Runnicles: best after Berglund

In Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony, that is (and only connect: Paavo was left-handed and so is Donald). I flew up to Inverness for a mere 20 minutes’ talk on this and Sibelius’s links with Beethoven, very much interconnected in the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s programme with mighty Donald (how lucky they are in the commitment to his homeland of one of the world’s best conductors).

The flight passed over snowy Cairngorms and flights of geese beneath before a taxi sped me to the town on the river Ness, rushing at high level past my hotel and the Eden Court Theatre on the other side where the concert was held. The place enchanted me in the bright, cold weather with only the occasional snowstorm, enhanced by the knowledge of those mountains to the south and no major settlements to the north.

I last came here with dearest Lottie in 1983 to join the Scottish Chamber Orchestra on its steam-train trip to the Kyle of Lochalsh (the best perk of being the SCO’s ‘student publicity officer’). We stayed in the youth hostel which, my taxi driver told me, has since burnt down, leaving enough of a shell to save and within which, perhaps, to rehouse the museum, currently stuck in a concrete box. His lilting accent reminded me of the Invernessian charm. News of my business there, and mention of Sibelius, led him to tell me of a Scot he knew called Greig who lived in Norway and reversed the e and i.

We could live here, I foolishly thought, enticed by the nearness of wild nature and the fact that on the Saturday morning before my early afternoon flight I walked half way to Loch Ness along river and canal, greeting lots of locals – cheery at the sun, no doubt – with their dogs: any town where the country is so imminent has my vote. Lewes would probably be a more practical suggestion but heck, a castle here wouldn’t cost half our flat thanks to the insanity of the London market.

Alas, I left my camera behind and my mobile phone was in transit from Aix-en-Provence, where it had fallen out in a taxi, so no shots of the fast-flowing river or the thousands of snowdrops and crocuses along the way. Here’s a generic photo of the Eden Court – no architectural masterpiece, but you get a sense of its riverside setting.

As for talk and concert, I thought I’d better draw the threads suggested by the programme together: Sibelius and Beethoven, the painstaking path both took to the final results (Beethoven 9 finale, Sibelius 5 versions 1 and 3). Runnicles’ coup, after a first half balancing a Sibelius Finlandia which was never overbearing even from my second-row seat with an intonation-perfect, meaningful-in-every –note Alina Pogostkina as soloist in the Beethoven Violin Concerto (still boring to me despite that), was to follow the end of Sibelius 7 with Beethoven’s Leonora Overture No. 3 (the same C major). My blind spot for so many Beethoven scores meant I still didn’t find it as meaningful as the Sibelius symphony, but that was a beauty of a performance, every tricky tempo change seamlessly negotiated and the climaxes falling where they should. Delighted to find this sketch on sibelius.fi.

Predicting success from what I knew of Runnicles' flexible style, I’d made an unfavourable comparison in the talk with Rattle’s Sibelius cycle so fresh in my head: this is a work that Donald knows how to negotiate, on a first attempt by the way, and Sir Si, for all his strengths in Sibelius 1, 2 and 4, doesn’t. A lady in the interval ticked me off for setting one above the other, and she did it with typical Scots abruptness, not prepared to hear me out. But against that, there were five folk with whom I had really lovely conversations, including the local worthy who remembered Neeme Järvi unveiling the plaque to the new theatre. That wasn’t all to the good: the theatre had lost several hundred seats in the revamp, meaning that they couldn’t afford many visiting orchestras because they couldn’t sell as many tickets as they had before.

Still, this event was packed. A fine crowd; they deserve more music up there. And I loved meeting the very thoughtful and friendly Donald as well as Alina (pictured above) afterwards, thanks to the kind offices of the excellent Andrew Trinick. I mentioned the superb performance she gave of Widmann's Violin Concerto in Bamberg and our conductor was keen to hear a recording of it.

Now I’m in Glasgow after another talk, another great concert, enjoyed with the adored godchildren studying here, Evi and Alexander. I hadn’t intended to write about it but was so impressed by the sound coming from the orchestra under Mexican conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto that I just have, with a disclaimer, for The Arts Desk.

Work proceeds inspiringly on listening to all the Sibelius 4s for Radio 3’s Building a Library: halfway through I’ve found one which will be hard to beat, a real surprise to me at any rate. But I can’t say more about the performances; suffice it to say that being immersed in this dark, if not black, work has not been depressing – past an early dip, extrovert performances raised my spirits and the perfect construction amazes me more and more.

Another seminal work of  around the same time, Schoenberg’s Three Pieces for Piano Op. 11, was beautifully argued in word and performance by young Jordanian-born, British-trained pianist Karim Said (pictured above) the other week. The circumstances were remarkable: an evening at Lady Valerie Solti’s house, organized by Norman Rosenthal. Said was promoting his new album on Opus Arte, hence my invitation from the recording company.

What artistic treasures – one never knows if it’s legit to list them or not – and what unshowy good taste, much like the lady herself. She came to the rescue when I asked where Strauss, at whose funeral Solti conducted the Trio from Der Rosenkavalier where the ladies famously broke down one by one and came back in again to reach the end -  was among the pictures in the music room. The photograph in question – the old composer on his 85th birthday celebrations working with young Georg (Valerie referred to him throughout as ‘Solti) – seemed to have disappeared. She found me an unsigned copy, wonderful to see. Naturally it's not available, but I think - I may be wrong - that this photo of Strauss conducting also dates from the time of the celebrations.

A portrait of Thomas Mann led to a conversation about Joseph and his Brothers, which I’ve just begun and, contrary to fearful expectations, am bathing in its serene mythic re-interpretation. ‘Solti’ read one of its four books every summer holiday, and when he finished, went straight back to the beginning. I can already understand why.

Said’s concerts will always be a success if he presents them as revealingly as he did this one, explaining why the Schoenberg shouldn’t be seen as difficult music: how it should waltz and entertain. In that small space, the resonance of the Steinway could be overwhelming, and it is perhaps a little too often on the CD too; a few more genuine pianos wouldn’t go amiss. But there’s no doubt about Ashkar’s lively intelligence, re-creative art and knack of good programming. The Berg Sonata actually made sense and flew by for once rather than sounding like an improvisation, though the improvisatory quality was still there and the becalmed ending seemed like the goal of all its labours. Fabulous neoclassical Enescu, too. The promotion did its work: I’ll be seeking Said out from now onwards.

Roaring our heads off

...for these two, Nina Stemme and Donald Runnicles (which also means the Deutsche Oper Berlin orchestra), in a shatteringly great Proms Salome. No need to add much to the rave over on The Arts Desk but I wanted to include a few more of Chris Christodoulou's photos, which arrived as usual punktlich not long after I got back from the Albert Hall last night.

The above came from him after I'd asked for a landscape of Nina, preferably with Donald, to lead. Before he fired them back, I'd already cropped the money shot, and unless he objects don't want to replace it. Hence the second home. There were also others I couldn't use over there. Doris Soffel, having made little impression on us as the Countess in the Zurich Queen of Spades, really had a ball with Herodias, and Runnicles let her hold on to her top A at 'schweigen!' for what seemed like an infinity. Here she is with Stemme.

I mentioned the shame about the slight dependence on scores and music stands from most of the men - Samuel Youn's Jokanaan honourably excepted - but this shows that character tenor Burkhard Ulrich wasn't beyond acting it out as Herod.

Cheers, too, for the Narraboth, Belgian Thomas Blondelle

and Ronnita Miller from St Petersburg, Florida, now a Deutsche Oper principal, as a lustrous 'Page'.

It was a company show, no doubt about it: what a team Runnicles has in Berlin. But ultimately it had to be Nina's night. Doesn't she look, in relaxed mode, like our own intense non-singing (as far as I know) actress Olivia Colman?

Oh, and if you're curious to know who the boors were behind us, shouting 'sit down!' when I rose unhesitatingly to my feet after the shield-crushing, I'll go so far as to say that the only one of them I recognised - and they were all obnoxious in their self-expression before the invisible curtain rose - was a distinguished and, by all accounts, Mensch-like singer who must have welcomed a few standing ovations himself in his time. Shame on them.

1/10 As outlined in a comment below, this was everything the following (last) night's Elektra was not. Ed Seckerson expresses everything I felt in his review for The Arts Desk, not least so eloquently nailing the problem of Christine Goerke's upper register. And he's also right to say that Felicity Palmer's Clytemnestra was the star of the evening. What's the caption here? 'Yes, I'm still better than you, my girl, even at 70'?

Even so, in an ideal dramatic world, Clytemnestra shouldn't be either so old or so visibly raddled. After all, she's the mother of a 20 year old girl, and her decay is inner. Which is why you'll never see a better portrayal than Waltraud Meier's in the great Patrice Chereau's last stand. In fact this is one of the most riveting opera DVDs ever made, and Evelyn Herlitzius - slight of frame, searing of voice - IS Elektra as far as I'm concerned. For some reason my BBC Music Mag five-star review isn't up on the erratic website, but need I say more here? Don't waste time on the iPlayer broadcast of the Prom; buy the DVD.

The beauty of retrospective

It looks like an end-of-term line-up, though in fact this photo by the indefatigable Chris Christodoulou of cast, conductor and director of the Proms Die Walküre was taken at the mid-point of a Ring that no-one will ever forget (who ever forgets any Ring, for that, matter, but this one was special from the very first low E flat). There's an even better version, without Barenboim - who hardly stands out as the only unjolly one above - and with the immensely likeable Justin Way seemingly doing a Rhinemaiden on the laps of Terfel, O'Neill and Halfvarson, to head my Arts Desk retrospective on Wagner at the Proms.

I knew I had to honour it, having been stunned quite as much in different ways by Tannhäuser and Parsifal as I had by Das Rheingold and Die Walküre (the reason I had to miss the last two Ring instalments and the Tristan is, as I've been at pains to point out before, Norfolk and Britten related). Surely the artists would have as awed a perspective as I did? Well, they're an eminently more practical bunch, thank goodness, but I think I got some interesting results. I'd been a bit reluctant to do phone interviews as time was short, but when it seemed like the only option for a very busy Donald Runnicles, Sir John Tomlinson and Way, I took it on board and loved the results.

Runnicles, pictured in a photo from Chris's extraordinary gallery of conductors in extremis for The Arts Desk which we instigated in 2010, was a consummate pro, giving me the 200 words in almost perfect straight-off-the-top-of-the-head form. Courteous, too: 'You will be very welcome, sir, at the Deutsche Oper'. Sir John belied his title and was instantly so amiable and friendly. He'd been on a family holiday in Rome, so we talked about the new film hymning that great city, La Grande Bellezza, which I can't wait to see. He told me he'd been doing Gawain in Salzburg, and was flabbergasted when he found out that the director had a whole new concept - not working with the singers. So in effect he had to help out others who'd not done it before with the staging.

This led to the Proms's great virtue - putting the performers first, really focusing on the one to ones. Neither of us would usually say that such a context is better than a full-scale production at its best, but that special magic doesn't happen often enough in the opera house. It did with Kupfer's Bayreuth Ring, where JT cut his teeth alongside Daniel Barenboim and which occasioned my only visit there so far (and that would be enougn; I had my Bayreuth vision). There was plenty more fascinating chat once I switched the mike off.

And the beauty of retrospective? Well, I'd been thinking earlier about how much more interesting it can be to interview artists AFTER they've done something. The only reason it doesn't happen more often is because publications are reliant on the pre-performance publicity machine. But I treasure both of Richard Jones's visits to my City Lit opera class once his Welsh National Opera Meistersinger and Royal Opera Gloriana were up and running (still got to write that last up here).

It always strikes me as dishonest when critics talk about 'the best Prom of the season so far' when they won't have seen so very many;  only the most fervent of season-ticketed Prommers has the right to say so. I managed 14, and the peaks stand out. Of the Wagners, which were one long high, Act 1 of Walküre was possibly the most electrifying I've encountered live (Way's personal highlights were the whole of Walküre and Act 2 of Gotterdämmerung, where I'm told Nina Stemme really came into her own, though she's never less than dependable). Otherwise, no question: the late night Malians and Azeris, Lisa Batiashvili with Oramo in the Sibelius Violin Concerto and Yannick Nézet-Séguin's Prokofiev Fifth, the best I've ever heard. His sheer, unfeigned delight and energy shine in another of Chris's best pics.

Amazingly that whole performance, as televised on BBC Four, is up there on YouTube (not for long, I shouldn't wonder, but enjoy it while you can).

Wish I'd been there for the Spanish song and dance - astonishing to think it blazed out in the middle of the big Wagner week - and no regrets about missing the Last Night (three-line whip for friend Father Andrew's 50th birthday dinner in an excellent Nepalese restaurant). We caught it on the iPlayer on Sunday night. My, the final jamboree goes on these days, as a sort of extended showcase to the world. But Alsop's discipline and her focused energy were always impressive.

Joyce DiDonato - what a trouper, looking great, plastering over the cracks in an instrument which I've never found hugely individual, but it's still a demonstration of what artistry is all about.

Nige - well, even the Diplo-mate, usually unamused by musical comedy and like me a bit troubled by the ongoing Kennedy persona ('like a down and out Irish navvy'), was in stitches at the fun and games of the much-treated Monti Csardas. Spot all the references?

New seasons have been opening and stunning in the meantime. What a scorcher is the National's Edward II, a Young Vic kind of show in a usually much more conventional space.

Attractive John Heffernan (pictured for the NT by Johan Persson) didn't dominate, but only because it was such an ensemble production. On Monday lunchtime, heavenly Anne Schwanewilms's Schumann Op. 39 Liederkreis was a perfect partnership with Roger Vignoles (only connect: when I met him after Kozhukhin's Prokofiev triple bill, he expressed his surprise at the connection between the Seventh Sonata's Andante caloroso and Schumann's 'Widmung', and here he was playing it). Anne's website man and a loyal student of mine, Howard Lichterman, introduced me to her and I took a shot of the perfect duo which wasn't professional enough to appear on TAD.

A renewed Weill crush has just been put on hold as I rediscover Paul Bunyan in the wake of the British Youth Opera staging (which was good, but not as dazzling as their staging of Cimarosa's The Secret Marriage). I fiercely defend the total brilliance of the collaboration with Auden, which given that I've also been listening to The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny strikes me now as a determinedly optimistic riposte to Weill and Brecht. If you have any criticisms about the poetry, just ask who apart from Da Ponte, Hofmannsthal or Brecht could come anywhere close to the best of this genius text.

I went back to the Plymouth Music Series' 1988 classic recording, coinciding with the epoch-making Aldeburgh revival, and I don't think it can be beaten for American authenticity. Love Pop Wagner as the balladeer. And isn't this Britten's most unambiguously joyous stage work?

New seasons elsewhere: the now old chestnut about the 'show solidarity' petition and the Met opening rumbles on, with signatures being added all the time and further dissatisfaction with Gergiev, who now echoes Putin's equation of homosexuality with paedophilia: disgraceful (scroll down the Onegin piece and the comment at the foot of the companion article on The Arts Desk for an update). Michael Petrelis and his loyal companions have been making the right kind of stand at the San Francisco Opera opening gala - ie no disruption of the performance itself, in which married lesbian soprano Patricia Racette stars - and have got a very decent statement out of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (how could it not so reply with Michael Tilson Thomas at the helm?)

I love this photo of a grande dame* showing her solidarity with the friendly protest before the opera gala - from Petrelis's blog, courtesy of him and the photographer Bill Wilson. What a great redemption of that famous Weegee shot in which two overmadeup socialites with tiaras sweep in to the Met past a gaping pauper.

So towards an annual interlude: our walk for the Norfolk Churches Trust. Jill has planned out a route of 15 or so miles and 13 churches. The forecast, alas, is for less good weather than we've had over the past few years. Maybe that will encourage folk to give more generously - though I hope I don't have to invoke the kind of disaster scenario we experienced back in 2006. By way of reminder, here's last year's report and a photo of St Margaret, King's Lynn, alongside which we stay each time, so it's always our starting point.

And, at last, another sunny farewell. This one will mean going over to a page on the Emerging Indie Bands site where godson Alexander's Lieutenant Tango has just been feted. Makes me wonder why he never enlightened me over the 'kwela beat', and what it is. Happy to plug away at a third track, 'So, Go', because, while the million-sellers J sometimes plays on his iPad - following a Facebook commendation, just dipping - sound like dross to me, this is dance music with a genuinely creative edge.

*The lady, Michael now tells me, is glamorous grandmother Joy Venturini Bianchi, owner of San Fran's Helpers House of Couture, at 74 still a redoubtable socialite and staunch friend of the gay community. For the charitable origin of 'Helpers', read the linked article. What a woman! I love the comment on fashion's Alexander the Great: 'McQueen, Jesus Christ almighty. I have a dress by him with a hood so chic that I can't even stand it.'

Proms hat trick

That's partly a reference to Falla's vibrant ballet El sombrero de tres picos, but chiefly to an historic seven days at the Proms, with not only a Ring cycle at the highest level possible but also two other impressive feats: squeezing in Tristan und Isolde between Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, all three of which I had to miss because of my proud association with the Brittenfest in north Norfolk, and the participation of the stunning Antonio Márquez Company in Juanjo Mena's BBC Philharmonic spectacular of Beethoven, Falla and Ravel.

Had the dancers made it into the Proms prospectus, I would have noticed and made a special effort to go (bulletins were subsequently sent out to advertise their addition, but I somehow overlooked those). I can't regret going to the English National Ballet triple bill that Thursday night instead, and I love the only-connect fact that shortly after we'd seen a state-of-the-art Petrushka with Benois's designs and Fokine's choreography, orchestra and dancers at the Albert Hall were to some extent recreating a Ballets Russes hit of 1919.

That second half with Ravel's Boléro following The Three-Cornered Hat, at any rate, I managed to see on its BBC Four transmission, and colleague Jasper was absolutely right in his five-star 'Danza Erotica' review on The Arts Desk. On the platform where Anja Kampe, Nina Stemme and Bryn Terfel had sung and acted their hearts out two nights before, the dancers gave us sex without the usual cliches. Founder and star Márquez justifies his position, electrifying in the Miller's Dance of the Falla one-acter (pictured below) and dripping buckets of sweat as he launched Boléro shirtless.

The patterns of various dancers outlined the different phases in the slowly crescendoing tune; the stamping only heightened the orchestral excitement. And let's not forget the fact that Boléro started life to choreography by Ida Rubinstein's company, mixing factory rhythms and sensual provocation. Is this a first for the Proms? I know there's been dancing before an orchestra before, chiefly when Rostropovich conducted Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet at the Barbican and the Lithuanian Ballet joined in, but surely never at this level.

It won't eclipse memories of a slower, deeper-digging Boléro at the Proms conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen with subtler Ravel at the other end of the scale in the shape of the complete Ma mère l'oye ballet, but it was certainly something I've never seen before. Here's it is on YouTube. I fear they've clipped the first few seconds of side-drum, but at least it's otherwise complete. You can still watch the whole BBC Four transmission on the iPlayer for the next few days.

In its way, this was every inch as much of an achievement as 'the Barenboim Ring', though less widely noted. Much as my attention was riveted by every note and gesture of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, the climax to the week would have been the Götterdämmerung - I was bathing blissfully in a warm North Sea off Holm Beach as it began - and clearly Barenboim's afterspeech thanking the Prommers for their silence was deeply felt.

I need to disgorge all my impressions about Britten in South Creake, Wells-next-the-Sea and Holt, but I can't download my own photos at the moment for several complicated reasons, and I still need some Yorke Trust snaps of their Midsummer Night's Dream. I'm sure it can wait; happy memories keep me going meanwhile. And now to the Proms Tannhäuser. 

5/8 Still buzzing from it. Duly eulogised on The Arts Desk. Another Prom for the history books. And how could I resist a couple more of the indefatigable Chris Christodoulou's shots, others of which feature above? As I wrote on TAD, Runnicles is a gift for him - and a match for Barenboim, which is putting it mildly.

This big handsome man, Estonian bass Ain Anger, is a new god on the block. Read why over there.

24 hours in Glasgow

I've always loved Scotland's rainy city, though I know we students were in danger of romanticising it as a livelier alternative to our more outwardly beautiful stronghold of Edinburgh in the 1980s. Now my beloved godson Alexander is studying at Glasgow University, so a trip like this, to give another talk before one of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's thoughtfully planned programmes in the beautifully restored City Halls, is also an excellent opportunity to catch up with him in person.

Everything, for once, went smoothly, not least the train journeys either end through hillier territory than the East Coast line (and in my view far more beautiful). A rainbow hovered over one of the city's remaining giant tower blocks as we drew near Central Station.

Then I made straight up the hill for the ABode Hotel on Bath Street, which I've come to welcome for its quiet and comfort as well as for its fairly stylish adaptation of the original building constructed in 1829 by Sir James Campbell. Most of the remaining fittings must belong to the time when it became the family home of British Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, including, I'm guessing, this stained-glass panel in my room.

Just as good was a new discovery as I walked around the streets of the Merchant Quarter where the City Halls are situated, looking for a restaurant to have a pre-talk-and-concert supper with Alexander. I settled on the Italian Caffè because its list of Italian tapas-size dishes looked unusual and authentic. We had two dishes each - pasta, chicken livers in marsala, sea-bass in a mussel sauce, superb Italian grilled vegetables - and, most important, a great talk about Glasgow and family life. How times have changed since the two-year-old Alexander used to make a daily early morning visit to our room at Edinburgh when we were there for a seasonal stay, sit on the chair and ask "shall we have a chat about Christmas?" Here he is now, with his permission because even he agrees it's not a bad photo of him, at the end of the concert.

I very much like the room where the talks take place - huge contrast to the Barbican's Fountain Room with its low ceiling and poor lighting. While the City Halls bar is too pink, the pretty colours across the hallway are kept to an acceptable level.  Here it is before the punters arrived.

The theme I'd decided on with the BBCSSO's Andrew Trinick and Douglas Templeton was on the legacy of Beethoven's Fifth, part of an extraordinary Viennese programme to be conducted by the great Donald Runnicles. I started with the strangeness of its opening gesture, harking back to a BBC Symphony Orchestra/Robertson concert which had connected Wagner's Tristan Prelude and Schoenberg's Erwartung - a much tougher work to talk about - in its first half. I found that there was a reason for putting those three works together. Look at it carefully, and the world's most famous musical gesture has a lot more to it than meets the ear. I'm only summing up here, so no more on that for now.

The middle section was on composers who'd taken the gesture, and how differently they'd interpreted it. Rachmaninov in his 1900 song 'Fate' (Sudba) for Chaliapin clearly followed the romantic cue of Beethoven's secretary Anton Schindler who claims the composer declared "Thus Fate knocks at the door!" (though I prefer Carl Czerny's notion that it's a joke amplification of a yellowhammer's song in the Prater). I had Boris Christoff and Alexander Labinsky to demonstrate the first stanza; I'm guessing, though a different CD set is suggested, that this is much-missed Elisabeth Söderström with Vladimir Ashkenazy. Especially valuable since Apukhtin's poem is given in English translation:

At the other end of interpreting the "knock" is ever-kooky Charles Ives, who heard in Beethoven's theme "the Soul of humanity knocking at the door of the Divine mysteries, radiant in the faith that it will be opened - and the human becomes the Divine". Here's that amazing third movement of his Concord Sonata (1909-15) which Alexander liked so much. The rhythm's beautiful transformation at the start commemorates the Alcott family, most famous of whom, to us at least, is Louisa May. Of it Ives wrote: "And there sits the little old spinet piano Sophia Thoreau gave to the Alcott children, on which Beth played the old Scotch airs, and played at the Fifth Symphony." On Thursday I chose a pianist I adore, Jeremy Denk, but the Hamelin performance below comes with the score, always a welcome YouTube touch:

Mahler, who conducted Beethoven's Fifth quite a bit in his earlier days, gave up because he lost confidence in how to conduct the fermatas in the phrase. He thought the 'tremendous meaning' of it could more fittingly be summed up as 'Here I am!' ("Das bin ich!"). Which cued me on to symphonies which follow the symphony's trajectory of darkness to light in very different ways - Tchaikovsky's Fourth, Mahler's Fifth (progressive tonality, of course, C sharp minor to D major), Shostakovich's Fifth and all the rhetoric of Beethoven's Sovietization, and finally, richest and rarest in my view, Martinu's Third of 1944. But needless to say 25 minutes proved all too short and I had to cut out quite a few of those examples.

As for the concert, it made excellent sense of its extreme Viennese contrasts, and the afterconcert bonus, a Schubert Violin Sonata from the soloist in the Berg Violin Concerto, Julian Rachlin, with Runnicles at the piano, was such a wonderful way to end that I wish the London orchestras would adopt the practice where appropriate. All about that in my Arts Desk review.

Morning-after plans went slightly but not unpleasantly awry, as usual. I always plan to head back to my favourite gallery, the Kelvingrove, or make another expedition out to Helensburgh to find the Mackintosh house open (as it wasn't when I went before). But time and rain interfered, so I was happy to go and see Alexander's student flat further up Bath Street, with a dozen or so pairs of trainers in the hall seemingly multiplying but good coffee from an espresso machine his dad had given him for Christmas.

Then I headed for a nearish retreat, the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art in the 18th century building touched up by David Hamilton in the late 1830s. It took up less time than I'd expected on my second visit, because the whole point of the ground floor space - to show off new works in neoclassical surroundings - was obscured by the installation of two large screens in a darkened room. Anyway, in the gift shop I found gifts for our evening hosts back in London and noted for the first time the way Carlo Marochetti's 1844 statue of the Duke of Wellington outside is adorned by Glasgow's celebrated sense of humour, a long-standing tradition:

The mosaic on the architrave is by Niki de Saint Phalle, who has an object in the otherwise not very colourful GoMA collection currently on display in Gallery Two.

A quick look inside the grandiose late 19th century City Chambers was enough to see the Carrara marble and alabaster staircase.

It seemed too soon for lunch, so I wandered to the southern bit of the shopping zone I've never walked around before. Rather surprised by the Victorian Argyll Arcade full of jewellers

and delighted by the earthy pipes and drums of a very hairy street band, Big Peat, which seemed to be very much for local shoppers, though - equally surprisingly -  there were quite a few tourists around.

Then along Argyle Street with its fine ironwork

where I passed the Atlantes pictured up top, sculpted by the firm of William Vickers on one doorway of Horatio Kelson Bromhead's vast Stewart and MacDonald Warehouse. Glaswegian wit quickly named the figures Stewart and MacDonald, while the handsome extension of Central Station under which Argyle Street continues to run on its way to the West End - I'm assuming that's the bit added by James Miller in 1901-5 - and which you can see in the distance is known as the Hielenman's Umbrella.

After re-acquainting myself with the famed Glesca friendliness* in a couple of shops and an eatery, I headed back for the train and an utterly restful journey finishing a very gruesome Icelandic thriller and relishing the sharpness of the late afternoon light on the hills that fringe the Lake District (a slightly out of focus shot, this, from the carriage window, but we need a bit of sunshine after all that typical Glaswegian rain).

Two cheers today, anyway, for the passing of the law in the House of Commons to enshrine gay marriage as an equal right. I don't want it for myself - being civilly partnered since that institution first arrived in the UK is good enough for us - but I think it should be there for those who do. The two cheers, of course, are for the fact that 175 voted against, but is that surprising? And anything that splits the already fractured Tory party still further has to be a good thing.

*which can just as easily be replaced by an equally entertaining rudeness, as I discovered from the programme seller in the City Halls...