The Carducci Quartet

We were at Syde Tithe Barn on Saturday evening for a short recital by the excellent Carduccis. It was lovely to be able to watch them at such close quarters - playing Haydn Op 20 No 5 and Mendelssohn Op 80. They milled around with us all afterwards.

Guiting again

Mini said last evening, before our customary date attending the Guiting Festival, "Being here always reminds me that the end of Summer is approaching." Well, as if to contradict her, today it's been hotter than ever - and even now, late in the evening, it's still 21 degrees C.

However, yesterday - though it wasn't cold - the sun resolutely refused to sign for our pre-concert picnic, which was a pity, but it in no way diminished the pleasure of the performance by the Carducci Quartet. Here were Emma Denton, Eoin Schmidt-Martin, Matthew Denton and Michelle Fleming after a memorable performance of Mendelssohn's last quartet - ending a recital which deserved (but sadly didn't get) a full house. ("There's just too much music!" as a friend said.)

The three string quartets (Haydn and Ravel before the interval) took less time to play through than one Act of the Ring Cycle, which no doubt explains my surprise that it all seemed to be over so quickly.

Full houses at Pittville

The Pump Room was full both this morning and yesterday afternoon - all to the good for the Cheltenham Festival finances. And for the first time after a lengthy gap, we once again get free tea or coffee included in the ticket price - though seeing how much they have gone up, it's just as well.

This morning's programme opened with the Escher String Quartet playing mid-period Mendelssohn (32 minutes, but it felt longer). Piano prodigy Benjamin Grosvenor - only one day out of his teens - then gave us Gaspard de la nuit: this must be hard enough to play at the best of times, but made more so when a phone goes off: this happened four times - does anyone else harbour murderous thoughts as I do on these occasions?

After the interval, the five performers combined to give us the Brahms Piano Quintet, which will surely have sent our royal patron off to lunch in a good mood: I was wondering why police were there directing traffic before the concert.

Yesterday's event that I attended was altogether more unusual: the period instrumentalists Florilegium combined with the Arakaendar Bolivia Choir to give us a nicely varied programme of Bolivian baroque pieces. From the first entry by the choir, processing to the stage, it was clear we were in for something different - a sound we don't get from European singers, even those open-throated Bulgarians.

Not everyone was rushing back to watch Federer v. Murray: an impressive percentage of the audience stayed for the post-concert discussion: Piotr Nawrot SJ and Ashley Solomon (Florilegium's director) gave a riveting account of how it has all come together. Hearing these newly-discovered religious settings removed, at last, the nasty taste left by Swayne's Missa Tiburtina the previous morning.

Poles together

A splendid innovation at this year's Cheltenham Music Festival concerts at Pittville is an additional central aisle between the seating. With my long legs, I have felt myself lucky to get a place beside it nearly every time. The view, in one of the most beautiful chamber music venues anywhere (not just my opinion), is as good as it gets from where I have been sitting.

One rather disconcerting feature, however, is the way in which the large, central chandelier sways slightly from side to side - a cross between the huge Botafumeiro in Santiago de Compostela Cathedral (I hope to see it one day) and an outsize metronome. The fact that the swaying does not happen in time with the music may or may not put off those on the platform: it certainly didn't seem to do so this morning, when we were treated to what for me was one of the best recitals in this Festival to date.

After hearing American, Russian and Finnish Quartets, today I listened to the Royal Quartet from Poland performing their compatriot, Szymanowski (the second of his two quartets), together with early Mendelssohn and Mozart's sublime Clarinet Quintet. It all seemed just right, particularly the Szymanowski - quite new to me. Emma Johnson stood between the seated strings, playing her part from memory. Having struggled to learn to play the clarinet at school, I have an inkling how hard it is to play so sweetly.

And sweetest of all was their encore, a quintet arrangement of the Mozart Ave verum corpus. A Royal occasion indeed!

Out of order at the Festival

I've been reading Pope Benedict's new "social" encyclical - rather appropriate given that today is the feast of St Benedict. "It is good for people to realise," he writes, "that purchasing is always a moral - and not simply economic - act." Well, I can't claim any very high-minded motive for declining to purchase a £9 Music Festival programme (or even the £1 throw-away sheets) when I've attended this Festival's concerts. I came to realise at a certain stage a few years ago that the house - or rather the attic - was already too full of old concert and theatre programmes, and that I just had to stop buying them. Anyway the Festival provides a perfectly adequate advance booking brochure, setting out what we are to hear.

Perfectly adequate? Yes, for the most part, but this week there have been two irritating occasions when the order of the pieces performed has not been as set out in the advance brochure - and I and those others in the same boat were not given prior notice of this. While most of those of us left in the dark could probably tell after the first couple of bars that it was Beethoven not Shostakovich that the Borodin Quartet were playing in the middle of their recital programme, it was not at all obvious yesterday evening that Steven Isserlis and Connie Shih were launching into Schumann instead of Mendelssohn after their opener. So, a little more consideration please, Meurig "Hedgehog" Bowen, if the order is to be changed in future - particularly as you were up there on the stage, chatting away to us anyway before the concert, with your roving mike.

Having got that off my chest, I will say immediately that there was absolutely nothing out of order about the playing last night. It was a delight to hear two performers so much in sympathy with one another, and with a passionate shared commitment to the work of those two composers. OK, the "new" variations spurieuses - Thomas Ades's description, we were told - by Mendelssohn were perhaps a bit boring; but the second half of the recital took fire in no uncertain terms. This, anyway, seemed to be the post-performance consensus over supper - one of those present being particularly hungry having (aged 75) bicycled 12 or so miles to the concert.

Meta4 (pictured here before their rushed exit to catch their flights home to Helsinki) and the dynamic Ingrid Fliter likewise took fire yesterday morning, in the same hall, playing more Schumann - his great Piano Quintet: why is it so much less celebrated than Schubert's Trout? Perhaps because it doesn't have a nickname.

Before their interval, Meta4 had - with all the fearlessness of youth - launched into Beethoven Op 130, with the Grosse Fuge thrown in. We were in Cornwall last week, and I marvelled at the beauty of the waves, for surfing; but also at how perilous was the undertow. I was reminded of this during parts of that great fuge, where the playing rolls along, but can so easily come adrift: happily the quartet, 3/4 of whom played standing up (on their surfboards), all ended together eventually. A brave performance.

Europa fits the bill

Scott Ellaway is an ambitious young man. Only 26 still, he founded Orchestra Europa all of three years ago: tonight they performed together a matchingly ambitious programme at the Cheltenham Music Festival. Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream overture; Tchaikovsky's violin concerto (Nicola Benedetti as soloist) and Schubert's Great C Major symphony. Not surprisingly, the Town Hall was packed for such popular fare. (The 6 o'clock start time was a further factor making it a gift for the corporate entertainers, who were out in force: solicitors, accountants, surveyors, headmistresses, past High Sherrifs - why, I even saw the Chief Constable there.)

What did we think of the big screens? Personally, I felt they were brilliant; but I seemed to be in a minority in our group - even though we were at the back of the hall, amongst those most likely to take advantage of them. Time will tell. Anything to distract attention from the lugubrious statues of Kings Edward VII and George V has to be an advantage in my book.

And the music? Well, the Mendelssohn was a bit heavy perhaps; and the orchestral accompaniment to the concerto soloist rather too prominent, but Benedetti gave it welly, and looks the part, if one can say such a thing these days. For me, the Schubert was the evening's highlight: OK, perhaps some of the brass might have thought they were playing Janáček rather than Schubert (especially in the 2nd movement), but I put that down to youthful enthusiasm. The tempi were on the whole just right, which is all-important in so long a work - so long indeed that we had to call on the Town Hall's first aider to revive one of our party. A dramatic end to the evening.