Sunday 25 February 2007

on the Newcastle-Glasgow train
I'm going home again, after the briefest of trips to the very excellent venue of The Sage Gateshead for an 11am concert this morning. It was a Radio 3 recording, unusual in that the four of us (Alexei Ogrintchouk, Sebastian Comberti, Joanne Lunn and me) hadn't been in a room together before 5pm last night. So it was a good exercise in mutual co-operation.

But I wish I'd made a better job of the Bach two-part inventions I played. Bob Deegan's tuning meter didn't seem to have a convincing grasp of Vallotti so I tuned the harpsichord myself, which before an 11am concert is pretty much a guarantee that any difficult music will go horribly wrong. But it was great to share some cups of tea with Bob and catch up a bit.

I had an excellent morning for food actually: smoked haddock and parmesan risotto for breakfast at the Eslington Villa Hotel (spectacularly helpful staff too), and then the roast beef in the Sage's café looked so good it was irresistible for lunch before running through the rain to the station ...