To judge by the audience reaction the Cultureville Phil was a huge hit in ‘that London’.  Although I thoroughly enjoyed the concert I was rather surprised by the volume of applause – and, given the venue, it can hardly be put down to what Mary Chambers calls ‘Liverpool hyperbole’.  Mary might be interested to hear that her ‘Petrenko effect’ was confirmed in my extremely scientific survey  - the people either side of me in the arena – in which Vasily was unanimously identified as the star of the show.  He does seem to have a remarkable rapport with the orchestra and, in my opinion, got a scintillating performance of Symphonic Dances out of them.  I thought they performed well in Kenneth Hesketh’s new work Graven Images, too, though obviously I don’t have the memory of earlier performances with which to compare it.  The piece itself is a sumptuous experience in the concert hall – lots of shimmering percussion, brooding strings, dramatic tumult, the odd dance rhythm – and it will be interesting to see if it gets enough repeat performances to become established.  I wasn’t sure the orchestra was quite at one with Paul Lewis in the concerto.  As I commented in my brief post in another place the band seemed to be attacking some of the more dramatic passages with an energy that was almost certain to eclipse the soloist.  A clue as to why this might have happened was given in the pre-concert discussion where VP talked of the players’ fear of not being able to fill such a large hall.  I think this was largely a reference to the quieter passages but I wonder if they were over-compensating in some of the louder passages too. 

There seems to have been a radical change in queuing habits for the arena.  I was surprised at the ease with which I got a good position for Proms 1,2 & 3 but on Friday it was quite remarkable.  I arrived after 1730 and still got the lowest number ticket I can remember getting; but the arena still seemed well populated by the time the concert started.  Maybe people are just being more sanguine about taking the risk of not getting in and are just turning up later.  Something which is, unfortunately, rather more familiar is that I noticed lots of empty seats (mostly in the circle) just before the start; but they seemed to have been filled by the interval.  Perhaps it was a couple of coach parties who got caught up in traffic but I suspect it might have been people who couldn’t be bothered turning up for the new piece.

I was quite disappointed with this Proms Plus event, Eruanto.  I felt the attempt to cram discussion and performance into a 45 minute slot was unfair to the musicians - and, perhaps, to the music; which left me cold, too.  The organisation was particularly dire with no serious attempt made to stick to the schedule so the last appearance of the students came after the scheduled finishing time when the tiny number of prommers who had turned up hours in advance must have been wondering if they were going to be last into the arena.  I thought Petrenko was quite charming - easy to see why the laydeez like him - but the 'bigging up' of the Capital of Culture experience gets a bit wearying after a while.  I'd have preferred either to concentrate on the music - with full pieces preceded by short introductory talks as at the 10/10 concerts I've attended or the free new music events the Philharmonia used to have before some of their concerts - or to leave it out altogether and just have the chat.

Paul Lewis doesn't usually look very pleased with himself. One of the many things I admire about him is his apparent total lack of interest in himself - or the audience, for that matter. He always looks as if he'd rather not have to acknowledge the applause. I thought he played beautifully, but agree there was something odd about the orchestra from time to time. I wasn't in the hall, just listening at home.

I thought the Kenneth Hesketh sounded wonderful at first, but palled after a while - too long perhaps. I was a bit shocked to discover he was 40 - I still think of him as a choirboy! Where did those years go?