Exhausted...

Last night I went to hear David Fray playing Mozart at the Festival Hall. Lovely. Bizarre-looking lad, though, I must say. His publicity pictures make him look smouldering, chiselled and cheekbone-y - trying to draw in the "Twilight" audience to classical music, perhaps? In the flesh, he looks like baby bro aged thirteen; six feet-odd of gangly, skinny, stooping awkwardness with huge feet, and hair in his eyes. By gum he can play, though. His Mozart (Concerto no. 20) was delightful, beautifully balancing emotional tension and delicate precision; his encore, which I didn't recognise, a distillation of ethereality, floating melodic veils of sound (excuse the attack of the purples). But it's Nikolai Lugansky they should be promoting as a pianist-sex-symbol, not this wee boy; and his (Lugansky's) publicity shots make him look like a horse. Weird.

Why won't the rest of the world agree with me about what constitutes good looks, I wonder? Now there's a rub...

The second half, for a bit of contrast, was Mahler 5. So I am pretty tired today - though not as tired as the Philharmonia boys and girls, and Maestro "Father Christmas" Segerstam must be.

Things kept going funny on the computer this morning, and at first I thought it was me, because I was so tired; it was almost a relief to hear we had a virus in the system. In the end everything got shut down for an hour and a half. Poo.

Off home, via Sainsburys in the rain; it's Friday, hurrah, and this time next week, touch wood, I'll have both hands and both arms free. I may even be able to hold a pencil and make a line that goes where I want, instead of where it willeth. I am so nearly there... and I am so very tired... I am a weed.

Mythical figures in concert

Last night at the Festival Hall was a nice concert of uncomplicated happy music; a complete contrast to “Wozzeck” last week. Just as there is a place for cartoon comedy in the world, so too there is a place for the full-on, heartily relished, colourful romanticism of Dvorak and Glazunov…

The Glazunov Violin Concerto, which I hadn’t heard before, was rather lovely, with a fast, tangy finale. It was played with delight and passion by Nicola Benedetti, in a wonderful dress that made her look like a mermaid. And conducted by Leif Segerstam, who I only knew from the radio until now. He looks like Father Christmas. So like, it’s uncanny. He stands at the rostrum to acknowledge applause, opens his broad arms and beams at us; Father Christmas, his very self. You just want to run and cuddle him. Damned good conductor, too.

So Father Christmas conducted, and a mermaid played the violin, and the Philharmonia did themselves proud with a lushly romantic programme, and I had a very pleasant evening, complete with a glass of tender, cold, liquid smoke on the balcony at the interval. I mustn’t make a habit of that, but I wanted to treat myself, and a measure of Laphroaig isn’t that much more expensive than an ice-cream.