Freeman of Cheltenham

Bob Freeman's funeral takes place today. Family and friends will meet afterwards at the Gardens Gallery, Montpellier, which Bob did much to help establish and support. Only last October, when few would have known how unwell he was, he exhibited this portrait of Stephen Isserlis there.

Besides his own artistic work, Bob produced a regular monthly round up of exhibitions and events: a large number of those on his mailing list will have shared my sadness at hearing - before Christmas - that he had become too ill to continue this encouraging and enlivening endeavour.

RIP.

Festival envoi

As might have been gathered from earlier posts, we have enjoyed this year's Cheltenham Music Festival. Tonight's "London marathon", the Bournemouth S.O. conducted by Martyn Brabbins, was no exception. Cellist Stephen Isserlis's father died three weeks ago, and the last music Stephen played him was part of the Elgar Concerto: no surprise, therefore - his spellbinding performance of this same concerto, the pivot of this final concert. An extraordinary stillness overcame the Town Hall.

Last night's playing of Grieg's Holberg Suite by the Trondheim Soloists stole that show even with Sarah Connolly performing after the interval - today's Janet Baker, my neighbour suggested. I wonder.

On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we went to three of the five "Time Capsule: 1914-18" concerts, devised by the fragrant Kathy Gowers. I had misgivings about these at the outset, as so many of the works seemed to come into the deservedly little-known category. But they proved ideal festival fare, the variety providing continuous contrasts, some looking back, some forward - mostly played with great pizzazz: I would single out particularly the Norwegian pianist Christian Ihle Hadland in his Rachmaninov, but also in the piano transcription of Bartók's Romanian Folk Dances. Thrilling!

Not even crying offstage babies and texting audience members in front could take away that floaty feeling you get when something special is in the air.

Nice music, shame about the sales

Five wonderful concerts have been given in Tetbury church during this year's festival. Music by Schubert (Paul Lewis), Bach (Jonathan Cohen's Arcangelo consort) and Victoria (The Sixteen). And hotchpots on Saturday from the Elias String Quartet (in the morning) and Steven Isserlis with Dénes Várjon (in the evening). For me, perhaps the highlight was the quartet's performance of Haydn Opus 64, No. 6, but any such choice is invidious. The standard was uniformly exceptional: it was a great privilege to hear so many fine musicians in such lovely surroundings. And what a great programme book!

By contrast, my exhibition was a flop. People came, yes: indeed it was a highly sociable weekend. However, sales at the Gallery were few, and certainly mine were far from enabling me to meet my framing and mounting costs. As I have always said, people in England just don't seem to buy photographs for display; or is it just mine? Certainly, the punters this weekend were mostly of that age when they might be thought to have already lined their walls, which is why so often over these past four days one heard the excuse, "But I don't have room for any more!"

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.