Thanks to a bit of encouragement from a friend (thanks, Sean) I’m going to give this another go… I’ve not been blogging for seven months, since the 52 Poets one ended, so I thought I’d try (again) to resuscitate this one.

With more classical music. Last night was concert number 10 in the BBC Proms series at the Royal Albert Hall. I got really cheap seats with a friend – we were way up in the last row of the circle, with a restricted view. The hall was probably only two-thirds full though,  so when it was clear no one else was going to be joining us on the last row we scooted right round and got a really good view of the whole orchestra (albeit from a long way up).

I love the Proms – a huge long series of concerts, a really diverse programme, and of course world-class orchestras, choirs, soloists and conductors. With standing tickets at a fiver it’s an amazingly cheap way to discover and enjoy a huge range of classical music.

Friday’s concert wasn’t on my ‘really want to see’ list (I haven’t managed to make any of them yet, but they’re all broadcast live on BBC Radio 3) but it was a lovely programme:  a mix of French (Debussy, Ravel), Spanish (Sarasate) and Japanese (Takemitsu, Hosokawa) music, ‘tracing musical cross-fertilisations between East and West, and between France and Spain’. It’s always a treat to see a full orchestra play, and Beth and I were wowed by the violin solo in the Ravel piece. Incredible that you can fill a hall with such a small piece of wood… although the violin in question did turn out to be a 1714 Stradivarius, which is in itself pretty impressive.

And we were rather hypnotised by the sound of the shō - a Japanese ‘mouth organ’ that, apparently, sounds like the call of a phoenix. I’d never heard (or even heard of) one before, and it was mesmerising – long series of chords that just went on and on (you can play it inhaling and exhaling). Beautiful.

(Interestingly, the two tallest reeds are silent, but they’re kept for aesthetic reasons – like two symmetrical ‘wings’.)

So, if you’re in London – go and see a Prom. They’re great.