Spent the day at Harbour Cove near Padstow. I’m still pink. Read more →

I made it to Cornwall. Shellshocked. The train ride to Penzance had been good, but the cumulative effect of a lack of sleep over two consecutive nights was beginning to catch up with me. I stumbled around Penzance at 8.00am in search of a hotel for breakfast and then later when I couldn’t find any open or I wanted to go into, a cafe on the high street. Hot and a little dazed, I got on the train back to Bodmin Parkway where the lovely Simon met me with an air-conditioned car. Read more →

Concertos are written for soloists with conductors relegated to merely managing proceedings.

Symphonies, on the other hand, seem to me like the pay off. In return for agreeing to a concerto on the programme, the conductor gets his symphony, his moment on the podium. There’s something raw, honest and intimate about the relationship between conductor and orchestra in a symphony. A rock-solid, long-term relationship. A concerto is flirtation. A symphony is a demonstration of true love.

I’m thinking all of this as I listen to Zinman’s Beethoven 6 with the Tonhalle. The man clearly gets Beethoven. This isn’t the usual tired and well-trodden path through a supposed-pastoral idyll I remember from Uni. This is measured lushness. Cleansing. Elegant, but not twee. Read more →

The World Orchestra for Peace turn in a cracking performance of Mahler’s 6th symphony and I lose my best biro. Sod it. Read more →