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.