Co-operation

This warm and sunny morning, Thomas and I walked up through Pittville Park to the Pump Room - once again gloriously uncluttered by marquees: his musician Godmother (Imogen Cooper) had kindly left us tickets for her recital with mezzo Christianne Stotijn.

What a lovely programme! A testing trio of Schubert songs was followed by Benjamin Britten's Winter Words. After the interval, a delicious Schubert Imo-promptu, and then two further cycles: more Britten and Mussorgsky. Finally, the bonne bouche - a song by Tchaikovsky.

I enthused about La Stotijn last time she was with us here, accompanied by Julius Drake (was it really four years ago?): my enthusiasm has increased after today's peaches and cream performance, particularly seeing and hearing the rapport she has with Imogen.

Festival finale

Although the Cheltenham Music Festival doesn't end till tomorrow night, I've been to my last event now - a performance by the Australian String Quartet this morning: they put across their compatriot, Peter Sculthorpe's Quartet no 8 well - an interesting piece - but overall did not appear quite to be in the medal category from where I was sitting. The competition has however been fierce in Cheltenham, these last 14 days. Perhaps they were a bit handicapped by playing with a guest cellist.

Last night there were a couple of hiccoughs at the end of Christianne Stotijn's recital, with Julius Drake, but overall that was definitely a medal performance: this 31-year-old mezzo certainly deserves to be going places: the opera stage, I'd hope, with a voice so full of drama and power to colour the phrases. "Das Mädchen fing zu weinen an," she sang in Mahler's celebrated Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen - and we could have wept too I guess, at that and also at other moments during the evening. Great stuff, and great too to be reminded of how difficult it is to sustain a recital of this intensity by the young singer's reluctantly-admitted frailty.

So, a big thank you to Meurig Bowen and to all those who have been responsible for providing us with such a musical feast during this year's Festival!