Syde order

The Carducci Quartet returned to Syde Tithe Barn this afternoon for the first in a Summer series of short early evening concerts. We were treated to delicious performances of Haydn's Joke Quartet and the Ravel of a century later.

What a space for chamber music - and on the most perfect afternoon of sunshine, when the Syde garden was looking at its  best. And it was our wedding anniversary!

La Scala

We are home again after our eight days abroad. My head is swimming from side to side rather, from so much rail travel - six different trains today alone. It's swimming, too, from many rich experiences.

This time yesterday, we were enjoying (very much) a Debussy/Ravel concert in the wondrous setting of Milan's great opera house. I had seen it before from the outside, but it was closed for repair in 2001, when Thomas and I spent Easter Monday exploring the city.

Our train from Florence arrived in time for a pavement lunch near the Brera yesterday: thus fortified, we tackled what for me (despite only one previous visit) rates as a favourite collection. It's not too large, but nearly all top notch. And amazingly almost empty. We then set off for an ice cream, and to show Caroline a different sort of gallery, the Vittorio Emanuele arcade.

En route, you can't miss La Scala, and there outside was one of its characteristic yellow bills announcing that the Orchestre National de France (under music director Daniele Gatti) were in town - and playing at 9 p.m. that evening as part of the MITO Festival.

Returning at 8.30, you could see at once that this was a high fashion occasion. I felt a little under-dressed in my shorts, but despite the plentiful décolleté all round us, there were no armed soldiers turning away the scantily clad, as at the entrance to the Duomo earlier. The box office seemed more than happy to let us in to the Gallery - the tickets, a mere five euro each. What's more, the concert began with a bonne bouche: to commemorate the life of Milan's late beloved Cardinal Martini, there was the Ave Maria from Otello, Act IV. I can't think of any religious leader whose passing might attract quite such treatment at our Royal Opera House.

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.