When I heard this a few months ago I was four feet away from the performers. I can't imagine it carrying to the depth of the Albert Cavern Hall. Was anybody there to experience it in person?

I thought I heard a lot of differences between last night's concert and the version I have on CD, which I guess is down to the microphones picking up a different balance between the instruments.

I was.  I was in one of the Grand Tier boxes to the right of the performers (their right).  It was high up, and the balance was a bit odd.  In the louder parts, clarinet and piano easily overpowered cello and violin.  There were some very nice elements of balance when the quartet played piano or pianissimo.

An odd concert - I really enjoyed it, although there were lots of things to criticise (maybe why it's different from your recording, IRF).  Frost went flat on (at least 3 of) his long crescendo notes as he got very loud, which was gross (and a basic mistake?).  And he seemed to pull the tempo around when it needed to be strict.  He seemed good when he needed to punch teh sound, but maybe did this too much?

Barley had poor vibrato in his movement.  It stopped as each note changed and then started again.  It was way too wide, and had two settings (on and off).  I was listening for change of vibrato with change in intensity, but it didn't happen.  The whole movement also got faster, which I don't think it is supposed to do.

I really did enjoy Marwood's playing though.  A wonderful tone in all areas of the instrument.  there were a couple of blemishes on bow changes in the high intense parts, but they were soon forgotten and are just luck-of-the-draw things when you are trying to get the most intensity you can.  I was most impressed by the way he went into and came away from the last phrases.

I would have preferred to be in the arena, but a good experience being 'up there' and being able to see everything.

Tommo

It's the second time in a couple of weeks that balance problems have been reported in chamber music at the Proms.   The first was in the Janacek Capriccio,  and I was in the Arena for that one.   From where I was standing (3rd row - ie only a few metres behind the conductor) the balance seemed to be ideal.  Yet many in other parts of the hall, and still more people listening on R3,  reported very poor balance,  and I don't doubt that's exactly what they heard.   Now the self-same problems are being mentioned about the Messiaen

The cavernous monstrosity of the RAH is utterly unsuited to chamber recitals - they're completely the wrong scale to be heard to best effect there.   

The issue about whether the Proms (or in fact any classical concerts) should continue at this horrible venue is a separate one - not even the RAH's strongest fans can claim that chamber music comes over well there

Paradoxically, the only performance at the RAH I can remember which wasn't either compromised or destroyed by the space was Stimmung, where I was sitting more or less next to the stage.

Well, perhaps I just felt his rubato was a bit erratic.  But should the last 4 notes of the Clarinet movement be strict?  They weren't.

Tommo

From the front row of the Arena, it was obvious that the performers were not arranged correctly. Particularly in the violin+piano movement, there were many notes where the ensemble (particularly on the part of the pianist) was not good. This was over-compensated for in the Danse de la fureur movement; does it really require quite so much stamping?

Still I found the performance very mesmerizing. The afore-mentioned Fröst crescendi did work very well, even from that distance they were barely audible at the start. But of course by the end they were on the point of unbearable volume.