PROM

19/8/10, Royal Albert Hall

3 hrs. The BBC Scottish Symphony with Martyn Brabbins and a Mozart overture, Liszt piano concerto, Sheherazade, then after the interview an unlistenable new work by James Dillon and Tchaikovsky's Second Symphony. I was knackered and it was a long concert, so the second half was a bit of a blur.

The Mozart (Der Schauspieldirektor) was short, polite and inoffensive. The Liszt was played by Boris Giltburg, replacing Boris Berezovsky for "contractual reasons", whatever that means (a row about the fee? double booking?). It's a serious work but for the first two movements piano and orchestra could have been playing separate pieces. The pianist delivers himself of a great tract of noisy, dramatic, flamboyant, romantic angst; the orchestra plays a few notes; the soloist starts up again while the orchestra rests its instruments and watches. There's more integration, more dialogue in the third movement, but overall the impression was unsatisfactory. Yet the Prommers loved the soloist, who was brought back for a (lengthy) encore.

Sherehezade is long too. I'd forgotten how long, even though it's almost tediously familiar thanks to an Ann Rachlin tape we used to play in the car when the kids were young. But it is marvellous, colourful stuff with great tunes and orchestral effects (and hearing a work in live performance with whoch you're already familiar is usually more a help than a hindrance because it enables you to spot differences in interpretation and emphasis). Half the orchestra seemed to be employed as soloists at one point or another. The "Sheherezade" passages for solo violin and harp and the woodwind solos were particularly attractive. And it boasted six percussionists. It also had a third trumpeter who sat mute throughout the first two movements and only raised his instrument briefly in the third, much to our relief (D nudged me to make sure I didn't miss it: he'd become a positive distraction).

The Dillon (called La Navette) was a long drone involving at times the whole orchestra, with the usual cliches: sudden brief eruptions from the brass; little twiddly bits, equally sudden, equally arbitrary, from the woodwind; every conceivable type of percussion.

The Tchaikovsky (which we didn't know) was enjoyable and accessible and culminated in a typical Tchaikobsky march which he flogged to death, typically, repeating it over and over until it threatened to become a pain.

IDOMENEO

25/6/10, ENO

3 hrs 25 mins. Katie Mitchell's latest take on two of her favourite themes. One is the old "Dad promises to sacrifice the first living thing he sees to win the gods'/God's favour, then discovers in horror it's his firstborn" story. She did it with Iphigenia at the National, the girlish heroine eagerly embracing her martyrdom; she did it with Handel's Jephtha at ENO (about which I remember little except for its length and generally static quality, though I suspect it was rather moving at the time); and now she's done it with Mozart. The other is the legacy of Troy, explored in the Trojan Women at the National and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas at the Young Vic.

A production full of Mitchell tropes. There was the wide, flat set, with lots of movement laterally across the stage but little depth, which gives the impression of viewing everything through some great picture window but makes handling the chorus a challenge. There were the dancing couples (appropriate on this occasion, during the scenes of celebration after Idomeneo's return). There was the video (limited on this occasion to shots of flowers and trees on what looked like 16mm film, projected onto a screen in a sort of conference room while Ilia sang of pastoral beauties; and to a wonderful seascape seen through the [picture] window of the family villa). There was the modern dress, which made them look like a family of wealthy Greek shipping owners surrounded by servants and staff and well-dressed hangers-on. There were the witty updatings: the scene in which Electra and Idamante prepare to set sail from Crete took place in a ferry departure lounge, bright sunlight streaming in from the door to the quay at one side, the posh folks secluded in an airport-style business lounge on the other; Ideomeno returned from the wars looking like a US soldier in desert combats. There were the Trojans, in distressed party frocks and ballgowns.

And there was the very busy business: in the first scene Ilia and Idamante come across as a pair of spoilt brats singing of love and sipping drinks brought in by black-aproned bistro-style waiters while people in business suits scurry across the stage, opening and closing doors self-importantly. The waiters were a constant, as were the business suits, as was the scurrying: there was much to-ing and fro-ing during the climactic scene on the beach as people brought on arc-lights to illuminate the sacrifice and a bodybag. Some might have found it distracting: I thought it was all justified, partly because it created a convincing milieu which helped make the emotional journey of the characters convincing; partly because it's a long piece and some of the arias are very long and, agreeable though the music is, it helps to have something to look at.

Tellingly though, there was relatively little business in the high points, which included a spectacular and pain-wracked solo for Paul Nilon as Idomeneo during the party scene which deservedly brought the house to a halt. Nilon was generally the key to the evening's success because he was absolutely convincing in his anguish at every stage.

Sarah Tynan sang prettily as Ilia and looked the part. Robert Murray was a rather too beefy Idamante. Emma Bell was Electra, wittily portraying her as a spoilt and scheming little rich girl well on the way to becoming an alcoholic lush. This made her mad scene and suicide at the end entirely convincing; and she did a witty drunk turn during the party; but in the very next scene this pantomime villain sang a beautiful song of departure which was difficult to take as seriously as was perhaps intended.

The text I think was subtly massaged. No mention of a sea monster rampaging across the island, only of a disastrous and destructive storm.

It was a very hot night and there were empty seats all around the auditorium, including immediately in front of us. A price break? People who couldn't face the Coliseum on such a steamy night? Dr T very cross with someone sneezing loudly in the row behind us. I very distracted by a young girl of about eight or ten just in front who fanned herself vigorously with her programme throughout: heaven knows what she made of it all but (apart from the fan) she sat very quietly.

LONDON CONCERT CHOIR

28/3/09, Barbican

2hrs 5mins. Mozart's Coronation Mass and Mendelssohn's Symphony No 2, the Hymn of Praise, performed by a choir we hadn't heard of accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the choir's conductor, one Mark Forkgen. The choir was large (forgot to count, but they filled the back of the Barbican Hall's stage with no difficulty) but, as so often, desperately short of men (so short, indeed, that one woman sang tenor). The RPO fielded around 30 players in the Coronation Mass, with only one set of violins and no clarinets (there were no clarinets in Mozart's Salzburg, G told me, and bless me, he was right); there were around 40 for the Mendelssohn. Both pieces featured a chamber organ.

Visual memory cues: chorus in black ties, band in white tie, soprano in fine dark burgundy evening dress and little black jacket.

The Mass is almost uniformly joyous and was sung with gusto, but the choral writing seemed unadventurous: almost all the choruses were sung in unison. I wondered if it showed Mozart had little faith in the capacities of the Salzburg cathedral choir, but I read instead that the Cardinal-Archbishop insisted on keeping masses short, and this was Mozart's solution (it lasts only around 30 minutes). The part-writing for the voice was limited to the soloists, mostly deployed as a quartet. There were only two quieter passages: the Agnus Dei, a beautiful soprano solo, and the Benedictus, where a reflective soprano alternates with the choir belting out Osannas. The choir seemed well-drilled right from the very first note, when they enter, all guns blazing, with a Kyrie.

Enjoyment slightly marred by a dreadful stomach ache brought on by too little exercise earlier in the day and a dyspeptic reaction to the meal beforehand at Searcy's (G paid): normally it's a good place and pretty quiet, but tonight it was full and they seemed overwhelmed. My starter never arrived; we were bolting our main course a few minutes before the concert started and more than an hour after we got there.

On the other hand, a Japanese woman sat at the next table in full fig, and there were more kimonos in the foyer beforehand, there to see the Ninagawa Kabuki production of Twelfth Night in the theatre.

The Mendelssohn is really rather fine, a three movement sinfonia, which lasts about 40 minutes, and then a 20 minute choral finale with three soloists (mezzo, a South African soprano called Erica Eloff, who had a powerful voice and a young tenor, Nathan Vale, with an agreeable voice but not perhaps quite enough heft). It starts with a distinctive and authoritative fanfare on the trombones which is then echoed by the rest of the orchestra and returns several times during the piece, including at the very end.

There were some lovely touches in the orchestral sections, including a clarinet solo which dies away to nothing; and in the finale there's a wonderful crashing chorus ("the Hymn of the German Reformation", apparently) with the band batting the notes of the fanfare back and forth between brass and horns, and which ought to be the work's climax. What can he follow it with? you wonder. In the event he pulls off a potentially very difficult transition by going straight to an unaccompanied chorale of Nun danket alle Gott, set to the familiar tune, and then a duet for soprano and tenor and finally another chorus, not quite so crashing.

Mendelssohn does write some lovely melodies and manages to write music that is mellifluous without being cloying. Why isn't this piece better known? G thought it better than Elijah. I'd love to hear it again with a better balanced choir.

MITSUKO UCHIDA

24/11/08 Royal Festival Hall

With the Chamber Orch of Europe, leader Alexander Janiczek. Stravinsky: Apollon Musagete (music 1927-28 for a ballet); Mozart piano concertos no 23 and 24

The Mozarts written just a few weeks apart but very different. No 23 has two sunny outer movements (especially the last, which positively dances, though I’ve heard it sing even more than it did tonight) and an introspective, rather tortured slow movement which is very short. No 24 has a positively rhapsodic slow movement, bracketed by two very dark (for Mozart) outer movements, all minor key, with added timps and trumpets, by turns sombre, stately and rather tragic.

The first piece written for string orchestra by Stravinsky, choreographed by Balanchine. It would have benefited from some dance tonight. A bit bland now and then but generally lovely, rhythmic, patterned – with those plangent sounds so typical of 20th century works for string orchestra.

Ms Uchida a striking figure, wearing a turquoise strappy top under a pink chiffon blouse thing (hideous ensemble). I have never seen anyone bow so deep. Clearly no problems with HER hips. She looks around the orchestra when she first comes on stage (making eye contact) and when taking applause first gestures rather gauchely at the band. She conducted from the piano, sitting with her back to us, standing up to conduct with great flowing gestures.

Not sure how much notice the band took of her – or of Mr Janiczek, the leader. I noticed one of the cellists in the Stravinsky seemed to be taking his cue from the leader of the second violins. Watching the players’ eyelines generally they seemed to be looking anywhere and everywhere except at the leader.

Lots of Japanese in the audience. I saw two women in kimonos, and a very smartly dressed family (mum, dad, two little girls) a few rows behind us – the youngest girl, perhaps 4, fast asleep on her mother’s arm during the interval.

There were quite a lot of kids generally, but they were very well-behaved. But not the coughers, one of whom ruined the start of the slow movement of No 23.