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Two holidays!!! I spent 5 days in Wales with my friend Chris. His place is very isolated, behind Barmouth, and towards the head of a valley, looking south – so that you can see, lit in the setting sun in the late afternoon, Cader Idris, one of the larger hills thereabouts. He lives without electricity,Continue reading “Thoughts during lockdown 4 – September/October 2020 Live Music and holidays”

In mid-August I spent 4 days in Launde Abbey on a personal rather than organised retreat. I like the monastic-type punctuation of the day with services (though it’s not a monastery, just the retreat centre for the dioceses of Peterborough and of Leicester –and going to a Compline at 9pm in the gathering darkness with flickeringContinue reading “Thoughts during lockdown 3 – August 2020”

In July – one of the ‘pleasures’ – relatively speaking –  of lockdown has been the time to look a lot at streamed performance, and programmes on Youtube etc For instance this is a lovely and recent film about Mahler’s First Symphony https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5DfYcT5icY and here is a super performance by Lenny Bernstein of Das LiedContinue reading “Thoughts during lockdown 2 – July 2020”

And in June I began to realise the full consequences of Covid 19 and lockdown for musicians  – their well-being, livelihoods and income – and live music, and those who organise it, and love it, and began to feel despondent. Though there are various things I continue to do, with varying degrees of commitment, theContinue reading “Thoughts during lockdown 1”

March 2020 before lockdown – as doom approached, the main things I went to in March musically were the Opera North Marriage of Figaro and Kurt Weill’s Street Scene. I enjoyed the Weill piece a lot. It’s a kind of missing link between Porgy and Bess, and Bernstein/Sondheim – still with some of the WeimarContinue reading “March before lockdown, 2020”

February 2020 – still oblivious of the impending lockdown and of months without live music, I went to the Halle’s performance of Beethoven 9 with Mark Elder conducting. I thought the finale was super, but the slow movement was, I thought, too fast and the first two movements neither had the energy or the powerContinue reading “February 2020”

I had another packed weekend in London at the end of January 2020 / beginning of February with Mitsuko Uchida as pianist and director of the Gustav Mahler Chamber Orchestra performing Mozart Piano Concerto No. 17, K453, Widmann’s Choralquartett , and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22, K. 482. This was just about as superlative asContinue reading “Late January/ early February”

I started the year off with an extraordinarily weekend of music in mid-January. After a meeting I had to go to in Borimingham I was able to catch the CBSO Mahler 8 with their chief conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla,. I have only heard Mahler 8 infrequently over the years – Davis and Boulez at the PromsContinue reading “January 2020 before lockdown”

In mid-December 2019 I went to a keenly awaited concert  – Omer Meir Welber conducting his BBC Philharmonic in Bruckner 7 and Sofia Gubaidulina’s Triple Concerto for violin, cello and bayan. A greatly interesting programme choice, with a religious element to both of them – Gubaidulina focuses in her piece on the number 3, obviouslyContinue reading “December 2019”

Once back in the UK my first live musical event was in mid-November – Opera North’s Giulio Cesare, at the Lowry. Trying to remember it 14.5 months later, the main things that stick in the mind are the excellence of the singers and the sheer fertility, variety and inventiveness of the musical numbers – almostContinue reading “November 2019”