Hallé @ Leeds Town Hall – Saturday 8th November 2008

It’s always a real treat to welcome the Hallé Orchestra back to Leeds, especially with such a diverse programme which contains the likes of Smetana, Bartók and Brahms.  Add to the mix their Principal Guest Conductor in the form of Christian Mandeal and Radu Lupu, the concert pianist and former winner of the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition in 1969, and you can be assured that the dream team has arrived.

Manchester Camerata @ Leeds Town Hall – Saturday 1st November 2008

The Overture to Il Mondo Della Luna, translated as The World in the Moon by Joseph Haydn, gets the fourth of the Saturday Leeds International Concert Season events under way in grand style.  The only sad aspect of the evening seems to be the large number of empty seats which one audience member attributed to the fact that the Overture is not very well known and, dare I say it, the credit crunch.  What couldn’t possibly be blamed for this lack of attendance is the Manchester Camerata and Douglas Boyd, their principal conductor.

As it will become clear shortly, there's an apparent grand design beginning to creep into these columns in so far as I find myself once again plundering last months effort for at least the starting point of this one. This may appear to be part of some elaborately thought out, post-post modern strategy that works itself out as some kind of thematic loop that eventually resolves itself sometime in 2015 with the revelation that it was all, like, connected, man, y'know? Or that it was all some master plan to provide the basis for my first book. No. Up to now this has quite definitely been a strategy based on expediency and desperation. Put simply, the internal monologue goes something like this - "Oh chuff, here's the deadline.....again! What am I going to write about?  I haven't got anything to write about! Oh, bugger. What did I write about last time...........er......er, OK, l'll use that". Although, if this does actually turn out to be a proper strategy that does eventually form the basis of a book that sells several million copies, then of course it was deliberate all along! I'll just have to make sure this intro is excised from the record, of course.

So, anyway, the "that" for this month is my ever increasing pile of unread books that I alluded to in passing last month.

Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra @ Leeds Town Hall - Saturday 25th October 2008

Fans of the television series The Onedin Line couldn’t have wished for a better opening to the evening.  Arranged by Russia’s Yuri Simonov, tonight’s conductor, the beautiful and memorable suite from Aram Khachaturian’s ballet Spartacus is an absolute joy from start to finish.  The Moscow Philharmonic played as if their lives depended on it, especially the percussionist on the kettle drums.  Simonov also added to the piece with his flamboyant conducting style, which endeared him to the knowledgeable crowd.