August 2019 All the blogs about live events from here on are memories after the event and not written at the time. Anything in 2021 and going forward is live!……….
Late August 2019 I went to Jerusalem for a break from Yatta and the South Hebron Hills, the surrounding villages of the West Bank, and the never-ending tension of the Israeli occupation of that area – it was nice to be able to sit in the hotel room and listen to the Proms on I-Player and read as long as I wanted to, and I enjoyed that almost as much as any of the tourism – although the Temple Mount is very special; calm, beautifully landscaped, and lovely to sit in (or would be if the temperature weren’t 30+ degrees). I managed to listen to the Proms I-Player Rattle Belshazzar Feast, which I thought was a bit fidgety, wayward in tempi, and not quite ferocious enough in the bits that need oomph; the Nelsons Bruckner 8 with the Leipzig Gwendhaus was, I thought, very fine indeed, though I notice some critics weren’t so enthused; I also enjoyed the Mirga CBSO Elgar/Weinberg concert. Critics were a bit sniffy about Sheku’s Elgar performance but I thought it was very sensitive, perhaps introverted, but that’s a perfectly reasonable reading of the score) – and I really enjoyed the Weinberg 3rd Symphony. I listened on I-Player to Stuart Skelton and Das Lied von der Erde – this was a little earlier on my last night in the UK – I toyed with the idea of checking into my hotel at Luton Airport in the mid-afternoon and then going back down to London to see the concert live. In the end I thought it was too much hassle and that I would listen in the hotel room. I listened to about 10 bars, but the whole experience sounded so painful I switched the music off and went to another sort of bar…I listened to the Martha Argerich Tchaik PC 1 too – great if wayward performance!…….
Later in October, again on a 3 day break, I went to Nazareth – wonderful fusion food, I gorged myself, and again had lots of beer, something we’re not allowed in the West Bank – and played Bruckner on Amazon Music
John's musical journey 