More than half in love...

…with Christian Tetzlaff. Who I heard last night at the Royal Festival Hall, playing Bartok’s second violin concerto with the Philharmonia. Seriously, incandescently good stuff. Mr Tetzlaff looks uncannily like a miniaturised version of my cousin Richard (Richard is a very handsome cousin, but he’s also a very tall guy, and Mr Tetzlaff, erm, isn’t). Richard, however, is no musician, and Mr Tetzlaff is a dazzlingly good one.

I’m very lucky to live in a place where I get to hear lots of marvellous violinists; in the last eighteen months or so I’ve heard Christian Tetzlaff, Joshua Bell, Sergey Khatchatryan, Gil Shaham, Benjamin Schmid and Frank Peter Zimmermann, and that is quite a feast, I can tell you, even if they aren’t all quite as easy on the eye as Mr Tetzlaff. Mr Shaham is I suspect part hobbit (& part fiddle-playing demi-god), while Mr Zimmermann looks like a policeman in a borrowed suit, but every one of these men is an absolute joy to hear in action. Bearing in mind that I can also get to hear the world’s great pianists, the world’s great singers, the world’s great orchestras conducted by the world’s great conductors; London may have its down side but the up-side is a pretty big up.

That brings me neatly to the Proms. I’ve been trying to choose which ones to book this year. I’ve worked out a shortlist of six, but I really ought to cut that down a bit. All six have at least one really, really good reason not to drop them; favourite pieces, favourite musicians, things I’d just love to hear live (I mean, come on, the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony, in the RAH, on that socking great organ of theirs? This I cannot miss)… I’ll have to skip “Elijah”, despite the superb line-up of soloists, as it’s on my mum’s birthday, and mum’s birthday is sacrosanct (and is always a day at the beach followed by a good curry or paella supper). But Tetzlaff playing Brahms? Shaham playing Bruch? Stuart Skelton singing Mahler? Britten’s Spring Symphony? Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Janacek, Sibelius? How am I to choose? I don’t think I can…

If I can get the cheapest seats (at the top at the side, or choir seats are okay), then it won’t kill the wallet. And there’s always the radio, after all, my great digital radio that has transformed radio-listening for me; and lots of the Proms are televised these days – I should check what’s being shown on BBC4 before I get down-in-the-mouth about the expense.

Here is my latest I-have-a-purple-crush poem:

To Christian Tetzlaff, playing Bartók

Vibrant disharmony, a pierced sunset
And the wide skies burning like a battlefield.
Slicing between discord and dancing, between
Lyrical terror and song, nothing’s so bright
As this plane of flame, which is sound, which is you
Wheeling undizzied as a gull in the gulf
Of air, with music pouring from your hands.

Bee caught in amber, golden-voiced, longing to dance,
Half of your blood is fire; you plunge
Humming, exploding into furrowed waves
And rise to arrow the dazzled heart. Your wings
Which are hands, are strings, phoenix of sound
Incandescent with energy in your burning field.

Emotional barometer going down again

Feeling rather low after a physiotherapy session this morning which was a mixture of encouraging and deeply dispiriting. There are not going to be any quick fixes with this wrist of mine.

Some aspects of the session were encouraging. My flexion is "pretty good considering" and my finger strength is "excellent". My pronation and supination - the pivoting-from-below-the-elbow movements - are much as expected. But my extension - the bending-back movement - is non-existent and my radial deviation is poor, and both of these may be affected by the position of the plate in my arm. I have a list of exercises as long as my arm, and two different types of massage; all of these have to be done several times a day. No starting on strength exercises until I have more flexibility, since strength exercises will not lengthen the muscles but if anything shorten them; I need to lengthen them back to a good normal standard before i do anything else. I've also been given a night-splint to wear; rather like a brace for one's teeth, only to stretch the tendons instead of straightening the gob.

I came out feeling tired and shaky and rather dismal, got as far as the tube station saying "Pull yourself together, woman" to myself, and then gave up, and limped into Starbucks for a large coffee and an apple doughnut. It's no good; when you feel weepy and wimpy sometimes you just have to accept it. I dropped my teaspoon in the café and nearly cried at that; so clearly I am hardly emotionally robust at present and I'd do best to be honest with myself about it.

Last night's Philharmonia concert was exhilerating; George Benjamin's "Dance Figures", which I didn't know and liked enormously; a dazzlingly icy and bravura Stravinsky concerto from Viktoria Mullova (in a very strange nightdress-like frock worn over black cigarette pants - not sure this was a good look, though it did leave her arms free), and the Bartók "Concerto for Orchestra", which I adore and was duely blown away by once again. The brass practically lifted me out of my seat. The first time I heard this it was being played by the amateur orchestra my godfather Jim Clinch used to conduct - it's probably one of the most ambitious things they'd ever tackled - and at the end, in the split second before the applause started, Jimmy could be heard hissing "Well done!" as he laid down his baton. I think that was the concert when he lost a dress-shirt button ten minutes before the start and I got hoiked into the Green Room to sew him back together (I am one of those odd people who carry needle and thread, and sticking plaster, and a rubber band, and a pencil sharpener...). Sadly I don't think I'll ever get to rescue Maestro Salonen from a sartorial whoops, but one can't have everything in this life of ours.

I know the Benjamin piece was choreographed (by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, I think) on its première, but someone ought to play it to Wayne Macgregor anyway; I'm sure it's right up his street. For that matter, I don't think anyone's ever made a dance piece to the Bartók, either, and it practically cries out for movement.

I came home on a high, trying to write a poem about Bartók. Must remember that, when I feel low. There is so much beauty in the world, so much of excitement and passion. My little woes amount to less than a grain of sand in comparison.