Lucas (2)

"The solo singing was wonderful. As Jephtha, James Gilchrist offered... virtuoso bravado..." So today's paper describes (with 5 stars) Tuesday night at the Barbican . And yesterday's Cheltenham lieder recital by that same tenor might, I feel, be described in similar terms.

It could be three years since I attended a Music Society event at the Pittville Pump Room, I'm rather ashamed to say. (Their programmes deserve more loyal support.) And I wasn't really looking forward to last night's mixed bag with any great relish, having been critical of a programme Gilchrist gave at our July 2012 Festival.

As it turned out, I was taken aback not just by the beauty of his voice, but the confidence and variety of tone he brought to his performance - settings of Shakespeare, Byron and Heine by Wolf, Mendelssohn(s), Loewe, Liszt, Grieg and Schubert in part one, and a glorious Dichterliebe after the interval.

The link to my illustration? Tenuous: Gilchrist started adult life as a doctor, and the portrait is supposed to represent another such, St Luke. It's one of the images in a garish-looking East window dating from 1850 in the Norman church I visited on Wednesday, All Saints, Salperton. The glass, "possibly" - Pevsner - by David Evans, is much eclipsed by two splendid late Kempe windows in the South wall.

Not amused

Caroline bought a bike for Agnes' birthday on eBay, so collecting it was my excuse for an outing to near Nuneaton on Friday. My reward for riding a 19" frame lady's bike from its former owner's to Nuneaton Station was a stop-off in Birmingham on the way there: I wanted to pop into the Art Gallery to see Burne-Jones' Perseus Series, on loan from the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the first time it had been on view in the UK. (The show was closing today.)

The pictures tell the story - as gruesome as any Tarantino film - of Perseus visiting the Graiae, Medusa's sisters, who shared one eye between the three of them, and making off with it; cutting off Medusa's head, and using it to win the affection of Andromeda (before turning various people to stone). It amazes me how the Victorian establishment obviously lapped all this up: Burne-Jones' commission came from Arthur Balfour, the future Prime Minister.

I fell asleep in the train going back, waking up with a jolt as it pulled in to Cheltenham. I had put my book on a low shelf beside my seat. Only as I was pushing the bike down the platform, the train moving off to Cardiff, did I remember.