Musicians of the lockdown era I guess will go on remembering the concerts we couldn't give. Added to which are the concerts which we couldn't get to but which went ahead perfectly well without us. At the very height of my list I have to place Saturday's superb performance of my opera Blond Eckbert, in the full orchestra version, in a double bill with Dallapiccola's Il Prigioniero, in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.
Tantalisingly, this concert by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic under Franck Ollu, was stylishly filmed by the NTR network, and for a few weeks, the livestream should be visible here. To add one more degree of grandeur, this was the particularly notable concluding concert of the 60th anniversary of the NTR ZaterdagMatinee season - a weekly Saturday afternoon live-broadcast concert from the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, which nearly always includes unusual programming.
As the silver lining to being marooned in Old Blighty, I was at least able, after viewing this broadcast, to board another train to Hertford later in the afternoon, and hear a fine rendering of my 2013 composition I give you the end of a golden string under Tom Hammond and the excellent Hertfordshire String Orchestra.
Pictured - Blond Eckbert scenery from Dawyck Gardens, Scotland.
