CBSO at the Sheldonian

Friday's was my first visit to Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre for a symphony concert: we had heard the OAE and Andreas Scholl there some years ago, but a full orchestra playing from the romantic repertoire was something else. If truth be told, despite the well-documented brilliance of the CBSO under its young conductor Andris Nelsons, it produced rather too harsh a sound for my ears, sitting in the first tier up. Still, the chance to listen carefully to two old warhorses (Tchaikovsky's 1st Symphony and Brahms' 1st Piano Concerto) in such virtuosic performances doesn't come often. In fact it was a treat.

My back has now recovered from sitting squashed for two hours on what is effectively a bench, an ordeal only partly offset by the beauty of Wren's architecture.

Highlight of the evening: the pianist was lissome Hélène Grimaud, her performance in the Brahms combining elegance with strength way beyond what her appearance gave me to expect.

OAE at NSF

Last October, I photographed Zoe Shevlin, bassoonist, playing at Tetbury with the Academy of Ancient Music. Last night, she popped up in an enlarged Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment for the final concert in this year's Newbury Spring Festival. We were invited by Sarah as a joint birthday present.

On paper, the programme looked unchallenging, symphonies by Mozart and Schubert and Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto with Artur Pizarro; but in the way Paul Daniel and the OAE tackled it, fresh sounds seemed to spring out all the time. In particular, the slow movement of the concerto came across as more sublime than ever.

It is always a pleasure to be allowed to join in such a friendly festival as Newbury's, church pews notwithstanding. The cavernous St Nicholas' in Newbury was of course packed. Sun streamed in through Hardman glass ("not good" in Pevsner's judgment), and there was still light in the sky as we drove homewards later along the M4.

1st stop, London

As we had more than an hour in hand before our Eurostar check in, we donned our backpacks and walked round from King's Cross to the just-opened Kings Place (sic - no apostrophe!), designed by Dixon-Jones. (This is the view looking upwards from our lunch table.)

Kings Place forms the new headquarters for the Guardian and the Observer, and also of the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. The basement concert hall wasn't open to view, but we saw and enjoyed the contemporary art: it's the (London) home too of Pangolin Editions as well as the Gallery providing a large exhibition space. The whole set-up looks pretty amazing to me, opening out as it does onto the canal and Battlebridge Basin.

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Sir Joshua Reynolds' statue in the Royal Academy courtyard currently sports a floral sash, we noticed on Thursday (when going into the Summer Exhibition). It was a hard job, in getting a photograph, to avoid Sir Anthony Caro's huge "Promenade, 1996 - steel, painted grey/green": this to me was quite the most unattractive piece in the Exhibition, Tracey Emin's room notwithstanding.

Our friend Elise had rung on Tuesday to see if we might be able to help her out of a hole. Friends from Italy were at this late hour unable to come with them to Glyndebourne on Thursday. "And of course you will stay the night." (O the joys of retirement, I thought once more.) She then rang us again the following morning: "Could you by any chance be our flexible friends for the OAE concert tonight too?" And we knew from past experience that one doesn't pass up an opportunity to hear Andreas Scholl!

So it was that we returned home yesterday after two culture-packed days in the South-East...