Saturday 23 August 2003

Man, I'm really enjoying the proms this evening. It's the Russian one this evening you see, and I love a bit of Russian music; Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, and now Shostakovich. Radio 3 are mad on Shostakovich, and yet have never provided me with a reason. Christian Tetzlaff, this evening, did just that with Shostakovich's 1st Violin Concerto. The first movement was pretty unengaging actually, but the second and third rocked. I don't think I ever heard anyone get such diversity of tone out of a violin, and the music itself was frenetic and dashing. At one point in the third movement he made the most fabulously incongruous noise. It sounded kind of like a small dog coughing politlely yet firmly "in a wind tunnel". I wonder how youndo that with a violin... anyway - a million chat windows. Bye!