As I write, Berlioz's Sinfonie Fantastique is playing on the radio, the BBCNOW from Swansea. A relatively rare live relay: I must say I wish that there were more: they used to outnumber the recorded concerts in an evening by as great a ratio as recordings outnumber live concerts now. But the practice did mean that a couple of weeks ago I was able to listen again, without the new-fangled I-player, on Thursday, to the concert I had attended on Wednesday. Certainly for the new piece, Colin Matthews's Violin Concerto, the relay pointed up the soloist in a way that did not come over in Symphony Hall, where much of the time, you could only see what she was doing - her efforts being subsumed into the general wash of sound: whether that was intended by the composer, I do not know, but for this listener it made for a very unsatisfactory listening experience. Whether the highlighting by the recording engineer for the broadcast was approved of by Mr Matthews, I suppose we will never know. Whether other fiddlers will take it up, only time will tell. I suspect not!
Off to Marden in the morning to do a bit of bus restoration...
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