Flying north from Stansted again
Afriendly audience awaited Alison and me in Leicester last night, after Kate Fawcett and her family settled us into the hall in the afternoon. Special mentions go to Kate's provision of a picnic, and to Sam's harpsichord playing (even when it was simultaneous to mine). His gong solo when he crawled into it and knocked it over was pretty good too.

In the audience was Schetky's No.1 supporter, Mark Summers. He said afterwards that it was the first time he'd ever heard anyone other than himself play Schetky's music. For one reason and another the CD recording of Schetky's music we were going to be making in a fortnight's time has been postponed, so it was good to be reminded by someone else that his music is actually worth playing. By a strange coincidence, you can hear Mark and me singing 19th century alternative words to metrical psalms on the radio soon: something we recorded a few years ago that just happened to resurface.

Rather than driving all the way back to London in one go after the gig, Alison had the bright idea of finding somewhere to stay about halfway, so at around 11.30 we found ourselves driving onto a dark and deserted farm in Bedfordshire and letting ourselves in. It was quite a relief to find other people there in the morning and to be served breakfast despite the electricity being off.  An early start this morning meant an opportunity to further Alison's river swimming research. But my misreading of the directions took us not to a river but a lake, which we later found out was in the middle of a nature reserve. That'll explain all the geese then.

 cellist in deep water

A very welcome lunch at Katharine Fuge's before Alison left us to the company of Haydn, Schumann and Monteclair. After a couple of hours, we had a couple of potential concert programmes, not a bad work rate. I like Kathy's singing very much because she doesn't let 'singer stuff' get in the way of the music. To be honest, I find most classical singing very difficult to listen to: I just don't particularly like the sound that most trained singers make. And it still surprises me how few singers are genuinely led by the song and the music, rather than by their sonic capabilities or technique. I want to hear someone sing something that touches me; I don't want to hear them show off the lustre of their top F or how smooth their break is. Anyway, when our Bach Ich habe genug with Kathy goes out on Radio 3 (in September I think) listen and see if you agree. It sounds like communication to me rather than just skill, and I like it.

When I dropped into Walthamstow to pick up CDs on the way to the airport, Alison had cooked some risotto, and rhubarbto eat in the car. Hooray!