Saturday 7 October 2000

This week I got round to some of the chores left over from last week's concerts, like filing alls the parts away. I must reorganise our music library sometime: at the moment it's all in folders which live somewhere near my study ceiling, in cardboard boxes which originally held containers of dialysis solution. They're very strong boxes.

On Thursday I went to the launch for next year’s Celtic Connections festival and caught up with a few promoters, and on Friday had lunch with James Waters at the Edinburgh Festival, where we batted about the idea of doing The Gentle Shepherd next year.  I wasn’t quite prepared for his enthusiasm, so I’ll need to do some more research pretty quickly if he really wants to do it.  Let’s see.

Couldn’t resist going down to St Cecilia’s Hall and ringing the doorbell while I was in Edinburgh.  Not only was it built by the Edinburgh Musical Society back when McGibbon, the Earl of Kelly and co. were its mainstays, but the galleries around it now house the university’s fantastic collection of keyboard instruments.  I’d gone to have a conversation with John Raymond, the Assistant Curator, about Broadwood pianos and who might copy one for us, and ended up by myself in the hall stumbling through a half-remembered Haydn sonata, watched over by the portrait of John Clerk of Penicuik on the wall.  It’s hard to imagine the social whirl there in the 1760s when you’re there on your own – it’s just an elegant little room compared to the enormous concert halls we’re used to now.