Inspiratio Ensemble - Beethoven

 Inspiratio Ensemble, An Afternoon with Beethoven, 

St. Mary's, Hayling Island, September 29

Bravely, I took on the vagaries of the Sunday afternoon bus timetable. To continue with what has been a great Beethoven year for me, a rare chance to hear some of his songs meant it was necessary and it was good to see that so many others took the opportunity, too.

Alex Poulton's programme was narrated by Piers Burton-Page in an epistolary biographical account of Beethoven's troubled life and with Valentina Seferinova and Mikhail Lezdkan as accompanists and additional instrumental pieces it made for an insightful as well as musically various show.

Beginning with three lieder, Alex's expressive dramatization was modulated through erudite diction and enunciation, ideal in the intimate acoustic of St. Mary's. For all of our stereotype image of Beethoven as the muscular Romantic bent on heroism, yes, he could do that, but the emphasis of what Piers read and these songs was on vulnerability and an openness to such feelings. Valentina might also be renowned for her high-octane performances of Rachmaninov and Joachim Raff but she can do decorous restraint, too.

In the finale of the Pathetique Sonata she was poignant but not unplayful before the song cycle, An die ferne Geliebte (To the distant beloved), Op. 98, was simpatico with nature until the last of them took off into a celebration of song itself as art provides some release from the torments it expresses.

It all seemed to fit when it transpired that Alex works in music therapy and suddenly it becomes obvious that that is what music is and does, whether as part of a programme designed to do so or whether one subconsciously puts on Josquin des Prez rather than Siouxsie and the Banshees.

It's not easy to think of a greater meeting of music and literature than Beethoven meeting Goethe but they did, not only by letter but in person, the poet reflecting later that,

His talent astounded me; nevertheless, he unfortunately has an utterly untamed personality, not completely wrong in thinking the world detestable, but hardly making it more pleasant for himself or others by his attitude. 

In the second half, Alex sang the rhythmic, Neue Liebe, neues Leben, op. 75, no.2, 'New Life, New Love', which in many ways was a recurring but unrequited theme and one of the 25   ( !!! ) Scottish Songs, op. 108. Not everybody knew that Beethoven might have been as well known for lieder as Schubert had he not done a mountain of other things as well. Like Für Elise, for example, that Valentina played so delicately to a rapt audience.

The 'big ticket' instrumentally, though, was Mikhail's Cello Sonata no. 4, op. 102, no. 1 with its plaintive, slow exchanging of trills with Valentina before a more unsettled Allegro Vivace and then, again, the deep, sonorous cello with lingering piano giving way to an impulsive, robust conclusion. 

It was for the most part about the songs this afternoon, though, and Sehnsucht, op. 83 no. 2, was a shadowy thing, translated as something like 'yearning' but, Wikipedia says, about all facets of life that are unfinished or imperfect, paired with a yearning for ideal alternative experiences.  And if that is what Beethoven is ultimately about, he made a very good job of it, not least in Busslied, op. 48, no.6, moving from minor to major, with Valentina providing something approximately akin to Bach organ music behind the celebratory anthem that, given his usual symphonic grand climaxes, Beethoven simply stopped. Valentina had to turn over her music because nobody thought it would do that and then came the applause. Clever trick, that. 

It was a brilliantly thought-out afternoon, pressing for a place to be short-listed on what is a long list of wonderful Events of the Year attended by me this year. Done with such care and attention and for art's sake, my one and only reservation would have to be that some sort of handout would come in useful, mainly for me admittedly, but for everybody else, too. It's not only something to guide you through but something to remember it by which we will surely want to do. 

Ensemble Concertante at Lunchtime Live!

Ensemble Concertante, Portsmouth Cathedral, September 26 

After last week's Lunchtime Live when Sachin's set brought the light from outside in, today Ensemble Concertante did the same for a breezy day with their four clarinets providing the wind indoors.

The Overture to The Marriage of Figaro lent itself well to its arrangement through Spencer Bundy's bass mixing sustained notes with ornament until the trilling finale. For the most part it is Rob Blanken in the lead part but 'ensemble' is the operative word and the combination glowed in the Allegro from Clare Grundman's Caprice. Clare was male, not female, it transpires and one must try not to take anything for granted.

That glow was maintained throughout the set which continued in jazzy style, making the case that the Mozart concerto notwithstanding, it is at least as much such an instrument as 'classical'.  Mack the Knife passed the tune around at a leisurely tempo with no need for Ella to improvise the words before the billowing Polly's Song with Jen Flatman, Naomi Rides and the bass man in an intricate trio in the middle and The Cannon Song by Kurt Weill which had more of the feel of the next whisky bar. 12th Street Rag was moved from its customary finale position before a Klezmer Triptych, arr. Mike Curtis, was yet more atmospheric in its traditional stylings of an age-old, somehow melancholy party until flying in Freylacher Bulgar.

Spencer's light-hearted commentary assumed that opera was forbidding and that everybody loved Gershwin but that's not how it is for me. His Walking the Dog swung loosely, however, to complete a brief survey of C20th jazz.

New to Concertante were three Songs of the British Isles, arr. Richards & Wood but not those of Rolling Stones fame. The Londonderry Air had Jen, Naomi and Spencer sighing beneath Rob's melody, Paddy Green Shamrock Shore had a variety of things going on in an unconventional arrangement and an ersatz Blaydon Races, if only 'ersatz' meant what I'd like it to mean which would suggest something off-kilter or fractionally askew. It was an interesting way to finish, not being the big send off or the lesser heard quiet ending but somewhat more arty than most renderings of it on Tyneside, I'd think.

What Concertante bring with them is no little sense of good fun. It's one of the things the clarinet does best.

Brush Strokes

 While it's diverting to do something out of one's comfort zone once in a while, it might be best if we don't do it too often. I undertook to finish the bathroom by painting it myself. It makes a change from stringing likely-sounding words into sentences. But whoever thought that academic work was somehow better than such artisan endeavour had it all wrong.

I've painted the bathroom once before and don't remember getting up into the top corners being quite such a challenge how ever many years ago that was. It's a young man's game on the top step at full stretch with one false move by someone so unused to such balancing acts offering a wide choices to bang one's head once and for all. This body, this vessel that I move about in, could once run or ride bikes for long distances, bowl eight overs at a time and do forward rolls at least into its thirties but aches and pains, not all of them psychosomatically, do their best to provide warnings. Early doors I was considering getting my favourite handyman to do it but I don't like to feel entirely useless just yet.

I can't do it all today. Maybe it's past halfway. I like the feeling of having done something useful, or tried, however badly. I have renewed admiration for those who can do such things, especially those one sees walking round on rooftops. They must know what they are doing.

There's probably a German word for 'the shame felt on realizing that what one does is of no intrinsic value'. What use have roofers for a theory that Shakespeare's kids weren't really all his own. What actual use is it to anybody compared to plumbing. What good is a write-up about a musical event or a book of poems compared to re-wiring the house. Is it the worst feeling one can have to end up thinking that one's life has been a waste of time.

Not entirely wasted, having enjoyed so much of it, but self-indulgent to say the least. And having enjoyed re-reading Benjamin Moser's The World Turned Upside-Down, I moved swiftly on to do the same with Laura Cumming's Thunderclap on very much the same subject and done in a similar way. Last year I think I preferred Laura but this time I'm more taken with Benjamin, notwithstanding his unnecessarily long coda, They are both fine writers and do much to enhance our appreciation of that exceptional period in painting but Benjamin demonstrates his Pulitzer credentials by finding more, possibly due to having spent twenty years on his book.

There. That feels a bit better already, back in the liberal arts and considering them of ultimate consequence whereas most people can manage without Carel Fabritius but there comes a time when bathrooms need some maintenance. There's painting and then there's painting. That could be the last time, I don't know.

Strange Fowl

Strange Fowl 

 

It is with some trepidation but no little rejoicing that Strange Fowl is released into the world after its extended period of gestation.

It is eight years since its appearance in the TLS letters page after some early mentions here but now it arrives in its fullest version which will be further augmented, edited or amended as we go.

It's hard to know how best to promote it, or how much we'd like to, but it is to be hoped that those with an interest in such things will find it in due course and it's there now, as ready as it will ever be to suffer the slings and arrows of the Shakespeare biography industry.

That's fine. It is a 'modest proposal' and not, we think, an outrageous one.

 

On behalf of the band, I hope we passed the audition.  

Ch-Ch-Ch Changes

 Not long ago here I reported on the changes in the Radio 3 schedule. I have not adapted well to the new timings and am no longer a regular listener to The Early Music Show, Record Review, Building a Library, the repeat of the Monday Wigmore Hall concert on Sunday or This Week's Composer.  A certain type of government would like to do away with the BBC and the likes of R3 in particular and it is be hoped that my desertion of these programmes is not extrapolated across the country to add to their commercial agenda.

As a species, I suspect we take change for the better as our due and aren't grateful enough for it but we do not take readily to change that doesn't suit us. Now the Saturday Review section of The Times has changed its radio and TV listings. I'm not concerned what is on Radio 1 or 5Live but Radio 4Extra, Talking Pictures and a bit of detail on Radio 3 is useful and now that they've been unlisted it's unlikely they will be back.

Of course, if that's the most I've got to complain about I can't have much to complain about but my world shrinks by just a little bit more and I might not know when All Gas and Gaiters is back on, or Much Binding in the Marsh or some old film with Googie Withers. 

--

It's been gloriously busy here with, not the for the first time, the 'books' part of the website's address looking like a misnomer. Some reading continues, though, and a return to Benjamin Moser's The World Turned Upside-Down from last year has been the highest of pleasures. C17th Dutch Art is about as wonderful a subject as there is and it is shown off to even greater effect by his informed, considered account. One could ask for more but it's best to be grateful for what there is. It would certainly be on a short list for the Best Book in the House which, since I'd acquire any book I found out about that I wanted, makes it a candidate for simply My Favourite Book.

--

How long does it take for potential heroes to disappoint us, though. Think of Beethoven scoring out the dedication to Napoleon on the Eroica Symphony. Prime Minister is a difficult job and the situation he applied for, and got, makes it no easier for Keir Starmer but it hasn't looked quite as good as it might have.

He'll never get anywhere near the depths of depravity achieved by Boris - which is the main point- but surely if one's advisor is paid more than you are you might think she'd advise against allowing the opposition, if there were any, the least opportunity. I wouldn't mind if it were Proms tickets, some Rembrandt or Vermeer exhibition but it's Arsenal and Taylor Swift.

Not being the last lot is still plenty good enough for me but the public are a fickle thing, his landslide was fragile and he's not really theirs forever because they don't feel that everything's free and could easily ask him to move over, darling, sooner than they should.

Sachin Gunga at Lunchtime Live!

 Sachin Gunga, Portsmouth Cathedral, Sept 19th

This choice time of year has been more marvellous than ever in its latest iteration and it ain't over til it's over. The abundance of light outside was continued indoors in St. Thomas's Cathedral when, in a change of programme, Sachin Gunga stood in to provide a set on that very theme.

Bach's 'Dorian' Toccata, BWV 538, was celestial and Grace-Evangeline Mason's Light, revealing more meditative and perhaps 'light' in more ways than one before Fiat Lux, indeed, by Dubois had dance-like elements ahead of its all-encompassing ending.

I'm never less than impressed at the repertoire musicians like Sachin, and many others, find. It looks unlikely that one would ever run out of composers to find out about. Nobody with a passing interest in cricket would be taken aback to find that Bairstow, the composer of Evening Song, was from Yorkshire. Its touching melody is evocative of fading light and if I'm more in favour of cello, piano and violin as expressive instruments, these pieces made use of a wide range of stops to show many of those dimensions an organ can incorporate.

Parry's Prelude on Melcombe, a hymn tune, floated to the extent that I wondered whether to add 'diaphanous' to my stock of adjectives which never seems quite adequate. And, mehr licht, as Goethe once, reportedly finally said, Sun Dance by Bob Chilcott had a restless energy as Sachin alternated fast and slow into what might have been the high light, as it were, Prelude on East Acklam by Francis Jackson whose remarkable dates were 1917-2022. Gently reflective, it gained much by moving the main tune into flute mode towards the end although an organ remains an organ and if one wants the sound of a flute one is better served by woodwind.

I'm only joking, of course. The new BBC series on Mozart told us that he didn't really ever want it so he presumably liked the organ's impersonation of it better.

Sigfrid Karg-Elert's Nun danket alle Gott was a grandstand finish for which Now thank we all our Sachin with heart and hands and voices, who wondrous things has done, and continues to do, looking at what is to come this Autumn at Lunchtime Live! The season builds towards two local piano superstars in Karen Kingsley and Angelina Kopyrina in November but there's much to be enjoyed on our way there. 

Miriam Teppich & Pavlos Carvalho in Chichester

 Miriam Teppich & Pavlos Carvalho, Chichester Cathedral, Sept 17

One doesn't live by Bach alone although I sometimes think one could try but there's no need to. Many will know Pavlos Carvalho from his performances of the Cello Suites at the Chichester Festival and, so far, vol. 1 of his recordings of them but he does other things, too, and today it was Miriam Teppich that gave us the Chaconne from Partita II in D minor for solo violin, BWV 1004.

Such music is like a solitary candle illuminating the dark. It shines forth before its intricacies lead us to a sense of affirmation, its abstraction speaks to us like no other. The Chichester audience was noticeably rapt in their attention to Miriam's precision and emotional input and not for the first time in recent weeks I knew I was exactly where I wanted to be.

Pavlos followed with the considerably less well-known Gaspar Cassado (1897-1966) whose music is nonetheless worth looking up. His Suite for Solo Cello, like any must, clearly owes a debt to Bach but is C20th and Iberian. The Preludio-Fantasia is atmospheric with ghostly top notes and resonant with the intense melancholy of Fado. That might not sound very Bach but the Sardana was recognizably similar dance music needing fancy footwork to keep up with the energetic fingers of Pavlos in its final passages. The Intermezzo e Danza Finale mixed choppier rhythms with longer perspectives and, as Pavlos explained, completed a very individual work that nonetheless synthesized a wide range of 'influences'.

Glière's Three Pieces for violin and cello, op. 39, came as something of a surprise while having heard of him that is only as far as associating him with Glazunov and grand Romanticism. Thus the Gavotte, all classical to the point of baroque, was confusing while utterly charming. The Berceuse was even more so. But this is Glière in disguise, like Prokofiev is in his Classical Symphony, and a brilliant disguise it is, too. The Scherzo ended proceedings exuberantly and an encore would have been appropriate and gladly received but our revels are scheduled to be ended by two o'clock.

Miriam and Pavlos communicate an entirely natural warmth that complements their fine musicianship as another act always readily welcomed back to Chichester. It is taken for granted that I say such music is taken for granted there but it shouldn't be. House prices within striking distance of Chichester should be inflated due to their proximity to such events.

Pilgrimage

It has become my custom, since establishing its whereabouts with the help of the kindness of strangers, to visit the grave of Rosemary Tonks each year. This year I invited any others who might be interested to join me there and, in the event, Chris Martin and Kev Rogers, with Mrs. Pauline Rogers, did.

It was an ideally, utterly gorgeous, very early Autumn Sunday afternoon and not easy to think of anywhere one would rather be. Kev's a generous sort of guy and took flowers but we decided not to read poems either by Rosemary or in tribute to her because she long ago renounced the whole shebang and the last thing we wanted to do was offend.

Maybe we shouldn't bother her at all but she is more at rest there, released from her own fierce intelligence than anything else, and if we fondly imagine that the dead have the slightest interest in what the living think, I'd like her to know how much some of us still love her.

Lunchtime Classics at the Menuhin Room

Lunchtime Classics at the Menuhin Room, Portsmouth, Sept 14

Ashton Gray and Andrew McVittie with special guest Mario Sofroniou (Tenor) accompanied by Karen Kingsley (Piano) 

For some, Autumn comes in with the last horse in the St. Leger. For others it is marked by lunchtime concerts resuming. Either way, it is Autumn now.

Andrew McVittie welcomed the faithful back to his own Menuhin Room series and began it himself with Domenico Scarlatti, the ornate Sonata, K.208, as refined last year in a masterclass with Danny Driver. K.209 was more upright, perhaps military in a toy soldier way but the bigger challenge of Chopin and the Nocturne, op. 9 no.1, brought out more of his technique in its dreamier, more sonorous expansiveness.

Mario Sofroniou and Karen Kingsley were consummately professional in overcoming very limited rehearsal time, due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, not that anybody would have been aware they only met half an hour before the show. Giordano's Amor ti vieta was immediately a big sound in an intimate auditorium and Hugh's Song of the Road by Vaughan-Williams is full of outdoor vigour and energy, Karen standing up for herself well against Mario's impressive power. 

They continued later with Alessandro Scarlatti's Gia il sole dal Gange, all baroque and shiny, and had covered a lot of musical territory in a short time after Verdi's La mia letizia infondere which was the grand, show-stopping item with the sustained note at the end a fitting tribute to Pavarotti whose performances first led Mario to want to be in opera. The knowledgeable audience readily showed their appreciation.

Before that, Andrew had returned to gambol in a jolly way through the third movement of Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata with fluency and some panache, leading to Cyril Scott's Lotus Land which was panoramic and declined to wander more.

Ashton Gray's set was genial. One rarely finds Haydn too down-hearted and certainly not in the good-humoured, slightly quirky first movement of his Sonata no. 49. Chopin once again, for me, outdid his more classical antecedents (which wouldn't always be the case) in the lush Fantasie-Impromptu in C sharp minor that becomes torrential. Three improvisations from Poulenc's 15 of them were jaunty and playful, nos 3 and 6, with the more lyrical no. 7 in between and, again covering a lot of music in succinct fashion, no. 23 from Nikolai Kapustin's Preludes in a Jazz Style completed a various and enjoyable mix on a hugely successful occasion at which all was well that ended well.

Thank you very much indeed to all who contributed so graciously. Happiness is said to 'write white' which means there's not much to be said about it, that art cannot be made of it. Apparently it's not like that at all.

Ivan Hovorun in Chichester

 Ivan Hovorun, Chichester Cathedral, September 10

 

 

It seems like an age since we were last in Chichester for a lunchtime concert and, although the summer offered other good things in the meantime, it is good to be back. It is a measure of how much Chichester enjoys the musicians they have and how much they enjoy Chichester that so many are invited back and take up the invitation. Ivan Hovorun is one such.

It's easy to forget how good the Yamaha piano sounds. Either absence makes the heart grow fonder or Ivan conjures a better sound from it than many others. His first half was Chopin, the Polonaise Fantasie, op. 61, both lyrical and dramatic with dance rhythm discipline and flights of flourishes, followed by the gorgeous Berceuse, op. 57, intially a little bit Fauré and another bit Gymnopédie but that's before the decorous, glittering right hand takes our attention. A sense of Ivan's unhurried time was carried forward into the Barcarolle, op. 60.

The bigger, broader picture, though, was Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2, not entirely Liszt due to it being as arranged by Vladimir Horowitz and with cadenza by Rachmaninov. As powerful as any combination of those composers would lead us to expect, mercurial light illuminated it, too, with Ivan adding great delicacy before it becomes a real party piece, fff, and the auditory equivalent of spectacular. He readily deserved an encore but time moves on. A small, cleansing sample of some well-tempered Bach might have re-established some sang froid but Ivan is a profound musician and takes time to explain some background to his programme. He is an intellectual musician but that never detracts from the emotional charge of his playing. It is possible to be both at the same time. He remains charming, captivating and a pianist to follow.

This was an exemplary start to a new season that is packed with promise of further good things to come. It's not often we are going to be stuck for somewhere to go on a Tuesday this Autumn.

Opus 1 Revisited

 Op. 1 isn't where Beethoven started. I didn't really think he did but there must be a point for all of us where the 'early work' is over and the 'grown up' work has begun and for someone like Beethoven his first published pieces could be counted as that. And so what it says here on Aug 18th still largely stands except that such catalogue numbers can be treacherous if taken at face value.

I'm aware that the Mendelssohn symphonies were not written one after the other but overlapped with each other without quite all being written at the same time. Biographies of James Joyce show how Dubliners, Stephen Hero, Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses did not represent the chronological development that their artistic sequence appears to and they were to some degree all in preparation at the same time.

The catalogues of composers works are complicated partly by later discoveries needing to be assigned numbers and early works being published posthumously- opus numbers usually being an order of publication rather than composition. It's for the best if we don't renumber everything to accommodate new pieces in the lists or else those few that I still remember, like k. 545, will be something else forever after.

Thus, Beethoven's WoO numbers are, paradoxically, opus numbers for Works Without Opus Numbers and WoO 1 is from 1790 but WoO 63 is Nine Variations from 1782, when he was 11, and so while acquiring The New Grove Beethoven at least partly for the purposes of that list among the indices has proved worthwhile it has brought with it further questions that one could do without, that are more properly the business of a devoted musicologist and not just somebody who enjoys a good concert.

Practice by Rosalind Brown

 Rosalind Brown, Practice (Widenfeld & Nicolson)

A novel about writing an essay at Oxford University, by a writer and thus an Eng Lit essay, sounds about as self-absorbed as one could get. Not a great deal happens. For some time it is more like an essay on Literary Theory itself as Annabel immerses herself in Shakespeare's Sonnets in search of something to say about them. Novels don't come much more 'literary' than this and while it will have great appeal to those who have an interest in such things it's less likely to thrill the 'general reader'.

Rosalind Brown is a gifted writer and we must avoid speculating on how much Annabel is her, as one could be excused for supposing in a first novel. There is surely some ironic distance between author and the main character's preoccupations with her work, diet, yoga and daily routine. She has a boyfriend nearly twice her age but 36 won't sound very old to readers of a certain age. Also, then, maybe we ought to make allowances for some of the attractively fine-sounding literary pronouncements and see them as the sort of things such students relish.

At what point does the quality of the work start to redeem the pitifulness of the scenario. At what point does it no longer redeem,

is a question Annabel asks about Shakespeare and, by extension, we might ask of her and Rosalind. It is the sort of elusive literariness that the likes of us enjoy involving ourselves in that others think is self-indulgent.

Then Patricia said Anyone who studies an extraordinary person has to come up against the fact of not being as good as her, believe me I've felt that too,

is a propos Virginia Woolf and well worth saying.

For something that takes place mostly in Annabel's head, Practice makes numerous excurions into bodily functions, sometimes graphically described which establishes a vivid dualism and the second half of the book moves into her social circle as the essay's deadline approaches without her finding a theme she can deal with in the diminishing time allowed. What with that and the apparently fragile state of her nerves and relationship, a mainly eventless story reaches its climax.

It could easily be read in a day but I read it over two which made it a book of two halves, the second not as clever or impressive as the first. It had seemed to be making its way towards something greater than what we are ultimately left with, which was of less consequence but which might be the point. I ended with less sympathy for Annabel, and the book, than I thought I'd have but maybe that is the life of an Oxford undergraduate who takes herself very seriously.

Plenty of Abundance

 Intermittently here, I report on a hiatus in books to read, projects to be involved in; purpose, really. It was heading that way again last week although the Autumn season of local concerts isn't far away now.

But things can change in an instant. Out of nowhere, it seemed, but from somewhere actually, came the unturndownable gift of an invitation to a weekend of Proms that included the much sought-after ticket to the concert I'd have chosen above all had I still been in the habit of looking through the whole programme. Good Lord, I'm still not properly readjusted to my drowsy, Bleaney way of life after the excitement of it all.

Yo Yo Ma, Emmanuel Ax and Leonidas Kavakos changed their programme and left out their Piano Trio Pastoral Symphony after I'd ordered the disc of it that arrived this morning so there is still more to look forward to from them, and Beethoven, except during the night I woke to find the wireless playing something glorious that proved to be Buxtehude's Missa Brevis so today had to include a return to Ton Koopman's Opera Omnia, well, two of its 29 discs. And - dear, oh, dear - how much wonder can this modest house house.

Not only that but I was presented with a new novel that seems to be an extraordinary thing on the evidence of its first 70 pages and, loosely related to that, the long-standing work-in-progress on Shakespeare biography suddenly jolted back into life like the hearse in Kit Wright's poem.

Naturally, these are all tremendous things much to be enjoyed and my gratitude for them knows no bounds but it doesn't feel like me. It's me whose idea of 'love' amounts to,
We commit to no more than rainy Wednesdays

In suburbs where the library’s always closed then

And I perform repeats of all the stories

She’s heard before in slightly different versions 

And then, if I’m polite enough to do so,

I ask her how she is but not to dance.  

 

and that is a gorgeously romantic view of it compared to what I found when making notes towards an essay on Larkin's attitude towards surrendering oneself to somebody else.

Some of us depend on irony, a downbeat attitude and minor keys but they depend on an awareness of that which is glorious, if only sometimes glimpsable. If such things weren't there we wouldn't be able to take pleasure in thinking we were denying ourselves them. It would be better to be able to react openly, unguardedly and naturally but maybe we once did that and felt vulnerable and so have become more wary. 

Still, abundance is as abundance does and, like anything else, it's a good thing in moderation.

Proms 54, 55 and 56

 Albert Hall, Aug 31, Sept 1.

Sometimes one gets lucky. Sometimes I'm so glad it's me. It seems to happen quite a lot, certainly more than are my just desserts.

The opportunity of three world-class Proms in two days didn't take long to convince me onto a train to Victoria on Saturday. If I'd trawled through the season's programme, Yo-Yo Ma and his friends playing Beethoven for Piano Trio might well have been my very first preference. As it happened, a late change replaced the arrangement of the Pastoral Symphony with some Brahms but it was not 'an important failure' and we still saw 'something amazing'.

Yo-Yo enters the auditorium as if meeting up again with old friends - charming, cheery, smiling and waving- and he and many of the Proms audience no doubt see it as that. 

With Emmanuel Ax and Leonidas Kavakos, the Brahms still provided a luxury first half before the Archduke Trio. There are echoes of at least one phrase from the Pastoral to be had ahead of the rousing second movement and then the sublime Andante which would have been 'edge of the seat' stuff had one been sat on a seat but I was a hardy standing Prommer in the arena.

That's a fair enough deal at the price which for me was not even that but it's competitive even among such well-disposed strangers to hold one's place only half a dozen back from the front.

It was almost precisely thirty years to the day since I first rode 12 hours on a bike for which I was well prepared and that was obviously tiring but standing through two concerts possibly hurt more. One has to remember to concentrate on what's happening in one's ears rather than in one's feet. If the Schubert Adagio encore was still much appreciated, I was one of the few less impressed with the idea of a second encore, John Williams's theme from Schindler's List. But I'm absolutely not complaining. I wouldn't have missed any of the rest of it and was thrilled to be there. The intimacy of chamber music is somehow still possible in a venue that holds 7000 given the lighting and the intensity of the performance and that of an obviously very concentrating and appreciative gathering.

In order of priority and expectations, these three concerts took a steep downward trajectory for me having started at such a high point but that was not due to the star quality of the musicians. The Berlin Philharmonic have been in the very top echelon of world orchestras forever, really, and even I can hear something about the precision, delicacy or power - whichever is required at any given moment- that is beyond what passes as highly acceptable.

Vikingur Olafsson looks studious but is a dramatic performer and Robert Schumann's intricately rhapsodic Piano Concerto, op. 54, gave him ample opportunity to indulge in that. However, however great Beethoven, Schumann and the Smetana that was to follow are wonderful in their own ways, Vikingur's encore, an arrangement of the Adagio from Bach's Organ Sonata no. 4, BWV 528, was a timely reminder why it was Bach's music that was selected to be sent by humanity from this lost and lonely planet into outer space to represent the best of their achievements. Even my big, recent surging of revival of interest in Beethoven hasn't put him within earshot of Bach.

I hadn't realized that Smetana's Ma Vlast is 75 minutes' worth. It's got a famous bit that comes early on, he's not quite Bohemia's version of Elgar, it's still the Berliners one is in the presence of and one knows one is getting there once the time remaining is less than the time elapsed. Ich bin nicht ein Berliner, mostly because they wouldn't have me, and I should be more appreciative but maybe I'm telling you about the concert experience more than reviewing the performance. I'd rather have bad feet than toothache and the music did plenty to soothe the discomfort.

A day of rest before their Bruckner made Sunday evening much easier. I've long been a Bruckner sceptic and have much preferred to stick to my view than test it by listening to his music. It might not seem that we live in a Golden Age of legendary conductors but the likes of Kirill Petrenko might one day be held in the same awestruck respect as Karajan, Klemperer and Toscanini by future generations.

Symphony no. 5 begins with pizzicato bass softly treading into the vast 80 minutes of what I thought might be 80 minutes of longueurs extended beyond all necessity. Three brief motets by the BBC Singers had looked like an inadequate sweetener, softening us up for Bruckner with some pleasantries in which one might have found reference to plainsong or Josquin Des Prez. It didn't turn out like that, though. 5 struck me as bitty and not having the overall design of Bach or Beethoven but perhaps that is how some music was to progress.

There was no point at which I regretted the decision to go and listen to Bruckner with an open mind. I was never bored. There were passages that could almost have been Sibelius and, for music of that period, there is no higher praise to be had. I'm not sure it was quite a Damascene experience but it was 100% a chance to use one of my favourite, mea culpa sayings, you were right and I was wrong. I might not be going in pursuit of more Bruckner when life is so short and there's Bach, Beethoven and Tamla Motown to be had but young Anton from Linz can finally be let off the naughty step. I'm sorry, mate, I wasn't listening. 

I nearly didn't go to any of it. This Plan B presented itself just in time for Plan A to be re-scheduled. It is by such fine margins that such fine things can come about. I never stop being grateful not only for the capacity to land on such decisions but to those who so kindly make such offers in the first place.

Thanks, mate.