The concert last night was in Frankfurt. Because of the Book Fair there, the publishers and book sellers of the world were using every available hotel room and so at the end of our four hour bus trip from Luxembourg, we found ourselves in a brand new hotel in Darmstadt. You...
Brussels. The centre of European bureaucracy and, if you read the right newspapers, the enemy of our proud British traditions. Leaving the Euro debate alone for the moment, Brussels has been accused at various points in the last decade of trying to force UHT milk on us, dilute...
If an alien life form were to land unannounced backstage at a concert in 2012, they would make some basic assumptions about human behaviour which I once would have thought unfounded. Now I'm not so sure. One of the many changes I have seen in my time on the world touring...
From the comfort of the train speeding through the Spanish countryside, you could be forgiven for thinking that it is summer. The sun is high and the deep blue stretches far into the distance, the only clouds visible on the horizon look like chalk cliffs. But the thermometer...
Regular readers of the blog will not be surprised to know that I am writing this having just watched Wales destroy Namibia in the Rugby World Cup. My Welsh father and a childhood involving many trips to Cwmllynfell to see my granny, cast my musical soul in red many years ago....
It's quite usual for me to arrive in a city, leave the hotel, which is different to the one we stayed on previous trips, and not recognise anything at all. There are times when I begin to doubt myself and think that maybe I'm mixing places up. The one constant is the concert...
Sir Colin Davis. Un nom, une...
The more astute amongst you will note that I have made scant comment in my periodical postcards of the other opera which is being performed here in Aix. Mozart, I hear, was quite a clever chap. He knew how to write a half decent tune for a start, and there are a fair few of...
The eagle eyed readers will have noticed that whilst a large proportion of the LSO is in Aix, almost all of those left behind performed...
Bless Maxine Kwok-Adams! For those of you who are not aware, Maxine is our resident fashionista of the 1st violin section. If column inches on a well known social networking site were the only measure of a person's popularity then MK-A would surely rival John Lennon in those...
