Updates, multifarious

There has been so much interest in our appearances at Latitude Festival on 18 and 19 July that I thought you might like to know what we are planning to play:

BACH Brandenburg Concerto no. 3
PIAZZOLLA Autumn from Four Seasons in Buenos Aires
REICH Duet
VIVALDI Concerto for Four Violins in B minor from L’estro armonico
PIAZZOLLA Summer from Four Seasons in Buenos Aires
BACH Concerto for Two Violins
with, as a possible encore,
RAUTAVAARA The Fiddlers

Perfect, whatever the weather!

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'It is Ibragimova's ability to pick out those melodies and shape them with deceptively unfussy nuance that makes her mesmerising.' Erica Jeal in the Guardian the other day, reviewing Alina Ibragimova's two concerts of bach's solo repertoire, part of the City of London Festival, in which we are playing tonight.

It's snowing in Krakow

Plan A had been to travel from Cambridge to Krakow by train, mainly as an early experiment in thinking about touring orchestras' carbon footprints. It would have taken me some 12 hours longer than the players to get here, but it seemed worth trying. Plan B, however, rapidly took over following two invitations to Helsinki. So Thursday evening was spent at Finlandia Hall hearing Olli Mustonen direct a recent work by Rautavaara, Prokoviev's 6th Symphony, and play and direct Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 24. Mustonen is a very individual artist, crystal clear in the Mozart, and well able to draw out the dark moments of the Prokoviev (supposedly a celebration of the end of the War); he also has a steak dish named after him at the restaurant we went to following the concert. The Britten Sinfonia blog has always had a culinary streak running through it, so I'll give more details when I get back to England.

Then early on Friday morning to Fazer Artist Management for a traditional Finnish pre-Christmas glogg party (basically a mulled-wine with vodka).

Failing hopelessy on the emissions front, it then took three flights to get to Gdansk to catch the midnight sleeper train to Krakow. Richard Causton (whose new work we are premiering in our Britten Sinfonia at Lunch concert tomorrow at noon at the Filharmonic Hall) has arrived, and the players are due in later. In a new collaboration with the Academy of Music here, there will be an open rehearsal this evening, and Ricahrd will run a composers' workshop on Monday morning.
Our UK audiences can hear the concert in Birmingham on Monday, Cambridge on Tuesday, at the Wigmore Hall in London on Wednesday, and in Norwich on Thursday.
John Bickley