and it was with some anticipation that we went to the Hexagon last thursday to hear them under their current director of music Andris Nelsons to play a program of Beethoven and Vaughn Williams. Was this going to be another under-rehearsed provincial orchestra just making up numbers in the concert season or were they going to take it seriously?

We were not to be disappointed. Nelsons is a large Latvian trumpeter who has transferred to the conductors rostrum with some success. He shambled on stage wearing what can only be described as crumpled black pyjamas but once the music started his balletic and very forceful conducting certainly paid dividends. At the end of the concert the orchestra warmly applauded him which is not something you always see as orchestral players can be very critical of the man with the stick.

The concert began with a selection from the Beethoven's ballet Creatures of Prometheus. This was far longer than the average concert opening piece and was really great fun and well played.

But the real treat was to come - Vaughn Williams' The Lark Ascending being played by Jennifer Pike. She has grown up from the 12 year old Chethams' pupil who won the BBC young musician of the year nine years ago and whilst we came to hear her play I have to remark on the wonderful bright red dress she was wearing. It had a touch of flamenco about it and whilst she looked wonderful in it - she has grown up - I'm not sure it was quite right for the piece. We saw her a couple of years ago but I don't seem to have written anything about it here.

That said she played beautifully, almost flawlessly and Nelsons and the CBSO accompanied her with real sympathy. It is not a bravura piece to be played at full tilt and a large symphony orchestra could easily overwhelm the soloist but they allowed her play it her way. We will go a long way to hear better.

The second half was given over to the Eroica symphony, Beethoven's No3 in Eb Major. It is a major work in the development of music making a substantial break with the tradition of Haydn and what we might term classical and baroque music. The slow funeral march of the second movement in particular is like nothing that had gone before. The finale is magnificent and could well be seen as being written in praise of the heroic Napoleon except that Beethoven had pointedly and publicly removed the dedication from him.

The CBSO were very good - hardly a note out of place and Nelsons kept them all together and worked the climaxes beautifully. They can all come again.

Osbourne, Ibragimova & Gerhardt playing Schubert

2011-02-04T00:44:00.000-08:00

Sunday 30th January at the Concert Hall, Reading.

After the wonders and pyrotechnics of Bartok at the Anvil, Schubert Piano Trios might seem like a bit of a come down but this top drawer group brought out the best in these interesting pieces. They played Trio No.1 before the interval and No.2 after it.

They are off to the Wigmore Hall tomorrow to play the same programme and be recorded for the BBC - another public rehearsal foisted on us? Absolutely not. All three have been BBC new generation artists and it shows. If there were any wrong notes I didn't spot them. The playing was of the highest standard.

My only reservation would concern the lovely Miss Ibragimova. I am sure that she is destined to become one of the greats - made in the Mullova mould perhaps. However her playing while seated along with her two partners looked uncomfortable. I was wanting her to stand up and let the music soar - instead she was often crouched with a bent back playing to the floor perhaps not to overpower Gerhardt on the Cello. Certainly she looked in need of a visit to her Alexander teacher.

This minor reservation aside - it was a great evening. More like this please.

Bartok with the Philharmonia

2011-01-31T07:29:00.000-08:00

Friday 28th January 2011.

What a difference a week and 30 miles makes. After the high expectations and disappointments of the Halle concert, I came to the Anvil with a little trepidation. An email from the Anvil manager soliciting a larger audience did not help - was it that undersubscribed? Would the Philharmonia really have the time and interest to get to grips with this strange Hungarian genius's music. The answer in short was yes and what's more it turns out that this is a year long venture with several key partners to explore the whole of Bartok's legacy under the title 'Bartok's Infernal Dance'.

The concert got off to a good start with Esa-Pekka Salonen taking the Philharmonia through the ealy tone poem Kossuth at a jolly good pace. No lack of preparation here. Then we had Yefin Bronfman giving a master class in playing the first piano concerto. Bronfman and Salonen go back a long way and have recorded all the concertos with the Los Angeles Orchestra. The second movement is especially great fun with the piano and percussion playing a game of music tag - or should it be follow my leader.

Bronfman delighted us with a little Bach fugue as an encore and I set off to buy a programme. Regular readers will know how reluctant I am to buy concert programmes. They tell you little you cannot find on the web - the biopics of the performers are usually thinly disguised puffs from the agent concerned and the price £2.50 or £3 makes them very poor value. This time it was different. My £2.50 bought a guide to the whole season full of long well-written academic articles with original photographs and a timeline that places Bartok and his work in a wider context - superb value for money. It will be treasured.

After the interval Salonen tackled the full ballet score of the Miraculous Mandarin and what a great job he made of it. The orchestra played their hearts out and many were beaming with delight at the end. It is a complex and I suspect difficult to play piece and I for one will be getting a recording of it to find out just what it was I heard. What a contrast to the Halle and what a shame that the Anvil was only about half full.

Still while on the subject of under-rehearsal, a golfing chum suggested that the Halle were actually doing a public rehearsal at our expense. I had a wicked thought - this programme had been played the previous night at the Festival Hall - perhaps the London audience had to endure a public rehearsal so that we could hear the finished product.

The Halle Orchestra, Natalie Clein & Ritter.

2011-01-20T09:43:00.000-08:00

When after the concert at the Royal Northern College of Music I wrote that I had heard many professional orchestras play worse, I was not prepared for my opinion to be reinforced quite so soon. I have often thought that Manchester must be fairly unique in having two top class orchestras based in a non-capital city. Saturday night at the Hexagon has led me to have second thoughts. The Halle were poor. The pieces were under-rehearsed and were played with a distinct lack of passion or real feeling. I was not the only person to think that the young conductor Andre de Ridder was not really in control.

This is a great shame as the first concert I ever went to was by the Halle under Sir John Barbirolli at the old Free Trade Hall in Manchester when I was a teenager. I really hope that under their Principal Conductor Sir Mark Elder they put up a better showing. As the oldest permanent Orchestra in the country they have a lot of history to live up to.

The concert opened with opened with Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. This is a quietish piece and was competently played. They then moved onto the Barber Cello Concerto. Natalie Clein the soloist said a few words before the piece and expressed the opinion that very few of the performers on the stage would have played it before. It certainly seemed like that to me. A rehearsal or two might have helped. The slow second movement was lovely and Clein played well but the first and last movements were a real mess. The programme notes told us that Barber had put in all sorts of musical ideas and Ridder did not find any compelling narrative for the work. When I got home I had a look around for other rarely played Cello concertos and both Bliss and Walton wrote ones that were popular in their day. So if the people who choose the programmes for the Hexagon are reading this, how about one or both next season?

Natalie Clein played a lovely encore of a piece by Casals and we all retired for the interval to discuss what we had heard.

But worse was to come. The concert was slightly odd in having two pieces in the second half. These were Mozart's Overture to Don Giovanni and Brahms Symphony No.2 in D. Given how short rehearsal times are these days and the travelling time from Manchester, I can imagine the conductor saying something like 'You've played Mozart often enough - we'll move straight onto the Brahms.'

The Brahms was a bit better. It is not my favourite symphony but his first is and it was not until the final allegro that the orchestra found any real passion. There were far too many fluffs and breakdowns in coordination for the piece to be enjoyable. I spent most of my time waiting for the next wrong note.

After hearing the youthful enthusiasm of the RNCM orchestra, how very sad that it should all come to this. I really wonder if concert programmes are too ambitious and given the constraints of limited rehearsal time whether orchestras should develop a core repertory that they really can play.

The trip Oop North.

2010-12-20T03:09:00.000-08:00

The snow came again last wednesday and with our proposed trip to the Edwards family reunion coming up at the weekend there was much studying of the weather maps and forecasts. However we got there despite a blizzard north of Banbury.

After a quick cup of tea of with brother Martin it was off to Manchester to see the sights and lights and take in a concert. The Royal Northern College of Music were putting on a full scale concert with the student orchestra and a professional conductor in their superb concert hall just near the University.

They started with a commission from a composing student, Duncan Ward conducted by Gergely Madaras who is a conducting fellow at the college. This for a modern piece was surprisingly listenable - read my comments of John Adams and his ilk elsewhere.

Jac Van Steen took the podium for the rest of the concert. Anya Muston who is again studying at the college tackled to fearsome Bartok second violin concerto and earned a standing ovation from from the orchestra as well as the audience. I hope she goes far. She may not have the wow factor of Jennifer Pike or Nicola Benedetti but she can certainly play. The Orchestra may have been a little under-rehearsed for the piece but Van Steen got them through it very well. A great piece of music and very well played.

After the interval and isn't it nice for the orchestra to mingle with the audience and queue for their coffees along with us, they played Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances Op 45. This was one of his very last works and while using the Dies Irae motif throughout in various forms it is a really an exemplar of the late high romantic style and wonderfully tuneful and often very loud. The college can afford to put out a large band of musicians and the hall is not al that large.

A wonderful evening and one of the best concerts of the year. I have heard professional orchestras play much worse that the students and I am making an note of to try to get along to more college performances.

It snowed whilst we we at the concert and the drive back to Wythenshawe was interesting. Why do artic drivers think they can still drive at 60mph when everyone else is doing a very careful 25?

The next day was the family dinner at Dowd's in Glossop. Unfortunately Robyn and Ed couldn't make it as they could not get out of the Thames Valley due to the snow. Donald arrived safely by train from London and we all foregathered at in the private upper room at Dowd's. They served a splendid meal and there was much gossip and jollity. We may need to consider having such reunions in the summer when travelling is easier.

2010 - Another year slips by.

2010-12-20T01:58:00.000-08:00

2010 for Rachel and I has been a year of beginnings and endings, of looking backwards with gratitude and forwards with anticipation. On the whole it has been a good and productive year if not a really memorable one.

One important ending of a sort for me was marked by my leaving the Lib Dems. I had joined the party in the heady days of Charlie Kennedy when it seemed like they were poised to become a really important force for progress and a more radical party than Labour had ever aspired to be over the last couple of decades. It all fell apart for me over an clash of local personalities but I guess I could see which way the wind was blowing and the parties ascent to power as bag men for David Cameron and George Osborne has torn the blinds from the eyes of huge numbers of us who have supported and worked for the party. To say I have become disenchanted or disillusioned would imply I was previously enchanted or had illusions. I thought I regarded the party with a cynical and suspicious eye but even I was not prepared for how quickly the jibe of vote LibDem and get a Tory came true both here in Reading and in Westminster.

I have redirected my modest financial contribution to the New Economics Foundation. Their mission to devise an economics that puts people and the planet first is as close to my own ideals as I am likely to find. I had read Wilkinson and Pickett's book Spirit Level early on this year and regarded it as perhaps the most important contribution to the argument for social and political change that I had read in a decade. However it has certainly been trumped in this area by Joseph Stiglitz's magisterial book Freefall which dissects the world's financial system and shows why and how this recession has come about and then tries to put it back together in a more sustainable way. Cameron and Osborne's huge gamble with the British economy shows no sign of having learned anything from the lessons of the last few years and certainly shows no glimmer of knowing what kind of a new order should be put in its place. The ending of the old New Labour regime has not thrown up anything that gives me confidence that politics in Britain can or even wants to change. Perhaps the election of Caroline Lucas in Brighton was the first sign that somewhere, some people are getting the message. However I search in vain for any other signs of green shoots - it could be a long political winter especially if the markets turn against us as they have against Ireland.

For both our children it has been a time of change. Robyn finally bought a house together with her Ed and they are busy making it into a place of their own. She continues to work as a classroom assistant at Chiltern Edge school and is carrying on trying to get a foot onto the teaching ladder although it is a difficult problem for her. Ed has had a very busy year travelling all over Europe and now the Middle East for his American company. Things look very good for the pair of them.

Donald has had his own ending of a sort. He had come to feel he had got as much as he could from the restaurant where he had been working for the past couple of years and needed a break to explore other avenues. He therefore took himself off to Australia for six weeks and went and visited large numbers of vineyards and wineries. He is now back in Reading and trying to put some flesh on the bones of these ideas. Whether the economic current climate is the right time to be doing this is an open question. However he has had a minor success in that he was given an award - a giant medal - by the wine makers of Tokaj in Hungary at a ceremony this autumn. He is now exploring an option to become the UK PR for Tokaj and there is talk of a restaurant / bar / cultural centre to publicise Hungarian food and wine. Again whether London needs any new restaurants is open to debate.

Rachel has had a very busy year at work and at play. Her three sessions a week for the NHS have been particularly heavy and this has led her to finally accepting her mortality. She has tendered her resignation and will be finishing at the Royal Berks at the end of next March after 32 years. You get less for murder as they say. Her new beginning is of course at the golf club where she accepted Caroline Archibald's request to become her Vice Captain in 2011 and then Ladies Captain in 2012. As with everything she does she is throwing herself into it 110% and so I shall still be able to maintain a quiet life of study and contemplation. Well someone has to do it.

Sandy our twenty year-old cat has survived another year and by dint of not exerting herself too much and keeping warm and well fed has defied the passing years. However a month or so ago at the beginning of November her life was turned upside when Mr.Punch arrived. He was then about 6 weeks old and a little on the small side for a kitten but what he lacked in stature he made up in energy. Hyperactive is the only word to describe him - we were seriously looking for a pussy Ritalin to combat his FDHD - feline destructive hyperactivity disorder! The name Mr.Punch comes from an old joke from Cheadle Hulme School days. The woodwork teacher Mr.Alty used to count Ack, Doh, Tee, Cha, Pun and he said this was an ancient English form of counting but it is actually Persian - Farsi. We called our fist two kittens in Maidenhead, Ack & Doh and we have had two more since then Sandy & Pepsi. Benjy does't count in this area as he adopted us and was far from a kitten when he arrived after Ack died. So this one was the fifth kitten Pun. Robyn's own new kitten had been called Pan after the classical Greek god so Pun would have been too close and as he has an odd snub nose and a serious attitude problem, Mr.Punch seemed very suitable.

Max who Robyn and I still ride carries on again into his twenties. His competing days are over but he will still outrun most of the other livery horses and some of their riders refuse to go out on a hack with him because he is so competitive over a few furlongs.

In our wider families we have to congratulate Rachel's nephew David and his wife Charlotte on the birth of their son William. My niece Claire has amazed us all in keeping her family together whilst coping with her husband Stephen's year long treatment for a nasty Lymphoma. We sincerely hope 2011 will see things really begin to get back to normal.

Over the Atlantic my oldest friend Richard Webb has remarried at the age of 62 (I think) and has started a new life in Shanghai with his new wife. Congratulations again but perhaps the joke should be that Hash Harriers are drinkers with a serious marrying problem!

So beginnings and endings all round and so much to look forward to over the next few months. Harry Christophers and the Sixteen come to the Town Hall soon and then we will hear Anya Muston play Bartok's great second violin concerto at the Royal Northern College of Music. More Bartok in the New Year at Basingstoke with the Philharmonia under Esa-Pekka Salonen and Yefin Bronfman playing his first piano concerto. A week skiing in Austria in March and perhaps a trip to Barbados to play golf in the sun. Yes 2011 could be very good.

Best wishes to you all and many many thanks for your friendship.

The Sixteen at the Town Hall

2010-12-13T03:39:00.000-08:00

Sunday, December 12th at the Concert Hall, Reading.

There is no doubt that Harry Christophers has put together a very fine small choir which can tackle a great variety of music and there is also no doubt that they are popular as a virtually full concert hall bore witness. I do have my doubts about their choice of programme for this pre-Christmas concert. The first half comprised a short selection of dreary religious pieces with a short piece from Arvo Part being the dreariest. The second half was even shorter and more dreary with yet another mini masterpiece of religious nonsense from Part.

It was all beautifully sung but a bit of fun or variety would have been welcome. The applause was polite and only two recognisable Christmas songs at the very end sparked any enthusiasm from either the singers or audience.

I find listening to singing in a concert hall difficult. I want to know what is being sung - words matter to me - but in the dim light of the auditorium following the printed texts was quite a challenge. Some of the awful stuff in medieval Latin made me wonder whether it was worth the effort. Some of the translations were quite a joke. Even my schoolboy Latin could tell the prissy English devotional prose was someway different from what was being sung. Maybe even the original Latin was a joke as well.

No I think Mr.Christophers could have done us better last night and none of his records will be making it into my collection.

Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer & Zakir Hussain at the Barbican

2010-07-17T02:19:00.000-07:00

It was as we came out of a concert in Malaga that I saw the huge banners advertising their summer programme. One name caught my attention immediately. Bela Fleck plays banjo on many of the best tracks in my record collection. He is to my mind one of the very top players to come out of Nashville and along with Mark O'Connor, Jerry Douglas and a couple of others he can hold his own in any company. I had to go and hear him. He was billed to be playing with Bass player and composer Edgar Meyer and a percussionist Zakir Hussein of whom I knew nothing. Edgar Meyer also holds a place in my affections as he masterminded the Appalachian Journey album with Mark O'Connor and Yo Yo Ma which has amazing songs from both James Taylor and Alison Krauss. He has worked with Fleck in 1998 on the Strength in Numbers - Telluride sessions and a trio album with Mandolin player Mike Marshall called Uncommon Ritual. These two guys play my kind of music.

I was already priming our friends for a return visit to Malaga, when Rachel suggested that I check where else he was playing and to our great surprise the trio were playing at the Barbican on the very next night. Tickets were immediately bought and good ones (see the blog about our last trip to hear the LSO there!)

The concert was spectacular and after a war up set from the amazing Julian Lage and a strange five piece band, Fleck, Meyer and Hussain proceeded to thrill and amaze a full Barbican hall. The audience was a good mix of ages and included many Indians who had I assume come because of Hussain's fame as a Tabla player.

How to describe the music is difficult as it rather defies categories. Some pieces had sections that were like Indian Ragas. Some pieces were more jazz like and at one point Meyer played a Bach cello piece unaccompanied on his double bass. Fleck amazed me with his seemingly effortless virtuosity and his part piece included a section where he played the top strings near the neck and stop the bottom string lower down with his mouth. Hussein played a solo on the tablas where he was drumming at great speed with two hands and still playing a bass line in some other magical fashion.

My aversion to percussionists is well know and it takes in my view a great player to add anything to any music - but this was different. I am converted. In fact I was converted when we listened to Ragas on the breakfast terrace overlooking the lake in Jaipur.

The high spot for me was a Canon where Fleck followed the phrases played by Meyer and Hussain added a rhythmic counterpoint. It was clever, very effective and a tour de force.

Bela Fleck was given his name after the great Hungarian composer Bela Bartok. I left the Barbican wondering two things. Could this trio take a great Bartok piece such as one of his string quartets and rework it and their virtuosity and the what would Bartok have been able to do had he been able to compose for three such talents.

Electoral unfairness

2010-05-07T01:50:00.000-07:00

At 10.30 with all but 25 results declared a simple bit of arithmetic shows the number of votes each party had to get to win one seat.

Con 34902
Lab 33235
LD 125818
DUP 21027
SNP 60352
Sinn 37659
Plaid 55131
Green 267702
SDLP 35798

This is not to count the 864284 votes for no seats for UKIP and 536226 for BNP also for none.

It looks to me that the Greens, the Lib Dems, BNP and UKIP have cause to cry foul.

Also looking at the electoral map all the action has been in England, Scotland, Wales and NI don't seen to have been much involved - it this just a local English dispute that really doesn't concern the other parts of the Union.

2010-04-28T01:35:00.001-07:00

Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra at The Anvil

2010-03-04T02:34:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 3 march 2010.

The Anvil was far from full and there were sadly no youngsters from the county music centre to swell the ranks but there was an air of expectancy in the hall probably due to the return of Simon Trpceski and in anticipation of a performance of Shostakovich's massive seventh symphony.

The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic was out in force under their chief conductor Japp van Zweden. Based in Hilversum the NRPO is I guess the equivalent of the BBCSO and must like them operate under the shadow of their more famous neighbours especially the Royal Concertgebouw. However they have a track record in Shostakovich and their recent recording of his fourth symphony has been well reviewed.

They got off to a flying start with a performance of a home grown piece Cyrano de Bergerac by Johan Wagenaar. Wagenaar lived and worked in Utrecht and died in 1941. This piece was a tone poem in the style of Richard Strauss and the orchestra warmed up well under van Zweden's forceful eye.

Next up was the return of Simon Trpceski to play Prokofiev's 3rd Piano concerto. We heard Trpceski a year ago playing Rachmaninov with the Philharmonia under Ashkenazy and were keen to hear what he made of the challenging Prokofiev. It was a great experience but even his power was not enough to overcome the orchestra. There were many times when he was drowned by the huge sound behind him and we were sitting in the side balcony and were very close.

We had heard the piece last year by the young Bezhod Adburaimov with the RPO under Dutoit and in the Hexagon and my notes remark on how Dutoit was able to balance the performance and allow the performer to be heard. I wrote that I often wondered how much difference a conductor did make but on this showing the restrained Dutoit won out over the overactive van Zweden - a shame really as I am sure Trpceski played very well. He proceeded to delight us and I hope the orchestra with a lovely encore of a March by Tchaikovsky. He can come again.

After the interval we braced ourselves for the Shostakovich. The piece was famously written during the siege of Leningrad where he had become trapped with his family. He was eventually moved to Mosow where he finished the piece and it was given its premier in March 1942. At well over an hour long it is perhaps the longest orchestral piece in the repertory and the first movement lasted for nigh on half that. It contains the famous 'Bolero' like invasion theme where various instruments play a simple march against a repeated snare drum roll leading to a massive orchestral climaxes

The work is full of wonderful music and the emotional pull of the first movement especially is difficult to resist even if you do not recognise all the musical allusions that Shostakovich put in. Apparently there were references to Hitler's favourite musical and some Orthodox church plainsong chants but I was unable to pick them out.

The next three movements were shorter but just as complex. The piece calls for huge forces - van Zweden had 12 brass, 8 french horns, extra woodwind and about 60 strings. There were seven percussionists, two harpists and a piano player. How you move an orchestra of that size around, let alone pay for it is a mystery - maybe the Dutch radio licence funds it all as the far from full audience would not have covered the costs.

But a more important question is whether as a piece of music it still has a real relevance. As I wrote in my Warhorse blog, I know that war is brutal, inane, pointless and tragic and I also know that it has been used as the subject of works of art and literature since humans started writing, drawing or warring. However it does not seem to me that all this outpouring of intellectual and artistic creativity has achieved anything. Wars today in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere are no less pointless and tragic than the Siege of Leningrad, the Great War or the Battle of the Pass of Thermopylae. Twice this week I have sat through (and paid large amounts of money to do so) performances calculated to challenge my emotions and I am not sure if it has done me a great deal of good.

However I can see the truth in the jibe that the 7th Symphony is just the music for a war film without the film. It could do with a good pruning and maybe it would make a good background for a documentary of the siege - perhaps someone has already done it.

The Warhorse, New London Theatre

2010-03-02T05:12:00.000-08:00

Monday 1st March 2010.

We'd had had a funny day already. For a start the weather was fine and sunny and Rachel and I had spent an hour down at Wokefield Park on the driving range trying out our new golf swings. After lunch we had gone up to London to Donald's restaurant where he had invited us to a tasting of wines from Tokaj in Hungary. The sweet Aszu wines are splendid but the ordinary dry Furmints and Harslevelu will not set the world on fire.

Afterwards we went to Covent Garden and had a very expensive meal which was quite nice but not worth the money and then walked down Drury Lane to the New London Theatre where we saw the National Theatre's production of The Warhorse. I should explain that we had gone only because Rachel had been given theatre ticket vouchers for her 60th birthday and we had not got round to using them as you have to present them in person at the box-office. We had seats in the very back row at nearly £50 each - the main body of the theatre cost £80 a seat - who pays these prices? Without the gift vouchers this trip would have set up back over £200 and we get cheap travel on the trains as well.

I found the Warhorse disturbing. An interesting children's book about a boy and his horse going off to the first world war has been dramatized by the National Theatre and I will be the first to admit that the staging of it and the quality of the performances was excellent. The use of full sized puppet models for the horses and for other animals including a splendid goose was fascinating. The two main horses had three puppeteers, two inside to control the legs and movement around the stage and another by the head to control the head and neck movements. The whole thing was beautifully done and the horse movements and especially the interaction between the two horses was very realistic and made it easy to suspend disbelief and become involved with them as creatures.

However it may be because Rachel and I do not watch much of modern film or theatre that we found the pretend violence very upsetting. I know that war is brutal, inane, pointless and tragic. I don't want it rammed down my throat in the name of entertainment - I know we chose to go, we didn't have to but I am not inured to this level of emotional attack and don't want to become so. It is certainly why we do not watch much film or television drama.

I was in two minds whether to go back in for the second half and I know Rachel also closed her eyes for some of the more violent episodes. In the end it was just a fairy tale with a happy ending. There were some scenes that were interesting but many of the characters were little more than cardboard cutouts - maybe the soldiers should have been puppets as well.

Was it worth the trouble and the expense? Well after missing the last fast train and getting back to Reading at midnight, it probably wasn't. Would I recommend it to others? If you are a sensitive soul like our daughter Robyn, certainly not, but if you can see through the dramatic effects and ignore the emotional blackmail, there was a great deal of interest to see, but at £80 a ticket, probably not.

EUCO and Tasmin Little

2010-02-25T03:11:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 24th Feb '10 - The Hexagon, Reading

The gap between the good and the best can often be horribly wide and obvious. There was not a lot wrong with the European Union Chamber Orchestra and Tasmin Little has a great talent and a big following but together they failed to gel.

It may have been the fault of their Hungarian Leader Zoltan Tuska, who did not seem to inspire any real commitment from his fellow players. His performance as joint soloist with Ms Little in Bach's concerto for two violins was lack luster. It seemed to affect Tasmin Little as well as her rendition of Bach's concerto no 2 was wayward in places especially in the important matter of being in tune.

The program was full of goodies. Apart from the two Bach pieces there was Grieg's Holberg suite, and after the interval Barber's Adagio for Strings and the Dvorak String Serenade. The music was lovely if not especially taxing on the audience but there was no spark. The leader of the second violins Laura Rajanen seemed the most animated player on the stage.

Tuska's cv reads well, but don't they always in programme notes and he plays with fellow Hungarian Andras Schiff in chamber music and has also recorded the Bartok quartets with the Microcosmos quartet, so he has a track record. Maybe it was just a rainy wednesday in Reading but compared to the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra who were brought to life by Andsnes at their concert at the Anvil, they were in a different but lower league.

The Philharmonia and Viktoria Mullova at the Anvil

2010-02-07T02:52:00.000-08:00

Friday 5th February - The Anvil, Basingstoke.

Some evenings are so eagerly awaited that when they arrive there can be a real feeling of let down. I have been wanting to hear Viktoria Mullova live for some while having heard her many times on the radio and having enjoyed her CD recording with Katia Labeque. But this time there was to be no disappointment. The Philharmonia were on top form under Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Anvil was pleasantly full and the programme was interesting and challenging. All in all a splendid concert.

First up was Night on a Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky. This exciting piece describes a witches sabbath and is scored for lots of brass and percussion and is an ideal warm-up for the treats to come.

Next came Ms Mullova to play one of her party pieces - Stravinsky's violin concerto in D. Premiered by Samuel Dushkin in Berlin in 1931 it has been recorded by many of the great violinist's but is rarely seen on concert programmes. Mullova recorded it with Salonen and the Los Angeles PO back in 1998 and this evening's programme had been played at the Festival Hall on the previous evening. I was especially delighted with the interplay between the solo violin and the oboe that occurs throughout the piece. I can't imagine that getting it right is at all easy and it was beautifully done.

After the interval Salonen and the Philharmonia gave us a rousing, tuneful and very intelligent reading of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. I have sometimes wondered if British orchestra's really understand Bartok but it was clear that Salonen does and he conveyed this to the orchestra and had them just where he wanted them - a very fine performance.

What struck me about the audience for what was not an immediately popular programme - Bartok and Stravinsky can frighten people away as too modern - was how full the Anvil was and how many young people were there. I spoke to some at the interval and and many of them had come with their teachers and parents through the Hampshire youth music service and their schools. It is so important to put good live performances before the younger generations if we are to build audiences that will allow this music to live. No finer way I can think of than being excited and challenged by Stravinsky and Bartok - I hope they will be able to say that they were at the Anvil that february evening when EP Salonen and the Philharmonia showed them how it was done.

Angela Hewitt at the Concert Hall

2010-01-23T14:07:00.000-08:00

Angela Hewitt is fast becoming a favourite with the Reading concert goers. Her concert last year of Rameau, Couperin, Dukas and Ravel and was amazing and the Concert Hall again was virtually full on a cold wet Sunday evening in January. This time she was playing with Isabelle Faust on violin and Stephen Stirling on Horn in a programme of Schumann and Brahms chamber works. In the first half Faust and Hewitt played violin sonatas by Schumann and Brahms and after the break she played a Schumann horn sonata and then all three gave us the Brahms Horn trio. They were going on the the Wigmore Hall on the following tuesday to give the same programme.

Isabelle Faust was unknown to me but has a not inconsiderable cv and was playing on a loaned Strad, which is not given to every fiddler but despite her impeccable phrasing and intonation something was lacking. Maybe it was Ms Hewitt's Fazioli that overpowered her or maybe she intended it to be like this but often I found myself wanting more aggression and dynamism to bring the pieces to life.

Stephen Stirling is a well known horn player and presumably knows the small chamber repertoire for the horn very well. Again he rather hid his light under a bushell but I suspect that the acoustic of the Concert Hall does the solo horn no favours. The Schumann was delightful if a little lightweight but the Brahms trio brought all three to life except at times it seemed a bit like a piano sonata with violin and horn continuo. However in the end despite any reservations I might have had the evening was a great success and further enhances Reading's status as a top chamber music venue.

2009 end of year report

2009-12-24T00:27:00.000-08:00

The Weather and golf - Its been a funny year starting off for us with pouring summer rain in a New Zealand ski resort and looks like finishing with much the same in Reading after a spell of the worst snow for a quarter of a century. Global warming has certainly increased the hydrological cycle and while we may have had one of the hottest years on record it didn't really seem like it - it certainly felt like one of the wettest.

Still Rachel managed to find time to play an awful lot of golf and we both managed to get our handicaps down a bit. However in my case there is still more work to do and I am looking forward to our Turkey trip in March to get the season off to a good start. Still we both won our respective sections in the end of year medal winners medal. I now have three medals to my name proudly displayed in the downstairs loo.

Work - Rachel although now 'retired' and in receipt of her NHS pension still does a couple of days a week at the Royal Berks and looks after Steve Copeland at the private clinic. It keeps her out of mischief and pays the bills. It also means she doesn't play more than five rounds of golf a week. No - I don't know how she fits it all in either!

I still look after her practice and one of her colleagues and will do so until they both stop work. I get my state pension now that I am 65 and along with my free bus pass and reduced train fares, being old is not too bad at the moment. I gave up chairing the Oxfordshire BHS branch last year and have been involving myself in local politics for the Lib Dems. I have just taken over as chair of the local branch and with local and national elections coming in the next 6 months it could be quite a lively period.

Animals - It is over a year since Pepsi our favourite cat passed away but Sandy now into her 20s soldiers on. She has a bad case of bowl worship, sitting by her empty dish telling anyone who cares to listen how they never feed her. Still she has learned proper cat habits like purring and sitting on laps after all this time.

We had a spell earlier this year when Max went lame and became unrideable. I was beginning to think this might be the end for him but a course of Navilox and a longish spell on Bute along with a reversion to egg-bar shoes seems to have done the trick. He has now quite forgotten that he is meant to be old, and is back in regular work and even gallops over the odd jump or two on occasion.

Music - We have been to a lot of concerts this year most of which are documented in this blog, but the standout one has to be the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra with Leif Ove Andsnes. The biggest disappointment was Martha Argerich cancelling her appearance here in Reading. She played a prom but it was sold out and I gather her health is not as good as it was. She remains the most important pianist still playing that I have never heard live.

Homes and houses - Rachel and I celebrated 30 years of marriage and thirty years in Redlands Road with a three day open house over the August bank holiday weekend. This was great fun although hard work. We gave the house a present of a new front door in which we fitted two stained glass panels especially made for us by Reading Stained Glass. This matches the earlier panel we put in the gable end of the clerestory in the rebuilt conservatory - sounds very grand.

I am planning major changes to the front garden next spring with new front door steps, new paths, remodelled lawns and a major clear out of old trees and bushes. The little vegetable plot and greenhouse did well this year and the link-a-bord raised beds were very productive.

We sold the Glasgow flat after eight years of use by Donald and Robyn and they have both made a tidy profit which will go to help them buy places of their own. I would have liked to report that Robyn and Ed have moved into their new home but last minutes hitches as a result of good work by their solicitor means it will be delayed until the new year.

Robyn and Donald - Robyn has finally dragged herself away from Glasgow having submitted her M.Phil thesis at the start of June. She heard nothing for ages but now at least has a list of corrections and revisions which she need to get back to them sometime after February next year. At present she is not working but is looking for a classroom assistant post prior to doing a PGCE starting in September. She and Ed are still together and are looking forward to having their own house together rather than living half here and half in Andover. Ed has a new job with the British branch of an American company which sells green electricity generators. He is very busy and is constantly travelling to sites in Europe where machines have been sold.

Donald is still with Le Bouchon Breton in Spitalfields. Their web sites calls him the Executive Sommelier and he oversees a large (and expensive) wine list which only city bankers can afford. He is still doing his Diploma in Wine Studies course and hopes to complete it next autumn. What then we really don't know but I think a spell overseas in other parts of the wine trade looks like a possibility.

Family and friends - We met up with my two brothers and various of their children and grandchildren a couple of weeks ago. Things are not too good in that Hilary's kidney transplant has packed up after thirty years and she is back on dialysis three time a week. Worse though is the news that my niece Claire's husband Steve has been diagnosed with a lymphoma and will start chemotherapy in the new year. This will be a difficult time for them all and we will try and do what we can to support them. However, despite all the bad news, everyone was in good humour for the Christmas party and all the children are thriving in their various arenas.

It was a year of babies in Rachel's family. Her brother John had three grandchildren in short order and her god-daughter Marie, Sarah's eldest had a baby also. Not to be outdone her brother David and his wife Charlotte are expecting next year.

Rachel's best golfing friend Muriel Quinsac has just taken over as Ladies Captain at Henley Golf Club and Rachel has joined the Ladies committee with a view I guess to being captain in a couple of years time. Which seems like the best excuse ever to spend even more time at the golf club.

Vienna Piano Trio at the Wigmore Hall

2009-12-21T01:11:00.000-08:00

We like days like this when despite the snow and ice the public transport system works like clockwork. Walk across the road and through the hospital to pick up a number 7 outside the main entrance. Take a free trip on our OAP tickets to the station where we pay on;y £12.85 each for our trip to London. Walk onto the platform and get the second train - the first was jam packed. Off at Paddington 25 minutes later and a quick stroll straight onto a Waterloo tube train to Oxford Circus. Do a bit of shopping take the tube from Piccadilly via Holborn to Liverpool Street with immediate connections at both places and off to Donald's restaurant in Spitalfields market. Le Bouchon Breton

Donald had forgotten we were coming and arrived an hour later but we had time for a light meal before heading back down the central line to Oxford Circus and the Wigmore Hall.

The Wigmore Hall is lovely. The decoration is beautiful and the seats are comfortable although the heating was a bit too high for my comfort. But the acoustics are nigh on perfect for chamber music. The Vienna Trio gave a sparkling performance of the Haydn C.major piano trio full of wit and good tunes. After the interval they played the Piano Trio by Brahms which was just perfect. In between they played a piece by Cerha. Cerha who I think is still alive was one of the Vienna school with Berg, Schonberg and Webern and his five pieces were a little odd. The first was all squeaks and pops but it did get a little better as it went on. I would have preferred some real music - yes I'm a philistine in these matters but I think composers should write tunes and not just 'create a personal sound world' as the saying goes.

They gave us an encore of the slow movement from the Schumann piano and off we dashed into the London night straight onto a Bakerloo train to Paddington where the Cardiff express was waiting for us to arrive and back to snowy icy Reading. If I have one complaint it was that we had to wait 9 minutes for a bus at the station and even that was only a 21 and we had to walk all the way along the Morgan Road ice rink. Reading Buses are you listening. This is not good enough - TfL do much better.

Leif Ove Andsnes and Pictures Reframed

2009-12-05T03:53:00.000-08:00

Friday 4th December 2009.

What a strange concert. First the good news is that Andsnes plays superbly well. He was at the top of his form last night playing to an almost packed Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank. The concert was in one long section with no interval and a request for no applause between pieces which was respected. The programme comprised music by Schumann & Mussorgsky and a new piece by Thomas Larcher entitled 'What becomes'.

The audience were requested by Andsnes in the free sheet of notes that accompanied the concert, to 'meet this project with open ears and eyes, in the same childlike manner... '.

The other news was that the project was to accompany Andsnes with a series of films and images on a large screen behind the piano. There were four other screens but they were not used to any real purpose I could see. The images were made by Robin Rhode who is according to the notes 'a young post-apartheid, mixed race South African making art that engages both with modern art and street culture'. Well yes!

Andsnes started with two short pieces from Mussorgsky called 'Memories of childhood'. There was then a first film(?) called 'Kid Candle'. We then had 'Kinderszenen' which was just beautiful. How 'Traumerei' can still retain its magic after so many hearings is a tribute to the performer.

We then had another film called 'Spray Painting' which led into the new piece by Larcher. I would have to listen again to it before passing comment except to say it was not as unusual as much modern music.

We then came to the highlight of the concert, Mussorgsky's massive and massively difficult 'Pictures at an Exhibition'. Andsnes played a version revised by Horowitz with his own additions and this was accompanied by all sorts of strange films and images to accompany the various movements. For instance we had a film of a cock and hen in a chicken run to accompany 'The hut on fowl's legs' and famously we had a film of a grand piano being submerged in water to accompany the last movement 'The Great Gate of KIev'.

However by this time I had got tired of the nonsense on the screen and had turned off the video and was just listening to the sound. In short I closed my eyes as I found the images so off-putting and irrelevant to the music. The piano playing was of the highest order and I am not really able to judge the quality of the visuals - but suffice to ask 'is it art?'.

It may be that in this way Andsnes is able to encourage a whole new generation who have been brought up on 'street culture' to come through the doors and be introduced to such great music. If so I wish him well. Certainly he himself performs without compromise. His concert with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra that we heard earlier this year was a real high spot. But for me the world is already overburdened with imagery that tries to inform, entertain, sell, disturb or whatever. I was not ready for more.

Haut Koenigsburg and other Follies

2009-12-02T06:33:00.000-08:00

Thursday 26th Novmber 2009,

Another beautiful day dawned with hardly a cloud to spoil the wide Alsatian sky. Having had two days walking we decided on a little sightseeing so off to Haut Koenigsburg which is just a few miles west of Bergheim. In fact you can see its grim dark profile on a rocky ridge from miles away. Whoever built it certainly wanted you to know he was there.

We arrived on a very quiet day and only a few of the several hundred parking places were taken. We had bought discounted tickets at the hotel and so passed quickly through the gateway with its portentious coat of arms in stone and plaque in memory of Kaiser Wilhelm II. It turns out that it was a real medieval castle that had been destroyed at the end of the Thirty Years War. The 17th century in Europe is a closed book to me but apparently the Swedish King was making a nuisance of himself and conquered Frankfurt just up the road across the Rhine and then his artillery had a good old go at this fortress as well. But after his defeat it was left in ruins until Alsace was annexed by Germany in the Franco-Prussian wars.

Kaiser Bill thought it would be a spiffing wheeze to do up the old place and have it as a sort of medieval disneyland cum theme park. He imported a top architect, hundreds of workers, two massive cranes from Hamburg, a steam engine to haul stone from a quarry, gave them an unlimited budget and let them get on with it. Eight years later it was done and he popped in once a year for a fancy dinner just to show who was boss. In truth this was a statement of imperial power. He was saying that the German empire stretched from the Vosges here in the west to Marienburg in Poland - so don't mess with me.

However his increasing mental problems led to a nervous breakdown and although he took a leading role in the Great War he was unable to secure victory against the might of the Americans and the British. He had to abdicate and live out his life in exile in Holland. Alsace and Lorraine were reunited with France and although it again fell into German hands briefly during the Second World War it is now a major tourist attraction.

Rachel and I were curiously unmoved by it, massive and dramatic though it is. It felt like a film set with no real purpose. No-one lives there or does anything other than sell stuff to tourists like us. Just what is it for?

So with the sun still shining we drove back to Ribeauville and went for a strenuous walk up to a real medieval ruin. Chateau St.Ulrich is an imposing castle which guards the heights behind the town. It took us about 40mins to walk up to the ruins passing the town's Lycee on the way where the students were on their lunch break. Some boys were having a sly fag round the back and some girls were having a giggle in a mini bandstand over looking the town.

No attempt had been made to do anything other than make the place moderately safe and it was really romantic in the lovely early winter sunshine. After a quick scuttle back downhill we found not much open except for a little cafe where a salad, piece of quiche and a beer found a nice corner.

Dinner at Bergheim was a much better affair as we had the run of the Carte. They served us some very fine food and the Alsatian wines from their own vineyards were worth bringing home.

The return trip to England was not much to write home about, effectively two days in the car with a stopover in Epernay. This was a real disappointment except we found the Champagne boutique and bought a small case of half bottles for us to share with nobody else. Even the Brittany Ferries boat was virtually devoid of passengers and there was no buffet in the restaurant so we opted for the self service and Rachel got seasick and left her meal uneaten. Tant Pis.

Another rant about showers.

2009-12-02T05:10:00.000-08:00

Regular readers of this blog will be in no doubt about my views on the issue of baths vs showers. The bathroom at Cour du Bailli was perhaps the worst possible combination of faults you could devise.

First it was a wet room with no shower tray or curtains. There was a drain somewhere near the corner where the shower had been installed, however there was not sufficient drain away to cope with the flow of water and in no time at all the whole of the bathroom floor was awash. You could not stand in front of the sink or sit on the toilet without getting your feet wet. And of course there was no way to mop it up.

Next the shower was controlled by a thermostatic valve with a metal lever that came forward and down to turn on the water flow. It went left or right to control the temperature and was of course positioned just at the correct height where every time you turned round or moved you caught it with your arm and either turned it off or worse still knocked it to scalding. These things, I repeat should be made illegal. They are dangerous and no respectable plumber should have any truck with them.

Finally the designer had created a minimalist design with absolutely nothing to spoil the purity of the conception. That is there were no shelves for your toilet bag, no little holder for the soap near the shower and no where to put a dry let alone a wet towel. Oh yes, there was a beautiful little glass vase filled with local rocks and gravel to remind you that here in Alsace terroir is everything.

A trip to the Golf Course.

2009-12-02T05:03:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 28th November 2009

Golf is not unknown in France but in Alsace finding space for le parcours is somewhat of a problem. Obviously you cannot use good vineyard land although much of that is on slopes that would make Goring and Streatley look flat. You cannot build on in the valley floor as that is as flat as a pancake and anything else is given over to their passion for La Chasse. So as we were to find any golf course has to be shoe-horned in between.

We walked out of Kayserburg over the main road up to St.Die and up into the woods. The weather had turned beautiful with hardly a cloud and the sunshine filtering through the beech and oak woods onto the carpet of leaves was truly lovely. We took a couple of detours which led us down the Ammerschwihr valley via guess what the Ammerschwihr golf club. Rachel was in her element. We first came upon Jean nul amis playing two balls up the fourth on his own. I had to restrain her from going and giving him a lesson as he left his rescue from the hedge short and then thinned his next way past the pin.

On the third we found the Mercredi Vets' fourball stableford all in electric buggies and another Jean nul amis on his own on the second. Don't they have a roll up here?

Still there course looked very green, well cared for and very hilly and tight. Rachel had to go into the pro-shop and get a card so we stopped by the clubhouse for a cup of coffee, which was just as well as Ammerscwhihr was deserted and there was nothing open at all.

Ammerscwihr was badly bombed in 1944 in the battle for Colmar but has been beautifully restored although we could see not a single original roof tile as a result of the firestorm that hit it in those fateful days.

Back through the vineyards for a quick salad and a beer in Kayserberg before setting off to find our next Hotel in Bergheim.

Bergheim is yet another medieval walled town full of the most beautifully preserved half timbered houses. Having seen a couple of photo collages of vines and grapes hanging on the walls in our hotel I decided to have a go myself and make a collage of half-timbered gables. I took lots of photos so that is a job for a rainy day next week. The town has a double moat with many of the original fortified towers still in place. It has a huge Catholic church and next door the Maison des Sorcieres – the Witches house – where they put the unfortunate ladies before carrying out whatever cruelty they dreamed up that day.

Hotel Cour du Bailli is a picture postcard. Right on the main street about fifty meters from the 14th century town gate and tower, it has a cobbled courtyard with wooden galleries and stairs. Our room was in a separate building at the rear and for some reason we had been given the disabled access room – see the next blog for another rant about showers and shower rooms.

Dinner was odd. The large restaurant laid out in an underground wine cellar was very empty and the waitress when she found out our names announced that our dinner was to be Tarte Flambe. I had asked for a glass of Muscat as aperitif while I studied the menu but the wine came and no menu. On further inquiry we learned that Tarte Flambe was their version of Pizza and we were to have four of them. After the first arrived, classique with bacon and cheese, we called the waitress over and suggested that something else be found as we eat a Pizza most years not four in an evening. A rather nice chicken dish was found and this went down with the Pinot Blanc the waitress had suggested.

When we mentioned this the next day the office staff were very apologetic and gave us the wine for free. However the cheesy assault on our stomachs led to a certain inability to sleep especially as the central heating seemed to have turned itself up to 22C in the middle of the night.

Over the hills.

2009-12-02T04:56:00.000-08:00

Tuesday 27th November 2009

The next day dawned grey but clear and over breakfast we decided to walk over the hill to Riquewihr. The nice lady at the tourist office pointed us in the direction of the start of the walk, but could not understand why we were not taking the easy cycle trail through the vineyards. Rachel has never done the easy option so off we set up past the ruined castle and on through the woods to the top of the hill at Rocher de Corbeau. We had splendid views back over Kayserburg on the way up and even better ones of Riquewihr on the way down.

Riquewihr is the honeypottiest village you can imagine and again it was putting on its finery ready for the Christmas invasion. We had it almost to ourselves and we found a little restaurant for lunch where I had the local version of Tartiflette washed down with a small flagon of excellent local Pinot Noir. They do this sort of thing well although I think I still prefer the Alpine version with Reblochon (see an earlier post on this blog).

I let Rachel take the lead for the return journey as we had agreed or at least I thought I had agreed that we would take the lowland route back through the vineyards back via Kientzheim which is the next town down the valley. Rachel of course had other ideas and we were soon back climbing up to the Rocher de Corbeau again. She generously accepted her mistake and took us the extra five kilometers via Kintzheim just for fun.

Dinner at La Vielle Forge was a much better affair and the wine again was by our terrible British standards very good and very cheap.

Mauvais in Beauvais.

2009-12-02T04:53:00.000-08:00

Monday 23rd Nov, 2009

The journey down to Portsmouth and across to Caen was without much incident although the ship tossed and turned in choppy channel seas. We had decided to take the slower direct route via Beauvais and avoid lots of motorway tolls, but we had not reckoned on how slow the french N-roads can be on a rainy monday morning. We were thrown off the boat at some impossibly eary hour, although an hour later according to les grenouilles and by coffee time we had only made it as far as Beauvais where we found a cafe across from the famous Cathedral for a second helping of coffee and croissant after the first on the boat. We watched the rain from inside the cafe and then scampered back to the car.

We made our way slowly across to Reims and then down to Nancy in light drizzle and gloom. I had hoped to drive the spectacular road over the Col de Bonhomme through the Vosges in daylight but Rachel took the wheel and we drove into Kayserburg long after dark.

Hotel Les Remparts was modern and just out from the centre of the old town. We unpacked and went to explore. Kayserberg like many of the towns and villages of Alsace has a wonderfully preserved late medieval heart. They take Christmas seriously in these parts and already most of the decorations were in place with most houses making some attempt to get into the spirit and many going quite over the top.

However as their Christmas fair did not start until the coming friday two thirds of the town was closed for business and we had some problem choosing a restaurant and when we did the meal was a bit ordinary and the long awaited bottle of local Riesling was too old and had started to oxidise. Still we slept well and dreamed of the treats to come.

Polish National Radio SO & Kevin Kenner

2009-11-20T01:03:00.000-08:00

The Hexagon, 19th November 2009,

I am worried about the Hexagon concert series. Here was a good popular programme that only half filled the Hexagon. It was a nice evening with no obvious competing attractions and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra should have encouraged a few of their compatriots out to listen - after all Reading is the third largest Polish City after Warsaw and Krakow.

The evening started with Elgar's tone poem In the South and was followed by a performance of Chopin's Piano Concerto No.1 played by the American pianist Kevin Kenner. After the interval we heard Brahm's first symphony - in my book one of the most exciting and important works of music ever to be written - certainly one of my desert island discs. Yet the audience was sparse.

It may not help in the longer term that the performance from the orchestra under Jacek Kaspszyk was wooden and clumsy at times. Kaspszyk is not in the first rank of conductors and has concentrated lately on Opera according to the programme blurb. I could not help comparing their performance with that of the Philharmonia under Petrenko that we heard last week. That was in a completely different league.

The Elgar is quite fun with lots of different contrasting passages describing in Elgar's musical language his holiday in Alassio in 1903. It has the ring of Strauss (Richard not Johann) about it in that he had not quite developed the distinctive voice that was to come later.

The Chopin is again a work of his youth and is not full of the fiery pyrotechnics that we sometimes expect from popular piano works. Kevin Kenner gave a very good performance and a Google search shows that he has played this many times before. Unfortunately it did not sound as if the orchestra and conductor had. I thought they were awful at times with messy entries and lumpy rhythms. At least they did not drown out the soloist. Surely a Polish orchestra should be able to play Chopin better than this.

After his main performance Kenner gave a little speech pointing out that had he lived Paderewski would have been 149 years old today and as a birthday treat he played a lovely nocturne as an encore. Am I alone in hating encores when you don't know what they are? After the Brahms the orchestra gave us a small extra piece that no-one recognised. Thank you Kevin.

The Brahms First symphony is high on my list of favorite works. Finished in 1876 when he was already 43, Brahms finally took on the mantle of Beethoven and gave us a work as David Patmore's programme notes say 'of supreme technical accomplishment and profound emotion, of elaborate counterpoint and beautiful melody.' They mangled and tortured it. In the final movement when Brahms builds up tension with lots of different ideas and styles but each with more passion and feeling than the last and then finally after timpani rolls and the alphorn call, the wonderful chorale comes in and the movement flows on majestically to its inevitable climax and close, the sloppy playing and clumsy tempi made me squirm in my seat. Only finally when the strings take over the chorale did they start to show any signs of really passionate playing. Or am I being too hard on them?

I do hope that this is not a sign of things to come at the Hexagon. Third rate performers playing badly to a half empty hall does no-one any good. I would rather go to an amateur performance where their enthusiasm makes up for a lower level of skill.

The Philharmonia with Vasily Petrenko and Boris Giltburg

2009-11-14T01:34:00.000-08:00

The Anvil, Friday 13th November 2009.

This could be a very short review as the Philharmonia were in terrific form under the young conductor Vasily Petrenko. Boris Giltburg was flawless in the Grieg piano concerto and the performance of the Shostakovich 5th Symphony was powerful, comic, ironic and just beautifully played.

The program consisted of Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Festival overture, a strange piece that I had not heard before written in 1888 and based around parts of the Russian Orthodox liturgy with allusions to pre-christian pagan rites. This was an ideal warm up piece and I suspect they had great fun playing it.

Giltburg, Moscow born but now living in Tel Aviv is still only 25. He has played many times with Petrenko and the Philharmonia and it was obvious they all knew each other well. The Grieg is an old warhorse but played as it was last night you cannot leave for the interval without all the great tunes spinning around your head.

Petrenko born in St.Petersburg and ten or so years older than Giltburg is well known for his association with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and indeed lives in those remote northern parts. Much as I love modern acoustically excellent halls such as the Anvil, there does seem a mismatch between the bare simplicity of the surroundings and the almost baroque complexity of the the music. We have heard a great deal of Shostakovich recently and this was one of the best.

Our 30th Anniversary dinner

2009-11-03T01:42:00.000-08:00

Monday 2nd November 2009. It's our 30th wedding anniversary and it's come round so soon. What happened to the years - where did the time go?

Donald and Robyn agreed to cook us an anniversary dinner and importantly in Donald's case provide the wines. So from about 5pm the kitchen looked like - well I don't know what - but it didn't look like my nice tidy kitchen.

Most of the kitchen machines were pressed into service. Large and small Kenwood mixers, the Bamix, the terrine press, every knife in the place and so many pans it needed a small army of plongeurs. However dinner arrived, if a little late - like any top restaurant the diners were made to wait to impress on them who is really important in the big scheme of things.

First up was the Champagne - Louis Roederer Brut Millesime 1999 given to Donald on a visit to Roederer in Rheims. This was drunk with the first course which was one of his experiments - a summer pudding but made with mixed vegetables and softened with the juices in which they were cooked.

Next up was asparagus wrapped in prosciutto with Donald's home made lemon mayonaise. This deserves a blog recipe page on its own. With this we had a divine bottle of Alsace Reisling from Marcel Deiss bought on our visit to them two years ago. If I could choose only one wine for the rest of my life it might be this - it would certainly be a Reisling.

The main course was wild duck served with potato, swede and carrot clapshot and mixed green things. We drank a bottle of 1995 Clos de l'Oratoire from St.Emilion which had been sitting in the cellar for years.

Robyn had made hot chocolate souffle for dessert and full marks for a creditable first effort. Making souffle is not for the faint hearted and a light touch is required at critical points. The star of the show was the pudding wine which Donald had been given this summer when he spent a fortnight in Hungary with Samuel & Mathilde Tinon a French couple who have settled in Tokaj to make wine. The Szamorodni 2004 was a 4 puttonyos wine which means four buckets of dried raisins per barrel - it goes up to six! - and was just beautifully balanced between sugar and acidity with a wonderful depth of flavour. If we get to go to Hungary next year a small case of this will be purchased to gently mature in the cellar.

A meal of this proportion would have been stupidly expensive in a restaurant but at least they would have washed up for us - still as Kirsten Bayes sagely quotes 'After enlightenment chop wood and carry water'.

Thanks to Robyn and Donald for a splendid creative dinner and thanks to Rachel for 30 wonderful years.

St.Petersburg Symphony and Guy Johnston at the Hexagon

2009-10-31T02:06:00.000-07:00

The new classical series in Reading started on tuesday 13th Oct with Vladimir Altschuler bringing the massed forces of the St.Petersburg Symphony Orchestra to Reading to play an all Tchaikovsky programme. The St.Petersburg is Russia's oldest orchestra and has been conducted by some great names, Koussevitsky and Mavrinsky being the most famous. In recent years it's principal conductor has been the sometimes unsympathetic Yuri Temikanov but tonight Altschuler got them doing what the like best, playing the Russian romantics especially Tchaikovsky.

The suite from the sleeping beauty is not as well known in the concert hall as say Romeo & Juliet but it is a lovely piece all the same even if the constraints of writing for ballet sometimes leads to odd passages.

Guy Johnston played the Rococco Variations with a beautiful tone and real control. It was a great performance from this young artist now making a name for himself after winning the BBC YMoY in 2000.

Tchaikovsky's first symphony 'Winter Dreams' is not heard as often as some of the later ones but shows the potential that he had and where his music was heading. A great start to the season with lots more goodies to come.

Nicola Benedetti and the Czech Phil at the Anvil

2009-10-31T01:29:00.000-07:00

Its been a while since we had visited the Anvil in Basingstoke and our expectations were high with the Czech Phil under Jakob Hrusa playing a programme of music by mainly Czech composers. But the main attraction had to be Nicola Benedetti playing Tchaikovsky's violin concerto.

We were not disappointed. Not only does Benedetti play well with a muscular intensity she also looks terrific which surely brings in the punters. The man sitting in the centre of the front row was almost orgasmic in his enthusiasm for the young lady. It was just sad the Anvil couldn't run to the price of a bouquet for her - the Hexagon usually does on these occasions.

The programme started with Dvorak's Noonday Witch a noisy symphonic poem based on a fairy tale by Erben about a mother who scolds a fractious child with a threat the the noonday witch will come and punish her and of course the witch does arrive and it all ends unhappy ever after. Dvorak's own orchestra played it with real feeling.

The Tchaikovsky was very well played with Hrusa leading a sympathetic orchestra and Benedetti after a couple of minor lapses early on, getting stuck in and showing us the dramatic intensity that the concerto really needs in a live performance. Listening after the concert to a recording I was struck by how an understated lyrical performance might have been lost in the concert hall but worked better in a studio.

The second half was a funny mix. Martinu's three Estampes which were his last compositions are tone poems evoking places from his childhood. They were fun but not very memorable especially as the great violin concerto tunes were still buzzing round my head. Janacek's Taras Bulbas is exciting and noisy but I cannot understand why a good Czech should write a piece glorifying a Cossack terrorist in his wars against the Poles.

Bumping into an old friend on the train home, we both felt that if you are finishing a concert with Janacek it has to be his wonderful Sinfonietta. But I guess I can listen to a recording of that tonight.

Angela Hewitt, The Concert Hall, Reading

2009-06-12T00:33:00.000-07:00

Angela Hewitt brought her Fazioli to the concert hall and treated a near capacity audience to a programme of French music, which sparkled with wit and ingenuity in the crystal clear acoustic. Even the town hall clock chiming at eight and nine o'clock seemed in sympathy.

She chose to contrast in both halves of the recital works from the 18c composers Rameau and Couperin with homages to them from late 19th and early 20th century by Paul Dukas and Maurice Ravel.

Angela Hewitt has established a reputation as the premier interpreter of the keyboard works of J.S.Bach and has hoovered up prizes all over including the first Radio Three listeners award in 2003 and Gramophone artist of the year in 2006 for her Bach recordings. It is easy to see why. The audience listened intently and responded with real affection to this unusual programme. So often solo rectitals tread the safe path of Beethoven and Schubert sonatas, Chopin and perhaps some well known Debussy. This programme took us on a real journey back into the court of the Sun King where the smooth silky tone of the Fazioli sounded too perfect for the simpler bass light pieces to the world of the Belle Epoque.

When the final notes of the Tombeau de Couperin (merely a memorial or a family tomb?) died away the applause was as generous as any we have heard this year. We wanted more and what else could she have played but Debussy? Where else was all this music leading but to the master himself.

But the lady herself is a workaholic. During her Trasimeo festival this summer she is playing 14 separate concerts, four of which are solo recitals (although it is two programmes played twice) - where does this slight frame find all its reserves?

Norwegian Chamber Orchestra - The Anvil 19 May '09

2009-05-20T00:51:00.000-07:00

If the travelling band of Czech musicians the previous night had failed to impress this band of viking marauders were in a different league. Under the leadership of Terje Tonnesen and with the wonderful Leif Ove Andsnes conducting from the piano we were treated to an evening of magical playing from the self styled National team of Norway. On this performance my money is on them for the next European Championships.

They do things differently in their quest to make music accessible to all. A Mozart concerto was conducted from the piano by Andsnes and then a rostrum was brought out for Tonnesen to put his chair on to conduct and lead in the Prokofiev Classical symphony. After the interval the strings all stood for Grieg's Holberg suite. Well at least the violins and violas did and they swayed and danced like rock musicians and even if it does not do anything for the sound it conveys a sense of the orchestra enjoying themselves which may even improve their playing.

The final piece was a beautiful rendition of Beethoven's third piano concerto. Andsnes and the orchestra were absolutely together and he conjured a performance which highlighted the passion and the complex structure of this great concerto. I have never really liked soloists conducting as well as playing and have seen exponents as famous as Ashkenazy do it really quite badly, but Andsnes either got it right or the band were so good that in effect he was dancing with his hands to their tune. I have to single out the percussionist and the two horn players for special mention. In a fabulous orchestra they were perfect on the night. The horns especially can mar a performance but this pair got all entries right and were never too loud or split any notes.

We sat in the choir stalls directly behind the piano which without its lid was able to fill the whole of this highly resonant if slightly sharp sounding hall. Only in the Holberg where the strings gathered at the front of the stage and played directly to the front rows, would I have wished to be sitting elsewhere.

This evening certainly ranks among the best of the season and just think of the sound they would make in Reading Town Concert Hall. Let see now, we'll start with a Brandenburg Concerto, then move onto music for strings, percussion and celesta .... just dreaming.

Prague Symphony Orchestra - Hexagon 18 May '09

2009-05-20T00:24:00.000-07:00

The Prague Symphony Orchestra should have been a brilliant evening. A noted Eastern European Orchestra on their summer tour playing music of their most famous national composers under the baton of an experienced conductor who has known them for years. Yet somehow it did not work.

The opening piece Dvorak's Carnival Overture was lively but somehow lacking in precision. His Cello concerto came next played by a young and very striking Russian lady cellist - Nina Kotova. The opening bars were a disaster - I half expected the conductor to stop and get them to start again. This set the tone for the rest of the piece with muffed entries and careless accompaniment. But worse was Miss Kotova who managed neither to make this wonderful concerto either muscular or lyrical. She was often inaudible and the Hexagon acoustics may not have helped here but she failed to make the cello sing and often in passages requiring fast and precise fingering she slid over the notes rather than making each one count.

A piece that the orchestra should have been able to play in their sleep sounded as though they all were asleep and the conductor Pietr Altricher must bear a responsibility for such an unprepared performance.

After the interval we heard excerpts from Smetana's Ma Vlast. They played Vltava first and for the first time sounded really together in this most descriptive movement from this masterpiece that came out of his madness and anguish. However the two following movements Tabor and Blanik were nowhere near as lyrical and narrative as the famous depiction of the river in all its moods.

The encore was predictably a Slavonic Dance and they played this again with passion if not always fully together. A funny and not really satisfying evening.

Bezhod Abduraimov & the RPO

2009-05-05T23:37:00.000-07:00

Saturday 2nd May 2009 - The Hexagon

When the advance programme for the 08/09 Reading classical concert series came out the highlight for me was to the visit of Martha Argerich and her long time collaborator and ex-husband, Charles Dutoit. Argerich is certainly the most important pianist still performing that I have never heard live and I regularly play her debut album from 1965 with its wonderful percussive Toccata by Prokofiev.

It was with some dismay that we learned that she was withdrawing from many engagements because of ill health especially as she was to perform the Prokofiev third concerto for which she is so well known.

When we got the the Hexagon on Saturday though we had another surprise - her replacement Jean-Phillipe Collard had also pulled out and the performance was given by the winner of the recent London International Piano competition Bezhod Abduraimov. Just nineteen and looking more like fifteen he comes from Tashkent and is now studying in Kansas having won several other piano competitions on the way.

He was a revelation. The piece is very difficult and requires power, dexterity, stamina and a mature musical sensibility to hold it all together and Abduraimov had all these a-plenty. It was fortunate for us that this had been his competition piece and he obviously relished the challenge of playing it again presumably this time for a big fee.

The RPO under Dutoit provided a great foil and I was impressed by just how well he balanced the power of the orchestra against the need to hear the soloist. They were all on great form. I sometimes wonder how much difference the conductor makes on the night and although Dutoit did not appear to be interfering greatly he managed to get a great performance from the band which is what I guess makes him such a successful and sought after conductor. After the interval the Ballet music from Romeo & Juliet was superbly played and all in all this was the best concert of the season.

There is a view that these top orchestras will know the music so well that the role of the good conductor is to let them get on with it while keeping them all together and that is what Dutoit did so well. I don't know how much rehearsal time he would have had with either orchestra or soloist but it cannot have been great so full marks for bringing out the best in the both.

I hope that Abduraimov goes on to great things as he certainly has the power and the technique to make it in the cut-throat world of classical music. On this performance he will be one to watch.

As a postscript I notice that Argerich is playing at the proms so I will have to swallow my dislike for the Albert Hall and buy a couple of tickets.

Simon & Hilary twice in a week.

2009-03-06T00:38:00.000-08:00

Greenham Arts - 26th February 2009

We have known Simon Mayor and Hilary James for longer than we care to remember and have been going to their concerts in various places around the area. With Gerald Garcia on guitar and Richard Collins on almost everything they play an amazing range of music with verve and skill and give everyone a great deal of fun. At the Greenham Arts centre they play the first set and after the interval give the stage over to a guest artist or group.

We have enjoyed great sets by British bluegrass band - A Band Like Alice, Brazilian tango maestros - Caratinga, Ira Bernstein and Riley Baugus who play and dance to Appalachian music and last week Andrew Cronshaw and Tigran Aleksanyan.

Andrew Cronshaw has been around the folk scene for a long time and plays electric zithers and a wide variety of things you blow into and over. He makes ethereal sounds helped by significant electronic trickery. Tigran Aleksanyan plays the Armenian Duduk which is a sort of primitive oboe from which he conjured the most beautiful sounds. Its double reed and single piece apricot wood construction give it a mournful sound which can become almost bagpipe like in the hands of Aleksanyan.

Museum of English Rural Life - March 3rd 2009.

The concert at MERL is a new departure for Simon and Hilary. They are focussing on English music and song although they had obviously raided their existing repertoire to find music to fit the bill. We were treated to a wide range of Simon's instruments with Mandolin, Mandola, Mandocello, guitar and two fiddles being featured. Hilary played guitar and her Mandobass although Simon and I reckon that it is really an acoustic bass guitar with a very funny body shape.

The MERL gallery is perhaps not the ideal venue although the collction of English farm machinery, vehicles and implements provides a suitable setting for the folk songs, the area near the entrance used for the concert was small and a bit noisy and I suspect does not allow for a big box-office take. However the audience obviously enjoyed the evening and joined in enthusiastically in Simon's Spider song.

As it is only a dozen houses down the road we could hardly miss it and were delighted to welcome Simon and Hilary back here afterwards for dinner. We look forward to more of the same and especially to Luke Daniels giving a tin-whistle workshop in a couple of months.

English Mozart Ensemble at Henley

2009-02-16T01:20:00.000-08:00

Friday 13th - Henley Parish Church

The English Mozart Ensemble is a small chamber group who bring their music to candlelit churches around the South of England. Founded in 1977 by pianist Garth Hall, the evening's performance was given by himself and a string quintet led by violinist David Le Page.

The programme included the Divertimento in F and the Piano Concerto in A by Mozart with Vaughan William's The Lark Ascending in the first half. After the break they played two Waltzes by Dvorak, Zigeunerweisen by Sarasate, the Andante from Shostakovich's second piano concerto and Haydn's Symphony No 88 in an arrangement for chamber group by the EME's music consultant Dr.Timothy Jones.

All in all a good and ambitious programme which was played with real feeling and a sense of enjoyment that is not always apparent from larger music groups.

Much of the fun at their concerts comes from the surroundings. There was a glass or two of reasonably priced wine to be had before the concert and during the interval and that alone made it feel quite special. I certainly have never sat in the pews of an Anglican church with a glass of red wine where the prayer book should be. But the real pleasure was in the acoustics. Readers of my blog will know I am sensitive these matters and like to hear what I have payed good money for. The clear acoustic with a lovely reverberation from the walls made David Le Page's violin (an 1876 Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, we're told in the useful programme notes) sing with a clarity that is sadly missing from bigger more expensive venues. It did not assist the piano quite as much but Garth Hall coaxed a great deal of passion from the Shostakovich andante making it sound even more like Rachmaninov than ever. However when you have heard the full version twice recently as we have done, it seems odd not to go straight into the bouncy third movement without a break. It seems to hang there waiting for something else.

Memories of July 2007

The evening was even more special for Rachel and myself as Philip Aird the co-director of the EME and husband of Rachel's niece Marie Lloyd had put together a private concert for her 60th birthday in July 2007. On that occasion a different group of players formed the EME and with help from Marie, her brother David on piano and various other family members they put on a wonderful evening complete with the Shostokovich and the Haydn Symphony No.88. Few who were there that evening in Reading Town Hall will forget it and the EME made a lot of friends and continue to do so with their relaxed and approachable (and affordable) approach to this wonderful music.

When I find out how to do it I will post a selection of recordings from that concert including the two world premiere's that we heard on the night - but that is for another day.

Russian State Philharmonic

2009-02-12T02:51:00.000-08:00

Wednesday 11th February 2009

The Hexagon is a tad small for Orchestras thesizeof the Russian State Philharmonic with its 104 listed musicians. I don't think all 60 strings were on stage at the same time last night and I have a feeeling that the a visit from the Bolshoi Orchestra a few years ago may have involved even more players but Valery Poliansky certainly had massive forces at his disposal for this porgramme of Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich. What he did with them is another matter. The bio in the woefully inadequate programme says that as a Professor at the Moscow Conservatoire he 'enjoys the rare privilege of having both an orchestra of 120 musicians and a choir of 60 voices..' Certainly many Professors here would change places for less.

Well how was it on the night? The opening phrases of Francesca da Rimini were tentative and he was obviously feeling for balance in what may have been a very strange acoustic. However once they got into their stride they made a fair fist of the wonderfully complex orchestration and the massive climaxes that Tchaikovsky wrote. However I never felt the brass was totally at ease and as a result the piece felt somehow ragged and unbalanced.

The Shostakovich Piano Concerto No.2 is becoming a regular standy by on current programs - We heard (or tried to hear) Demidenko play it at the Festival Hall and Garth Hall will be playing the second movement at Henley wityh the English Mozart Ensemble this coming Friday.

The conductor had yet another luxury in that the soloist was his lovely daughter Tatiana Polianskaya. What a proud daddy he must be. She played beautifully and gave the romantic andante its full measure of late Rachmaninov emotion. Her father held his huge orchestra in check and balanced the sound very well - something that many other more well-known conductors have been unable to do. Sitting as we were 30 feet from the stage every note was clear and in total contrast to the Festival Hall where for a lot more money we were hundreds of feet away and were searching for the volume control to turn up the sound (or turn down the noise of the audience).

Incidentally the Hexagon audience is becoming noticeably better behaved - it must have been the stern lecture we were given by Brendel at his last Town Hall concert.

Tatiana can come again with or without her father - she played an encore which Ithink was a short piece by Tchaikovsky but I do wish that some effort should be made to tell the audience what the encores are. Some performers are much better than others at this.

After the interval they tackled the might Pathetique. I will admit that I cannot hear this piece and not be moved by the wonderful final adagio and come away singing the great waltz tune but I did feel that in an effort to wring out more emotion from the opening allegro he let the tempo drop to almost funereal pace. The slow tempi again caused problems for the Brass and like the first piece it became clumsy and ragged in places.

I have often wondered how much real difference conductors make - my musician friends can be awfully catty about the ones they don't like - but tonight I felt that the orchestra needed bettert than Poliansky who is at best a minor second division conductor. On this performance they cannot be ranked with the best of the Russian Orchestras. A quick google search lists 14 include Moscow and St.Petersburg Philharmonics, Moscow Radio, Mariinsky Theatre and Russian National Orchestras. Three of these are in Gramophone magazines top twenty so they perhaps they corner all the best players.

Certainly all the good young Russian conductors seem to come to Europe and America and when a Russian Orchestra visits it is often under the baton of aged or rather uninspired conductors. Maybe in their system it doesn't do to be too good.

Tartiflette for the masses - my recipe

2009-02-04T09:02:00.000-08:00

Tartiflette is a traditional dish from the Alps and is really a potato and cheese bake. However like all these things there are lots of different recipes and this is my take on it.

You will need a couple of large potatoes, a half of reblochon cheese, an onion or two, some bacon lardons and a splodge of creme fraiche.

First peel the potatoes and cut them into 1cm slices. Put them into a pan with salted water and bring to the boil. Set a timer for 7 minutes when you take them off and drain them. You don't want to overcook them at this stage as they will go all mushy later but equally you have to par-boil them enough to allow them to cook fully in the oven. It depends a little on the type of potato you use - just use a skewer or thin knife to test them to see if they are starting to soften.

Peel and chop the onion while the potatoes are par-boiling and start to soften it in an oil or fat of your choice. I use olive oil or olive spread but I guess the Savoyards would have used butter or lard - its up to you. After a couple of minutes add the lardons and cook them on a lowish heat, stirring to avoid burning the onion. If you are vegetarian you can omit the lardons and if you have a thing about onions you can omit that as well although I think that it makes a great deal of difference - you could try shallots or even leeks but something is needed to add that bit of sweetness and bite.

Take a high sides oven proof dish such as a souffle dish and put a layer of potato slices at the bottom. Cover this layer with the onions and lardons and then another layer of potatoes.

Unwrap the reblochon and remove all the cardboard, sticky labels and whatever from it and slice it into two thin semicircles. Pop these rind side up on the potatoes and put the rest of the potatoes on top. Finally put a good few dollops of creme fraiche on the top and spread it round a little. The whole thing then goes into a hot oven (170c in my fan oven) for about 20 minutes until it starts to bubble and the top goes a nice golden colour. Some folks like to brown the top under the grill but I find that it does alright for me if the oven is hot enough.

Serve with a green salad, some mountain ham and charcuterie or a simple vegetable such as green beans. A glass or two of Savoyard white wine will greatly ease both the cooking and eating processes.

Notes for foodies and geeks. Tartiflette comes from a word for potato in some Alpine dialect. Reblochon means second milking and the story that is told in the French Alps is that the crafty cowherds would only half milk the lord's cows before the baillie came round to collect it. The cowman would then do a second milking for himself and this would give the best creamiest milk from which this cheese is made. You can buy special Tartiflette dishes with a recipe printed on the bottom - but it will not be as good as mine.

Two concerts in two days

2009-02-02T04:35:00.000-08:00

Saturday at the Festival Hall

Off to London again - in fact off to the South Bank again but this time to the newly refurbished Festival Hall to hear the Philharmonia under Tugan Sokhiev. They are doing a concert of Russian music starting with Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol and finishing with Rachmaninov's second Symphony. We have really come to hear the wonderful Nikolai Demidenko playing Shostakovitch's second piano concerto. We have been great fan's of his since his Chopin series at Reading Town Hall a few years ago.

Having booked late we had to settle for whatever tickets were available and £29 each only bought us seats in row KK which is in the rear stalls about 3 rows under the balcony and there lies the problem. You are a very long way from the stage and the sound doesn't travel that well in this huge space. I was hoping that the two year £91M renovation which included upgraded acoustics would have solved this problem but sadly it hadn't. Much of the time the sound of the audience, coughing, unwrapping sweets, whispering to each other and so-on was louder than the orchestra.

Demidenko played beautifully as always but even his power and his great Fazioli piano were not really enough to cut through the fog of noise. Rachel's niece Marie Lloyd who has played at the RFH often enough advises us that the cheaper seats right at the back of the balcony are better as the sound actually reaches up there. Paying a lot for a seat obviously does not guarantee good sound as our trip to Lucerne a couple of years ago also proved. Despite having paid more for the seats than at any concert anywhere, we were still right at the back under a balcony with very little of the sound reaching us. However if you read on there are other better ways.

Sunday Night at the Town Hall, Reading

Paul Lewis has been making a name for himself including 2nd Prize at the 1994 World Piano Competition (note to myself - who won that year?) He comes from an ordinary background in Liverpool and has made his way to the top of the musical ladder via Chetham's School, studies with Brendel and now to a Professorship at the Royal Academy of Music.

He plays Schubert and Beethoven like Brendel with a no-nonsense unshowy approach. He walks on stage, sits down and starts playing even before the audience had settled. But once we had settled, he held us entranced and I for one cannot remember a better behaved audience. He took us though Schubert's opus 142 Impromptus (D935) before the break and then tackled the mighty challenge of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. Evening's like this are rare and we will savour this one and I might even buy one of his CDs.

A well-filled Concert Hall gave him a hugely deserved ovation and then we all slipped back into the snowy night leaving me weighing up the balance sheet. A trip to London costs £12.85 plus £29 for the ticket and whatever a meal costs - so lets say £75 each for the evening. We walk to the Town Hall and the tickets cost £15.40 - so lets say £15.40 each for the evening. The acoustics in the Concert Hall are far superior then the Festival Hall but the seats are a little less confortable. So on balance Reading wins hands down.

Having looked up the answer to my question I find the winner was Eugene Mursky - yes who ? - although to be fair he is still playing and is recording the complete works of Chopin. There may be a pattern here as the runner up in 2000 was Simon Trpceski. Sometimes the best ones do come second.

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

2009-01-28T01:51:00.000-08:00

Tom Stoppard and Andre Previn collaborated on this strange piece of theatre where a small symphony orchestra share the stage with a few actors to tell a tale about a Soviet psychiatric hospital. A large number of theatrical effects were employed to garnish what was a relatively simple tale of two inmates, one mad , one sane and the stories of how they got in and how they might get out of the place. The script is written wittily with lots of puns that I guess only work in English - I don't think this one will be going to Moscow in translation and the music written I guess by Previn works well to demonstrate the mad character's madness. But in the end I found it neither very funny, very poignant or even very thought provoking. The tale of a dissident incarcerated for his opinions seemed very second-hand. Some of the action including a balletic fight scene where various members of the orchestra turn in to warder/guards and brutalise other players seemed pointless - yes prisons and mental hospitals could be (can be) fairly nasty places but it did not move the story on.

The sub plot of the dissident's son being sent to the prison to persuade him to accept the party line and thereby secure his release was unbelievable and I felt poorly acted - but as truth is stranger than fiction maybe these things do and did happen.

On the credit side the lead actors Toby Jones, Dan Stevens and Joseph Millsom gave excellent performances and brought out the wit of Stoppard's script even if it was never 'darkly humerous' as the NT blurb would have it. The Southbank Symphonia played Previn's Russian inspired music with real feeling. I was just left with the suspicion that it was all a little trivial and that an real opportunity had been missed.

EU Chamber Orchestra /Natalie Clein.

2009-01-22T03:06:00.000-08:00

Wed 21/1/09 - The Hexagon

The European Union Chamber Orchestra have been to Reading on a couple of previous occasions and have played as I remember well enough. Last night they put on an unambitious programme based around Natalie Clein playing Haydn's first Cello concerto and the 'Farewell' symphony with its good joke of the players leaving the stage in ones and twos to leave just the lead and second violin playing the final bars.

As it is the 200th anniversary of Haydn's death at the grand old age of 77 these were good popular choices but choosing Mozart's Eine Kleine Nactmusik and a set of really rather tame Schubert German dances didn't show much imagination. I suppose they thought the Mozart would pack them in - so to speak - but the audience was rather thin.

However Natalie Klein (is she really 30 already?) played with a lovely tone and pace even if she didn't show us anything new about the piece. It has become a bit of a warhorse for Cellists and they are a little lacking in really popular repertoire.

The EUCO is not to my mind the best string band we have heard in recent years. Under the leadership of Hans-Peter Hofman they put on a worthy if rather unexciting performance and at times they were a little ragged and not always quite in tune. When you have only 15 string players these things become quite noticeable.

As I have thought previously this year, they would have been better off playing to a packed Town Hall Concert Hall with its sparkling acoustic than fighting against the lusher sound of the Hexagon.

As a final gripe, the Heaxgon programme at £2.50 is a real disgrace. The artist and orchestra profiles are useless and without any advertising at all the whole thing is painfully thin. I certainly would not have a copy if it were not free with the season's subscription.

Is a good screw better than a good pull?

2009-01-19T21:38:00.000-08:00

8th January 2009

After our walk along Queen Charlotte sound, we went for dinner at an Italian restaurant in Blenheim. Rocco's was just out of town and was a real treat. It was decorated with lots of Chianti Fiascos and Parma hams hanging from the beams and it served what looked like proper Italian food. The seafood platter was perfect and a starter portion of pasta was more than Rachel could manage.

However the real treat was that they had proper recognisable wines on the wine list with real European corks. I told the owner Rocco that I had heard a sound I thought had vanished from the land - the sound of a cork being pulled out of a wine bottle - so prevalent is the screw cap in New Zealand.

When I next get an ordinary bottle of NZ wine in a restaurant I will send it back saying that I think it is 'Screwed'.

Queen Charlotte Sound

2009-01-19T21:22:00.000-08:00

8th January 2009

Had I known just how beautiful Queen Charlotte sound is and just how good the walking there is, I would have spent at least a couple of days exploring the track. The general idea is that you get on a little ferry boat and get dropped off at one place or other and then walk along the track to the next landing place where the boat comes and picks you up again. There are several of these places and you can mix and match in all sorts of ways.

The girl at the booking desk obviously thought that Rachel and I were a paid of old codgers as she was very reluctant to book us tickets for a longer walk and so we only did one section and we hardly got our second wind as the track was pretty much on the level as it followed the coast about half a mile inland on the wooded hillside. However it was a very lovely day and it didn't rain - in fact we haven't seen any rain since we crossed over from the West (or is it Wet?) Coast.

Our walk ended up at a little waterside hotel which at least enabled us to have a beer and a plate of excellent local green-lipped mussels before our return trip back to Picton.

I presume the sound gets its name from then Charlotte who was George III's queen but I guess she never did the walk.

Another reason why a bath is better!

2009-01-19T21:19:00.000-08:00

Reason 99.

The murder in Psycho didn't happen in a bath.

Blenheim and the Marlborough region

2009-01-19T20:56:00.000-08:00

Argrove Lodge 6/7/8th January

Argrove Lodge was a pleasant modern house set among the vineyards of Blenheim. The Harts run the small B&B - only three rooms and a business doing cycling trips around the vineyards.

Given that the NZ police are getting very hot on drink driving, a cycle is a better option than a car if you are not going to use the spittoons.

The vineyards of Marlborough are extensive and very me-too. All rectangular blocks with perfectly spaced and lined up vines and identically sized name boards. I'm sure that winery tours are a splendid tourist wheeze, but I find one modern stainless steel winery much like another and I am not really keen on spending $NZ30 to hear yet another PR puff for how good their wines are. It is instructive going on a visit with Donald who seems to know what he talking about and can certainly comment sensibly on the various tasting samples. Maybe I'm getting too old for it but one cheap Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc tastes much like another. They slip down very easily and maybe they make great wines at a price I don't want to afford.

The Wither Hills

So we took to the hills on and went for a walk in the Wither Hills park. There were lots of well kept trails and we got to the top of a ridge where there was a splendid view over Cloudy Bay and had a little picnic in the warm sun. We had to snuggle down in the grass to avoid the wind that plagues this land or certainly the hilly parts of it. The picture here shows Cloudy Bay taken from Wither Hills and we didn't have a glass of either while we were there. Unfortunately the haze prevented good photography - you have to get up very early to get the good light in these parts.

The trip back down the hill was made more interesting by our taking a wrong turn and spending the best part of an hour going down one valley and then back up it again all in temperature that were into the 30s! When we got back to the car park and had another look at the map on the information board it did show a path out of the valley but we didn't find it and anyway we got some real exercise.

Home at last

2009-01-19T20:30:00.000-08:00

Friday 16th January

The blog is going to go backwards now as our trip to New Zealand is over and the next few posts will be viewed through the retrospectoscope. So I will start with the journey home and work back until I reach where-ever I was when I last hit the keyboard.

The problems started at Kumera. I had WiFi on the second day there, then it disappeared and worse was to follow as the laptop that I was using refused to recharge. I was not able to find a decent WiFi or get the laptop going again until I got back to the UK so I will be relying on my recollection of events which may or may not be as precise as perhaps Rachel's

The Journey home

Air New Zealand seem a very competent airline and the flight home was without any real drama. The first leg from Auckland to Hong Kong took place overnight and although we had their evening meal at 1am NZ time we both got some sleep courtesy of Temazepam. Six hours later breakfast came and we landed at Hong Kong in the very early morning gloom. There was nothing open at the airport until 7am so we walked around to stretch our legs. There was a lounge open to American Express holders but when we showed our Amex card it was we were told the wrong sort, so we both dived into the toilets and changed into winter clothes ready for the next leg to wintry England.

We were offered another identical breakfast as the plane left a very polluted and smoggy Hong Kong and Rachel managed to sleep again but I couldn't manage any, not helped in part by a very large fellow in the seat in front who kept tossing and turning and bouncing the seat and my video screen up and down. West Side story and Lost In Translation kept me reasonably well occupied and I demolished Counterknowledge by Damian Thompson. It was well written as it should be by a Daily Telegraph journalist but was a little lightweight especially after reading Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.

Another really quite good meal arrived and a few glasses of excellent NZ Chardonnay saw us home to a very quiet terminal 1, where the formalities were almost pleasant for a change. Our luggage arrived promptly, the Top Car driver was waiting with a Chrysler 3000 and we were whisked back to Reading in idle luxury, where only a luggage case full of dirty laundry was left to remind us of the last month and a bit. Tempus fugit.

99 reasons why a bad bath is better than a good day at the office or any shower.

2009-01-09T21:50:00.000-08:00

1. You fill a bath at the temperature you want. A shower comes at any or all temperatures.

2. If you turn on the hot tap in a bath, it gets a bit warmer, in a shower you get scalded.

3. If you turn on the cold tap in a bath, it gets a bit colder, in a shower you get frozen.

4.You can wash your feet in a bath.

5. You don’t hit your head on the shower head in a bath.

6. You don’t turn on the cold tap when you move in a bath.

7. You don’t turn on the hot tap when you move in a bath.

8. You don’t have taps and levers sticking into your private parts in a bath.

9.You can rescue dropped soap in a bath.

10.You can lie and soak in a bath.

11.You can play with toy boats and ducks in a bath.

12. You can leave the water in for a friend.

13. You can share a bath with a good friend.
............

Weather, Damn Weather & New Zealand Meteorological Conditions

2009-01-09T21:47:00.000-08:00

Some common misconceptions about New Zealand Weather.

1. If is fine today it will be raining tomorrow.

2. If is raining tomorrow, it will be raining tomorrow,

3. If they forecast rain, it will rain.

4.If they forecast no rain, it will rain.

5.If it is fine in North Island it will be raining in South Island.

6.If it is raining in North Island, it will be raining in South Island

7.If the wind is from the South, it will rain.

8.If the wind is from the North, it will rain.

9.If the wind is from the West, it is raining.

10.If there is no wind, it will rain or is raining.

11. If you can see the hills, it will rain.

12. If you can’t, it is raining.

Kaikoura

2009-01-09T21:46:00.000-08:00

Kaikoura - 6th January

Kaikoura is a old fishing settlement on the east coast of South Island. It grew up with the fishing and whaling fleets of the 19th Century but now is a seaside holiday and tourist centre. It is set in the middle of a large bay and on a sunny day such as today with a smooth sea the place seems idyllic.

We left the car and set off to walk to the seal colony which was on a rocky headland on the south side of the bay. When we reached the seals we found also a large car park and dozens of camper-vans and cars. There were notices enjoining us not to disturb the seals but with so much humanity there, it was difficult to see how they could not be disturbed. In fact one of the ‘attractions’ is swimming with seals. You tog up in a wet suit and get taken out a to a rocky cove in a small motor boat and then spend half an hour in the water with them. What the seals make of this is difficult to imagine but it helps separate the tourist from his dollar.

To my mind it would have been better to have closed the road half a mile short of the colony and let those who really wanted to see them walk, but the Kiwi mentality seems to be that you take your UTE (utility vehicle or 4X4) as close as you possibly can and damn anyone else who might be in the way.

We carried on past the seals up a well made path onto the headland from where there were splendid views across the sound and on a clear day you can make out the south coast of North Island.

We returned and had a beer and shared a plate of local green lipped mussels at the Pier Hotel. By this time it was getting really hot and I had to beat a retreat indoors to avoid heatstroke. Ah! the joys of New Zealand weather. Four hours later when we reached our B&B in Blenheim the skies had clouded over and it had gotten really cold again. As they say ‘Wait five minutes!’

Christchurch

2009-01-09T21:43:00.001-08:00

Christchurch - 4th & 5th January.

We came to Christchurch to stay with Sue Townsend, Sue is a lady golfer from Henley who has recently settled in New Zealand to be near her eldest daughter who has herself married a Kiwi and has got a job as a lawyer in the town.

Christchurch is a lovely town with lots of fine old English style buildings and a large neo-gothic Anglican cathedral in the middle of the town square. It even had a town crier standing outside when we visited. A vintage tramway runs tourist trips around the centre but to us the glory of the place was the botanic gardens.

These are open to the public at no charge and are planted with hundreds of stately trees from all over the world and in between there are different gardens and sections with ponds, rock gardens, lawns and glasshouses. They claim to have one of the best collections in the southern hemisphere and I can well believe it.

After a splendid lunch at the old curator’s house in the corner of the gardens, Sue took us off on a little journey back in time. We drove out through the tunnel to Lyttleton which is the port where the original Canterbury Pilgrims who came from England to settle in the 1750’s landed.

To my eye it looked just like Dover with a great harbour surrounded by cliffs. We spent a while wandering around then set off to return via Sumner which is the local seaside resort. As we drove up and out of Lyttleton we stopped to look at the entrance to the sound and the Pacific ocean beyond. We saw white splashes on the water and it dawned on us that this was a school of Dolphins coming in to the bay. There must have been a couple of hundred of them and our only regret was that neither of us had our binoculars to see them more closely.

Dinner that night was a Kiwi barbecue hosted by Sue’s daugher Sarah and her husband Wayne. Local lamb chops, game sausages, steaks and lots of salad was an ideal meal for a warm summer’s evening and as a coup de theatre, Sarah produced a large Pavlova that she had made. As I had been whingeing all day about the possible shortage of puddings for the meal I was truly contrite.

Greymouth & Arthur's pass

2009-01-09T21:40:00.000-08:00

Greymouth and Arthur’s Pass 3rd & 4th January

Leaving Fox Glacier was no big wrench although Raelene and Colin Tuck had been great hosts and fascinating people. Raelene had cooked blue cod for dinner which had been caught by her son and far too much wine and whisky flowed for anyone’s good. But the memories of the afternoon on the glacier were too new and after my fall on the ice a spreading pain in my chest was a constant reminder of how dangerous it all had been.

We made a trip to the local beach where we were eaten alive by the vicious sand flies and decided to take a quick walk round Matheson Lake. This is signposted as 1hr40 but we cleaned it in less than an hour. A coffee in the nice cafe at the Lake visitors centre set up up and off we set up north to our next stop at Greymouth. On the way we tried to watch a film at Franz Joseph but they would not take out money as they said there had to be at least 4 adults before they would run the film so we carried on and after a few kilometers I suggested we went down to the coast at Okarito.

This turned out to be a real find. It is a sleepy lagoon with a few houses, one little shop where they run wildlife and water sports excursions and a coffee machine. We had an impromptu picnic sitting on a couple of upturned boats looking out over the lagoon and then went for a walk down towards the Tasman Sea where the waves were breaking up against a sand bar and there was even a little tidal bore in the river that was flowing into the sea. There was not a lot of wildlife apart from a couple of oyster catchers and the inevitable terns, but the whole place exuded a peace and tranquility and was a real part of the lanscape in a way that the tourist towns of Fox and Queenstown were not. I really liked this place and wished we had seen more like it.

New River Bluegums which was the name of the next B&B was also a real find. It was about 10km south of Greymouth and we passed it on the way in and had to go back when we called to find out where it was. Sharon Pugh and her husband Michael had built themselves a Swiss Chalet out of solid pine logs (unlike the faux timber construction of Fiordland Lodge). They had a curly headed 2 year old son who had obviously been very good as Santa had brought him lots of toys of a boyish kind.

We were welcomed with an apology from Sharon that she had got out booking wrong and that the cottage in the grounds was in use, but would we mind a room in the main house and a discount. Well it was lovely and we certainly did not mind especially as two beers were pressed in our hands and we were introduced to a couple of their friends who had dropped in on their way back to Christchurch.

These friends were also pressed to stay the night and an impromptu meal of whitebait patties and salads was arranged. Wine appeared and the conversation flowed and a great time was had by all. The next day after an equally good breakfast we paid a very small (by the standards of this trip) bill and set off slowly to cross over Arthur’s Pass to Christchurch.

The trip over Arthur’s pass was a very pleasant day. We had plenty of time in hand so we could drive slowly letting other vehicles pass by while we enjoyed the view. We viewed the Chasm which was a narrow gorge with the river tumbling through and stopped for a little picnic at Cave Stream. The car park and picnic area were heavily managed so we set off up a path to find a pleasant bit of grass. I was amused by the number of signs warning us of the dangers of this and that and it was only a couple of days later that I leaned that several children had been killed here when a viewing platform collapsed.

Coffee was taken in Arthur’s pass at the Wobbly Kia cafe. A Kia is a parrotty kind of bird which often lives and scrounges around humans. As we left we saw one with one foot missing - a Wobbly Kia indeed.

Fox Glacier

2009-01-04T00:29:00.000-08:00

Fox Glacier 2nd January ‘09

Our hosts at Reflection Lodge, Raylene & Colin Tuck gave us some sage advice which we immediately ignored. The weather forecast was for storms coming up from the South and they suggested we change to a half day walk as the conditions would become poor after lunch. They were right.

We had signed in the previous day at the Fox Glacier guiding centre and the girl taking our money had told us bad weather was on its way but when we arrived to get our gear and be briefed no mention was made of the possibility of a storm. A short bus ride took us to the entrance to the glacier road which was locked and the guide hopped off and found a key to open it. We got off at a broad area about 500meters from the base of the glacier and set off up the trail. This led to a series of artificial steps and a path round a rocky bluff with a fixed steel rope and then another stair down to the glacier. We were then given crampons, a quick lesson in how to fit and use them and off we went.

The first hour was alright although the weather was not brilliant. We walked across the glacier to some rocks and it rained and blew a bit but it was bearable. Lunch was a brief stop at the side of the glacier and we played in an ice cave that you could walk right through and get very wet in the process. The clouds were gathering at the bottom of the valley and things looked very bleak. I suggested to the leader that it might be a good time to get us off the mountain but he did not respond. We went as far up the slope as was safe and then when we had reached the top where there was a man having an ice climbing lesson we started to turn back. At this point the weather broke and the wind got up and the rain started in earnest.

By the time we had gone a few hundred meters, the wind had got up to beyond gale force and the rain was coming in horizontal. Our guide was struggling a bit and a young lady guide arrived with her party and came to the rescue. We made our way painfully slowly down the glacier back towards the start point. At several points the guide had to insert ice pitons and fixed ropes for us to us to go down into or up out of crevasses. The amount of time that we as paying clients had to spend standing around waiting for safe steps was worrying as the weather was getting progressively worse. By the time we reached the starting point the rain was very heavy and the wind was cutting. Just standing up to take off the crampons with freezing set hands was a real trial. But the worst was yet to come.

The reverse journey back up the steps and onto the path round the bluff was to lead us into the teeth of the storm. As we reached the fixed steel cable the wind got up even more and although it was fortunately blowing us against the rock and the rain was going straight through any clothing. I have never in my life been on a mountain either skiing or walking in worse conditions. I was struggling to stay upright and most of the other people in the group were having the same difficulty. We inched our way off the exposed bluff into the semi security of the of the semi-tropical forest and the fixed stairs.

The rain and the wind led the guides to decide it was unsafe to use the footpath that ran up the valley as there would be a danger of rock fall. We were therefore led down the middle of the valley crossing the river at several places until we we finally got into sight of the car park where we had to make one final crossing of the now quite deep and fast flowing river where any thought of keeping dry had to be finally dismissed as every one had to wade through 40cm high water over slippery rocks. The bus arrived a few minutes later and we were ferried out of the valley back to the guiding base in the town.

Two days later our boots were still drying out.

Christmas celebrations in Auckland

2009-01-01T21:42:00.000-08:00

Auckland Christmas Day 2008

Roz’s new house in Titirangi is much bigger and in many ways a much nicer place than the Dublin Street one apart from the road noise and the shaded garden. It is very close to the sea at Titirangi Beach and on Christmas morning Rachel and I took a lovely walk though a semi-tropical forest which wound its way alongside a little stream down to a little cove where there was a children’s playground, a public toilet and very little else. There were a few families out walking dogs and indulging in other innocent pastimes. The sun was shining and it was a great start to Christmas morning.

Christmas dinner was an informal affair supervised in the kitchen by Mark. Roz’s two sons Olly and Nick were there with Nick’s partner Natalie and Olly’s girlfriend Catriona. The final guest was Tyler who is the half sister of Olly’s son Zack and who regards Olly as her dad. She greeted Rachel with the accusation that she was too skinny and later cast doubts on the coloring of Rachel’s hair as well. It was suggested that Rachel and Tyler indulged in a bit of arm wrestling which Rachel comprehensively won - well Tyler is only 12. She should not have accused her of being too skinny.

However her enthusiasm for opening all the presents that had accumulated under the little Christmas tree helped to make the afternoon somewhat joyful despite the pain that so many there were feeling as a result of Zack’s tragic death.

A bottle or two of bubbly and some good Kiwi wines helped the chicken and ham dinner to go down and I felt that our presence did help in some way to make Christmas bearable for Roz and Olly.

Christmas in Auckland - you couldn't make it up.

2009-01-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

You couldn’t make it up.
Christmas Eve 2008 - Somewhere in Auckland

After a painless trip back from Carrington Resort we found Roz’s new house in Titirangi, dropped off our cases and headed off to the city to return the hire car which again was a painless business. We then made our way to the nearby railway station to take the train back.
We crossed the line to the far side for the westbound train and heard the points mechanisms working. A couple of minutes later a city bound train arrived and stopped at the opposite platform. There was a red light against it and what we thought was our train appeared the other side of a road bridge. It was then we noticed that there was only one line under the bridge and that both trains were apparently waiting for the other. After a few minutes the driver of the up train got out and walked off towards the bridge. He was soon joined by another man in a yellow jacket and then the driver of the down train joined them and a further railway worker.

It was obvious that the points had stuck and that neither train was getting a green light. So with a practised insouciance one chap swung a boot at the points. He was joined by one of the others and soon all four were kicking at the points. This was certainly the correct procedure as they all went back to their trains and the down train got a green light and disappeared off to town. We thought it was our turn next but the up train chugged unstoppingly past us and headed off West. Several minutes later our stopping train arrived to take us back to Titirangi and the Christmas celebrations.

Fiordland & Doubtful Sound

2009-01-01T21:34:00.001-08:00

29-31 December 2008
Fiordland Lodge - Te Anau.

This is a spectular building a few kilometers North of the town. It is set on a hill overlooking the lake and is built apparently out of whole fir trees. I’m sure that is an architects little joke as I’m sure there is plenty of concrete hidden in there.

Our room had two fir trunks apparently holding up the ceiling and the bathroom was full of carefully placed logs which supported everything in sight. Despite its huge size the bathroom did not have a bath or even a bidet, just a very fashionable totally open shower with one plain glass screen. I may expound on the virtues of baths in another blog soon.

We met up with two other British couples who were staying there. Colin seems to spend his life on holiday as he runs the Adventure holiday arm of TUI travel and his iwife who is the Captain of Nottingham LGU and spends more time golfing than even Rachel. Chris is a keen glider pilot and is on the fringes of the British team and knows Tim Scott who is Rita & Roy Scott’s son and his wife Cathy who is his crew. We spent two very pleasant dinners in their company and it livened up what might have been a quiet couple of days.

The menu was a bit fancy and the wine list a bit on the pricey side but the quality was good even if the portions were a bit nouvelle cuisine.

The Kepler Track.

There don’t seem to be many one day circular walks in these parts so we decided to do as much o f the first part of the three day Kepler track as we could. We drove to a car park outside Te Anau and set off over the river control gate bridge and round the shores of the lake. The walking was easy on well maintained tracks through mainly broadleaved woodland. It was only spoiled by the noise of the speedboats in the lake close by.

After about 5km the track turns up the hill and begins to get serious. The first overnight hut is 14.1km from the river crossing and it is a continuous pull up without any real respite. We passed lots of groups of walkers of all ages as we raced up in our usual fashion. At one point a young lady remarked that we were twice her age and going a lot faster than they were - but we were only carrying a day pack and most of the rest had three days supplies and sleeping bags as well.

We had a brief stop half way to enjoy the view and share an apple and then on again. After what should have been a scramble around a limestone bluff but now a simple set of metal treaded staircases we emerged from the forest onto the final part of the trail. We went a few hundred meters to a good spot where we could see both the Te Anau and Manapouri lakes and then cuddled down in the shelter of the tussocks grass to have lunch.

The Kepler hut was about 2km further but there was no real point in reaching it as it was very windy outside the cover of the trees so we set off back promising ourselves tea at a lakeside cafe. The downhill section was therefore swiftly completed although the final 6km or so along the lake back to the car seemed an awful long way. We calculated that over all we had done about 25km (or 15 miles).

At the car park we were approached by a Dutch couple who asked for a lift back to town as they had come across on the water taxi and did not want to spend the return fare of about $20 each.
Tea was taken at the Drop Inn by the Lakeside spoiled only by the Real Journeys coaches that parked outside and spoiled the view.

Overnight on Doubtful Sound.

We forgave Real Journeys as their overnight trip to Doubtful Sound was certainly a highlight of the trip. An hours boat ride across Lake Manapouri, a coach ride over the road that was constructed to enable to hydro-electric scheme to be built and then a superb evening on the MV Navigator. This is a 700 tonne purpose built craft for fiord cruising. It takes only 2 meters draught and is equipped with cabins and a splendid galley. It has two motor launches which can be lowered by hydraulic crane in a matter of minutes and a couple of dozen plastic washing up bowls which they try to pass off as kayaks.

The crew were really well organized, the food was first rate and the whole experience was well worth the money. We met lots of nice people. A couple from Seattle, another couple from Lourdes with whom we chatted in french and a Swiss couple who are working in Melbourne. We slept well in the twin bedded cabin with its little en-suite and the time passed very pleasurably.

Our only gripe was that it was raining when we woke up and never stopped for the whole day. But you can’t have everything. The nature watching part was a bit ordinary as we saw a few gulls and one rock full of basking fur seals. Apart from that there was very little wildlife to be seen. There were an awful lot of waterfalls which probably reflects the fact that it rains an awful lot there.

Wildlife on the Dunedin Peninsula

2008-12-28T22:11:00.000-08:00

Dunedin, Saturday 27th.

After an uneventful flight down from Auckland during which we got superb views of the Mount Cook range covered in snow, we found our hire car drove into town and checked into the B&B which was a short walk out from the centre.

The owners have four cats. One is over 20 and a grand old ginger tom and one of the youngsters they call Lemmy. Lemmy in. Lemmy out. Lemmy on your lap and Lemmy off your lap.

In the afternoon we went on a wildlife trip and walk to the end of the peninsula. We had a very knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide and managed to see a stack of wildlife.

First were the Albatrosses. They are huge birds and have established a breeding colony which is constantly monitored. We saw several of the very close up as they flew around us.

Next was a colony of Yellow eyed penguins. These are breeding in the bush just off the beach and the Conservation department has put up nesting boxes for them. There are also blue Penguins nesting but we did not see any of them out of their nest boxes.

As we were watching three penguins on the beach we saw a fur seal sleeping on the sand and then another young sealion nearby. We stood in amazement as a large bull sealion emerged from the sea had a good look around at us and the other animals on the beach. At this point the penguins scarpered. He waddled up the beach and stopped about 30meters aways. We all took great care as these animals are huge and can move across the sand quicker than we can.

He had a look at the fur seal and left him alone as he wasn't the right species and then moved on to the young sealion. We feared he might attack him but the youngster was duly obedient and they just had a little play. We watched and took photos as the went back into the sea and swam away. I have never been quite so close to as big and potentially dangerous an animal as this.

We finished the tour by going to the breeding grounds of the fur seals. There were lots of them including many newborn pups. They all seemed to be happy and well fed and some of the older ones were having a great time in the larger rock pools.

We got back long after dark having had a superb afternoon and evening and it was a great shame that the burger bar we went to was pretty ordinary although it claimed to be the finest in the town.

Silly golf and an even sillier hack

2008-12-28T21:55:00.000-08:00

Carrington resort - Wednesday 24th

The golf course at the Carrington resort was silly by our standards. It had been built out of reclaimed scrubland on the sand dunes and many of the holes were very tight. I lost my first two balls into a wilderness of bushes and marsh. The 6th and 7th holes looked unplayable. However the rain came and saved us just as we reached them.

The next morning before we left and while Rachel was packing, I went for a hack down to the beach. There was only me riding from the resort that day and two girls from the local yard. They had found me an ex-trotting horse tacked up western style. The girls were both on standardbred horses which is their name for 15hh ponies. One was being led. We got down to the beach OK through a couple of locked gates, but my horse didn't feel happy at all and the girl leading was also having real trouble.

When we got close the the beach the tide was in and we had to cross a lagoon. The point she chose was at a narrow point of a stream, but the water came right up to the horses middles and we all got wet feet. It is difficult to keep you feet high and dry when you are having to kick hard even to get the reluctant beast into the water. Neither of us was much amused.

When she suggested a trot, her horse went up, down, left, right and did some very fancy dressage manoeuvres that are probably not it the book. I tried to keep mine behind and on a fairly short rein, but he decided he would join in an go round in circles. I stayed on but accepted the offer of a change onto the horse on the lead rein, who was a bit quieter, but even this one started fooling around whenever the other horses got up behind her. So we never got our canter along the sand.

However I did see an amazing amount of bridlife and the whole thing was great fun. The tide had gone out a bit by the time we got to crossing the lagoon and I managed to get back across without too much drama.

Karikari and the end of the world.

2008-12-23T00:20:00.000-08:00

December 22-23. Carrington Resort

If you travel north from the Bay of Islands into Northland, the population gets sparser and the countryside a bit wilder. There are a couple of towns en-route and Maunganui where we stopped for petrol was situated on a crescent shaped bay and in the beautiful morning sunshine it was idyllic.

We rolled into Carrington resort which is towards the north end of the Karikari peninsular about lunchtime. Carrington resort is an upmarket development of hotel, golf course and winery. It is largely built on reclaimed land and is obviously aiming at a sophisticated and wealthy clientele. Was this the right place for us, I ask myself.

The Beach
Still having booked into our palatial room overlooking the 8th tee, we decided to go for a walk to the beach. The route took us over the golf course into the scrub and over the sand dunes beyond. When we eventually reached the beach it was like nothing I had ever seen before. A large sweep of golden sand stretching about 3km with a deep blue sea and gentle breakers. There was not another person in sight and apart from a few houses on the far side no signs of any-one having been here before us. There was a lagoon and a large sand bar which was gradually being covered in vegetation and apart from a bridge over a stream no development at all. I took some photos of Rachel paddling her feet in the freezing waters of the bay and these will soon be available on facebook as I cannot seem to get them to load in blogspot.

The Golf course
The golf course is very lovely having been laid out over the reclaimed land and sand dunes. There is fairway irrigation, beautifully tended curving fairways and contoured greens that don't hold your approach shots. All very wonderful except there are no golfers here. Yesterday we saw one couple playing and the assistant restaurant manager out practising - more of him later. Today I think there was ourselves and one other pair playing. We played only 14 holes and the scuttled in as the rain started. - more of this later as well. We missed out the three really hard holes where we could not see where we could safely hit the ball without it rolling off the sloping fairways into the lake or other hazards.

The Vinyard
The vinyard and winery are also quite odd. They have 40ha of vines and are growing a large number of varietals. Cabernet Sauvignon, Cab Franc, Merlot, Pinotage, something called Tannat as well as Chardonnay & Viognier. They tried Semillon but it would not work.

We had a winery tour with the Sommelier who is a young lady from Argentina. She was quite knowledgeable but a bit hazy on the vinyard details especially on soils and subsoils. The vinyard is on sandy clay and as it is on a penisular between two large expanses of water, it is not as hot as its northerly location would suggest.

They vinify on site and send the wine to Auckland to be bottled and then transport it back here to sell it. They also import some grapes from other areas for wines they cannot grow themselves eg Sauvignon Blanc from Blenheim and Chardonnay from Gisborne a couple of years ago when early rains destroyed the harvest. They are trying to get away from the single varietal wines and are blending different grapes. I tried a Merlot, Cab Sauvugnon, Malbec blend which was just about drinkable although very young. the Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cab Franc was just too tanniny (is this how it is spelt) for my simple palate. The vines are very young and the 2006 wines are very immature although I learn they have already won gold medals at exhibitions.

The website http://www.karikariestate.co.nz/index.php?page=redwines# has a picture of a pretty young lady treading grapes but the truth is that it is all stainless steel and machinery.

The weather.

As I write this at 10.30pm the storm outside is still raging. It started at 2.00pm when we were on the golf course and has not stopped since. This has not affected anything as the golf course sprinkler system came into life at 9.00pm and is still watering the greens - well actually it is missing the greens as the high wind is blowing the water over the nearby scrub and into the lagoon. I'm supposed to be going out on a hack tomorrow at 9.00am so I just hope it blows itself out soon.

Keri Keri & the Bay of Islands

2008-12-22T21:59:00.000-08:00

December 22-24.

The Keri Keri inlet is the site of one of the oldest settlements in New Zealand and the old Stone House is the oldest stone building. Just across the estuary is the Landing restaurant where we dined on two nights. The local scallops served on a Kumara cake (sweet potato) was really nice. They also served a great roast lamb.

We stayed in a place called Georgian Lodge which is run by an English couple who have sold up and moved out here. They had no other guests so they gave us the best room which was the upstairs of a large converted double garage. The conversion was done at no little expense as there were huge oak beams everywhere and downstairs in the guests sitting room there was genuine 17th Oak wainscotting.

Although the Bay of Islands has all sorts of attractions such as deep sea fishing and swimming with dolphins, we chose to walk and found a couple of really nice walks, both ending up at spectacular waterfalls. After Hong Kong and spending time with Roz, it felt like the real start of our holiday.

Russell across the bay was again like Devonport a lovely throw back to another more gentle era of holidaymaking. It reminded me a bit if some places on the west coast of Scotland forty years ago. We went for a walk up flagstaff hill and then down to a secluded cove and then had a nice meal in a seafront restaurant where we watched the rain pelt down. The ferry over was a speedboat with about 20 seats and it banged and crashed its way across waves. There was a notice at the front instructing us what to do in case of amongst other things the driver being lost overboard or incapacitated. Fortunately this did not happen on our crossing.

We were also amused on our way up to Keri Keri when we stopped in Kawakaw for lunch. It was a bit like an American wild west movie set and when a train came up the main street pulling a truck loaded with a mechanical digger complete with driver on board, the amusement was complete. Also the town's main tourist attraction appeared to be an ornate public toilet building which had been designed by a wacky Austrian architect, Friedensreich Hunterwasser. Very strange - he had obviously been influenced by Gaudi.

Auckland at last

2008-12-21T21:49:00.000-08:00

15th-18th December 2008

We have come to New Zealand at the invitation of Roz Young who had been Rachel’s best friend during her schooldays. They had shared summer holiday trips together during their teen years, culminating in a famous trip to Sardinia, where by coincidence Rachel and I had visited only this last summer.

Life for Roz is in turmoil. Her beloved, only grandson Zac, had been killed in a tragic accident at the beginning of October and the bottom fell out of her world and also of her son’s world. The process of putting things back together is proving difficult and to help her son cope, Roz and her partner Mark are moving out of their home in central Auckland and renting a larger house where her son Olly can come and stay.

Today would have been Zac’s 10th brithday and it will be a difficult day for everyone who was close to him. We won’t be there but we will be back in Auckland to spend Christmas with them. I hope we can bring them some Christmas cheer, but memories of Christmases past may still be too painful for Roz to bear.

Auckland’s weather.
Auckland is a bit like Manchester. If you can see the hills, it’s going to rain - if you can’t, it’s already raining. However it does mean that plants grow lusciously here. There is a garden in the Mount Eden area (I will resist the obvious line) which has been created in a disused quarry. The local microclime allows them to grow all kinds of sub-tropical plants and trees. It provided us with a fascinating afternoon.

When we arrived it was grey and overcast but it allowed Rachel and Roz to catch up the last couple of years. The next day dawned bright and sunny and we went to the beach. Auckland has water on all sides and there are good beaches in several places. Takepuna beach is particular is favored by the locals and by mid afternoon there were lots of people enjoying the sun and the warm sea.

The next day we had planned to take a ferry across to Rangitoto island which is a dead volcano and is kept as a nature reserve. However after we had bought our tickets we learned that the sea was too rough for the crossing and so we got our money back and stayed on dry land. We went for a walk in the city centre and we strolling in the park by the University when the weather deteriorated and we headed for the safety of a local cafe.

Cafe Culture
Auckland does cafes. They are everywhere. How anyone does any work when they seem to spend all day sitting and sipping lattes and mochas. They have some different items on their coffee menus from the usual US/UK ones. Top of the list is usually Flat White which is a medium sized cup of non-frothy white coffee.

We sheltered from the squall in the nearest one that looked as if it had a liquor licence and spent a splendid hour or so over lunch watching the world go by. Auckland is very multi-cultural and apart from the Europeans and Maoris there are huge numbers of other polynesians and people from all over the area.

Boats and buildings.
The centre of the city is dominated by the harbour at one end and the Sky Tower at the other. The harbour front still has one or two of the original Victorian buildings such as the Ferry House and the Old Railway Station, but most have been replaced by modern skyscrapers and shopping malls. Still it is not quite as bad as Hong Kong and there are still quite a few shops which have a bit if local character.

The Sky Tower though is bizarre. The tallest structure in the Southern Hemisphere (or something like that) it is concrete tube with a restaurant and viewing gallery on top surmounted by a large communications tower. At night it can be illuminated in a variety of colours and it dominates the skyline from all directions. We went in with the intention of going to the top but to get even to the ticket desk you had to run the gauntlet of the tackiest tourist trap shops and when we eventually got there we decided that $38 was a bit much when we could get a better view from the top of Mount Eden and some exercise in the process.
Eventually the weather improved and we took the short ferry to Devonport which is a pretty little old fashioned seaside resort - Auckland’s Margate perhaps. We walked to the top of the hill there and I am sure enjoyed a better view as a result.

We passed some of the NZ Navy docked at the Naval base. The Kiwis have a thing about sailing which culminated in their triumph in the America’s Cup a few years ago. There are still a couple of the boats in the harbour which you can go on for a couple of hours to get the “America’s Cup experience”. However these are now dwarfed by some of the pleasure cruisers and yachts parked alongside. It never fails to amaze me how much money is expensively tied up in these rapidly depreciating assets that rarely and sometimes never leave their moorings. If so many people can afford to waste this much money, we must have our taxation system wrong.

Bungy jumping and other strange sports.
From the viewing platform of the Sky Tower, from the underside of the harbour bridge and from countless other places around the country you can attach yourself to a bit of elastic and throw yourself off into the arms of a merciful and loving God or whatever else you choose to believe in. Not everyone dies as a result but its a wonder so many survive.

Tennis however is different. The wednesday evening roll up and join in tournament was really great fun. I haven’t played for a good few years but I could still remember how to do it. Most of my serves went in and I played with a number of different people and we all had a splendid time.

Rachel didn’t play as her cold was at its worst. She went to the doctors the next day for antibiotics to control the incipient bronchitis. She has however spotted several golf courses and I am sure that she would love a round or two while we are here.

Too many shopping malls

2008-12-15T21:27:00.000-08:00

Sunday December 14th
6.00pm

What a strange day. After a leisurely breakfast at the hotel we packed and paid and took the free shuttle to Kowloon Railway station where we were able to check in all our bags. We then went for a walk but the first problem arose. We couldn’t get out of the shopping mall. The station is in the basement of a huge new development with hotels, shops, offices and apartments all within one huge complex full of underground walkways which were carefully signed to other shopping malls. The first time we saw daylight we were sent back by the security officers for daring to escape from the mall. Obviously they saw we had no designer label carrier bags so back we had to go - round and round the merry-go-mall.

The International Scout Centre
When we finally escaped we came upon the Hong Kong Scout Centre. A huge handsome steel and glass 20 storey building backing onto Kowloon Park. We went in briefly and found it decorated for Christmas like a five star hotel or one of the endless malls we had been trapped in. Still it was a superb building obviously very popular given the number of people there and the huge piles of luggage. Perhaps that's where we will stay if we come again.

On the plane for Auckland
10.00pm

After a splendid airline meal and perhaps too many glasses of NZ wine its time to sleep and get ready for our big adventure. I’ve bought a copy of YoYo Ma and friends Songs of Joy and Peace. This will keep me company for the next few weeks. He may not be the best celloist in the world but he has a wonderful circle of friends. The Wexford Carol with Alison Krauss could become the theme for the trip.

Hong Kong - day 1. Jet lagged and bug ridden

2008-12-15T21:23:00.000-08:00

Saturday December 13th
2.00am
Jet lag is a funny thing. Sometimes I just seem to be a but tired or wakey at the wrong times and other times it can come and knock you out completely. Today I’m towards the latter end of the continuum. I felt tired for a lot of yesterday and we delayed going to bed until 11.00pm and fell asleep straight away. At 2.00am I awoke ready for the day. I read Obama for an hour and then went back to sleep until quarter to eleven.

Rachel unfortunately has brought the BIH bug with her from England and is fighting it off although very croakey.

Yesterday evening we touched down at 4.30 and got through the formalities quickly. I exchanged some pounds for HK dollars and bought two return tickets for the airport express train which was very clean and quiet.

We got onto a free hotel shuttle and went round Kowloon twice before reaching our hotel. It gave us a chance to see some of the town and today we will go and explore. Supper was a simple meal in a Thai restaurant where the locals were eating. It was cheap and just what we needed. The hotel restaurant looks very pricey and we will eat out again today.

The weather is grey and overcast and not too hot so a good walk will do us good.

Later that day
A good walk is what we had - downtown to the Kowloon waterfront with great views over to the Hong Kong Island skyscrapers. We found a nice cafe with free WiFi and were able to pick up an email from Robyn and then onto the funny little ferry that crosses the bay.

The cable railway that pulls you up to the peak is a real treat, although the visitor centre and viewing platform is a tacky shopping mall with the usual tourist tat. We had a nice lunch of roast chicken and vegetables served outside under large shady trees although the weather was a bit on the chilly and overcast side. The Tiramasu was a real bonus.

The Peak served as a retreat from the hear and squalor of the town in earlier times and has been quite well protected. There is a 3K circular walk through quite dense woods with occasional views to the South China Sea beyond. Lots of informative panels described the trees and other wildlife to be seen and it was a good way to settle the lunch.

Unfortunately when we got back to the visitor centre the queue for the return tram was I reckoned an hour and our requests for a route to walk back down were met by incomprehension so we picked up one of the minibuses and zoomed downhill in that.

Two Acts of kindness
Rachel and I are growing to like Hong Kong and especially the Chinese people here. They always seem happy, polite and well quite normal. Just like English folk with Oriental faces and they are really kind. When I failed to make the cash machine at the ferry deliver a token, the attendant at the gate not only came and helped and let me through the barrier but he insisted on operating the machine for Rachel. Later on when we got onto the minibus I didn’t have the 16HK$ in change and the man sitting across just handed across 20$ in change.

As we came back to the ferry terminal, I asked a group of men sitting at a table talking in English for advice on which ferry to take as the destinations were all strange to me. One of them asked me how I like his funny little city. He had come on a visit thirty years ago and had never left. I can see why.

Half way there - first thoughts

2008-12-15T21:16:00.000-08:00

Friday 14th Dec,2008
5.30am
I am an ungrateful old curmudgeon. Here we are swanning across the world at no little expense and all I can find to write about are the discomforts of overnight flying. How bigger chaps than me manage I can’t imagine because even in premium economy I found every small twist and turn brought me in contact with some hard bit of the seat.

The first part of the journey was trouble free. Top Cars were their usual immaculate selves and even Terminal 1 at Heathrow was almost pleasant, It was blessedly uncrowded and check-in and security passed without problems, Although they still insist on this barmy business of making you take off your shoes. Last week at Glasgow they had abandoned that - Hurrah say I.

The airline food was unexceptional - six large prawns in the Linguine were very nice. However I did discover the principle of diminishing returns. The first glass of New Zealand Chardonnay was cool and crisp and went down well with the funny little terrine. The second washed down the linguine and I thought that I would eschew coffee in favour of sipping a final glass with my bedtime book. The gracious stewardess, from Ulster by the sound of her accent poured me a toothmug full but it was by now warm and soggy. Donald would have said I told you so - stick to the Viognier.

My book on the plane is ‘The Audacity of Hope’ by Barack Obama. I have been impressed by him for some time and his speech on the night of his Presidential election victory was one of real quality and guess what - he writes as well as he speaks. A political polemic rarely becomes a page turner but this is so far. One paragraph stood out. Talking about how politics in Washington and the states in general have gone bad he writes

"No, what’s troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics - the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and the trivial,our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working consensus to tackle any big problem."

His challenge is to remedy that. He is going to need a lot of courage, friends in high places and a ton of luck.

Mum's fish pie

2008-12-02T04:27:00.000-08:00

My mum wasn't a bad cook but she wasn't creative like her Mum or Sister. However one thing she did cook well was fish pie. So I thought that this would give me an opportunity to try out my ideas for better recipe writing. I love reading about food and the free monthly copy of Waitrose Food Illustrated (known to our family as wifi) is the only thing to cheer up the start of a new month. However I find the way it formats recipes unhelpful so here is a first take on how I think it should be done.

First things first. The recipe should tell you in short order what the dish is and any big things you need to know to cook it. So here goes.

Mum's fish pie is quintessential comfort food. It is an oven-baked dish with a base of mixed fish and seafood in a white sauce (bechamel) topped with a creamy potato mash.

A little bit of history is often useful. My Mum used to use Cod and mash her potatoes in milk. I use a mixture of plain and smoked fish and put small prawns in the sauce. I mash my potatoes with creme fraiche. Lots of recipes suggest you do clever things such as using a bay leaf or an onion studded with cloves to flavour the milk for poaching the fish. I must be missing something as I don't think it makes any difference and certainly increases the complexity of things. It must be a good recipe as my student daughter has made it part of her cookery repertoire.

Now for the ingredients. I won't put any quantities as how much fish you buy (and what fish you buy) depends on what is available at what price on the day. If you are making a pie for two people with small appetites buy a little, for a hungry family buy a lot more. Last time I made it for two of us, I used a small fillet of farmed salmon, a fillet of cod and one of smoked and dyed haddock. I used small North Atlantic prawns and King Edwards potatoes. You will need half a pint of milk, 100g of creme fraiche and salt and pepper.

You will need a largish pan to poach the fish (I use an electric frypan which has a thermostat to control the temp and is easy to clean), a sauce pan and a tall sided oven proof dish such as a souffle dish.

A quick resume for good cooks comes next. Peel and cube the potatoes and cook in salted water. Poach the fish in seasoned milk until just cooked and prepare a roux of butter and flour. Flake the fish into the base of an ovenproof dish and use the milk to make the white sauce adding the prawns into the sauce (it helps to make it less lumpy I find). Season generously. I use salt and pepper but you can be creative in this area if you want. Pour the cooked sauce over the fish.

Mash the cooked potatoes with creme fraiche (enough but not too much to make it runny) and
spoon over the fish and sauce. You can top the potato with grated cheese but I don't - I just make swirly patterns with the back of a fork. Put into a hot oven (I use a fan oven at 170c) and cook until the potato crush goes brown and crunchy. Serve with a green vegetable or a side salad.

Finally should come the detailed instructions for those people who like to follow to the letter. But I'm bored by that so I say google it on the Waitrose or BBC food sites (or even, dare I say on Delia's).

Bon appetit.

Ashkenazy & The Philharmonia at Basingstoke

2008-12-01T01:47:00.000-08:00

This year the Philharmonia Orchestra has a residency at the Anvil Theatre at Basingstoke and their first two concerts have set a very high standard. Alfred Brendel played his last UK concert with them under the baton of Sir Charles Mackerass and even if he has lost some of his power and pomp he still has an unmatched musicality and always a twinkle in his eye. We will miss his live performances, especially those in the magnificent Reading Concert Hall.

But for sheer power and panache the evening with Vladimir Ashkenazy was unmatched. Simon Trpceski played the Rachmaninov 3rd Piano Concerto with a wonderful combination of grace and power. At times he seemed to be somewhere else completely in a musical trance but when he needed to he could summon up tremendous power and control. It must be wonderful for a performer to play with a conductor who will know every note of the piano part and has played them at the highest level himself. There was an obvious bond and sympathy between the two.

The orchestra also responded magnificently to him and made a joyous noise in the Tchaikovsky 4th Symphony which took up the second half of the concert. They showed their more serious side in a performance of Prokofiev's tome poem Autumnal.

They are going with Ashkenazy on tour to Japan soon and if the young violinist we met at the station is to be believed they will all have a great time. 'A lovely man' were her words.

The Gramophone list of the world's top 20 orchestras only has one British Orchestra, the LSO in at no.4, but I have heard quite a few of the European ones in the list and the Philharmonia compares very well with them. In my personal list they would replace the Gewandhaus who we heard in Lucerne giving a very lack-lustre performance under Ricardo Chailly. We are extremely fortunate to have so many excellent professional orchestras working in or visiting the UK that lists like this have no real use for me.

The Messiah at Reading

2008-12-01T01:42:00.000-08:00

Often I suspect these reviews will be as much about the place and the time as about the performance itself. This first one is certainly more concerned with the setting than the music. Handel's Messiah was written for large scale venues and for the large musical forces that go with them and is deservedly popular amongst performers and audiences alike. The English Concert under Roy Goodman and the Tallis Choir came to the Hexagon at Reading to perform this great work last friday, 28th November.

The Hexagon is an admirable multi-purpose hall but it has been the target of much criticism for its acoustic which some performers describe as too soft without any real feedback. The scale of this production with a small chamber orchestra of 25 players and a modest sized choir of some 45 singers, was not sufficient to overcome this acoustic and many of the louder passages sounded subdued and some of the quieter pieces were difficult to follow as the precision of the singing was lost. The Hallelujah Chorus which ends the second part of the Oratorio far from being a spine tingling blast was a real anti-climax. The harpsichord continuo sounded very feeble and the portable organ was virtually inaudible. Even the Mezzo-Soprano Sarah-Jane Lewis had some difficulty in projecting her voice.

The hall was far from full and I and my companions left after the second section. I had heard the Messiah before here and I felt it needed much bigger forces than were arrayed on the night. What surprised me then was the choice of venue. Reading has a concert hall across the town in the Old Town Hall which is praised by all for its clear acoustic and good aural feedback. Singers, pianists and other smaller musical groups love its reverberant nature and Brendel for one has claimed it is one of the best in Europe. It would have been the perfect venue for this performance - there is even an Father Willis organ so the continuo player would have no excuse for not being heard. Handel wrote his masterpiece for this kind of civic hall and I for feel that a wrong decision was made in this case and the Town Hall would have been packed to capacity.

Welcome to Joe's Commonplace Boook

2008-11-30T10:52:00.000-08:00

Hello friends.

I have been thinking for a long while about creating a web presence for myself and decided to take the plunge now ahead of our major trip to New Zealand over Christmas and New Year 2008/9. What I propose to do is to post a daily (or so) article which will cover a wide range of my interests. There will be concert reviews and these will become a reminder for me of the wonderful music we listen to in all sorts of places - the first will be a review of Ashkenazy's concert with the Philharmonia at Basingstoke yesterday (Sat 29th Dec)

I also want to find a way of putting my own personal philosophy into some order. This may well be a messy process but it may help me and I hope anyone else that reads it to think through the problems of living in this strange 21C world - a world for which the Human species was perhaps not perfectly adapted. I have a little idea at the back of my mind for a little project in this area and this blog may well enable me to start putting some flesh on the bare bones of this project. But more of that later.

There will also be photos and maybe other attachments and it will I hope be an interesting travelogue for friends and relatives. So off we go. If you happen to read this and want to come along on the journey - please do let me know.

Peace & prosperity to you all.

Joe Edwards 30/11/08