It can be a bit difficult to judge weekend Proms, and I was about 40 places down the queue when I arrived. In fact this was probably a good thing, as the afternoon Prom was with the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, and consequently there were a number of Small People hoping to be right at the front. Best to leave them to it; still, third or ( Read more... )

Some years ago (it looks like it was 2011), I decided I wouldn't go to see another Prom conducted by Bernard Haitink. He looked frail and I felt he deserved a decent retirement. This year I decided to U-turn on that: he's plainly not going to retire, and for his fiftieth anniversary concert at the Proms, he conducted the LSO in Mahler's Symphony No ( Read more... )

When I looked through the Proms season I spotted Rossini's The Barber of Seville and wondered whether Dad would be interested. He said yes, so I braved the Albert Hall website on the day booking opened and got some pretty good seats in the stalls. Since then he decided to make a long weekend of it, and so I took a day's holiday and yesterday ( Read more... )

I expected the queue to be much shorter for Prom 7, and it was, right up until the last hour or so. I easily got a space on the rail for a concert of unfamiliar works by familiar composers. I also got sunburn on my knees as a result of sitting half in the sun for most of the afternoon ( Read more... )

The First Night of the Proms is generally a popular affair, and this year it also had a popular programme, so it was no surprise that I found myself some way down the queue. The afternoon was passed with a mixture of reading and catching up with old friends; the weather stayed dry, though cool. The price of standing tickets has gone up to £6 this ( Read more... )

Life goes on. The concert at the Sheldonian in Oxford was titled as Moscow Nights, after one of the pieces, but the overall programme was to me more reminiscent of the Maškaradă album by Taraf de Haïdouks, a classical but folk-inspired whirlwind tour across Europe ( Read more... )

It was my first trip to the Royal Festival Hall yesterday, for a concert performance of Janáček's opera Jenůfa. It seems an odd venue now; not really as convincingly or edgily brutalist as the National Theatre next door, but not particularly attractive either. The lower levels, with their 1960s carpets, made me think of a bowling alley; the ( Read more... )

This year, the BBC have managed a full season listing on their website.

My long-list will definitely need to be whittled down.

• Prom 1 - Tchaikovsky, Elgar and Prokofiev
• Prom 7 - Fauré, Stravinsky and Poulenc
• Prom 14 - The Barber of Seville (aka We're off to Glyndebourne)
• Prom 18 - Mahler 3
• Prom 25 - Ginastera, Britten and Schubert 9

A few weekends ago we went to Oxford to see two small exhibitions, Armenia: Masterpieces from an Enduring Culture at the Bodleian and Scenes of Last Tokyo at the Ashmolean. I was a bit indifferent to the first of these - mostly religious artifacts, though one or two interesting pieces. The second, although small, was quite fascinating. We also took ( Read more... )

Best of the year:

• Fiction - The Merchants of Light - A Novel of Venice, by Marta Maretich
• Non-Fiction - The Cucumber for Java Book, by Seb Rose, Matt Wynne, and Aslak Hellesøy
• Music - Prom 28 - The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee, and The Poem of Ecstasy
• Museums and Exhibitions - Escher at Dulwich Picture Gallery
• Food and ( Read more... )