"Did you get to the pelvis yet?"

This is from the warm-up at Sunday night's Poulenc gig... Jamie went off briefly to speak to the youth choir, and left us in the middle of our stretches. On his return he said "How far did you get? Did you get to the pelvis yet?"

There was also: "Can we have more sound on the fff bar?... Tenors, that doesn't really mean you..."

and, my favourite, "Can you write 'adrenaline' and then cross it out?"

(While I was looking through my score, I noticed a Markism from the other day that I'd missed: "The 1st basses are up anyway, if you'll pardon the phrase!")

The concert went well, although I don't think it was the best we've done it. I was a little frustrated that some people (mainly, but not entirely, a few of the Youth Choir) seemed to have trouble singing ppp and/or watching Mark (I didn't think we were together in lots of places)... but, as I kept telling myself, singing very quietly is one of the hardest things to do, and singing exactly on the beat defeats many choirs. I think it was good enough that most of the audience wont have thought anything was amiss - I'm just being fussy. In fact, I did get a couple of lovely emails from members of other choirs who were in the audience, and I'd love to tell you what they said, but I asked the first emailer for permission to quote him and he said no, so I'd probably better not quote the second one either (that email arrived later, so I didn't ask them both at the same time). But rest assured it would delight you if you could hear what they said :-)

It sounded pretty good on the radio (well, I say radio - radio reception where I live is practically zero, so I listen via Sky) - if you missed it, remember Listen Again....


Oh, and the Radio 3 announcer helpfully told us that Pascal Rogé's encore was indeed by Erik Satie (which Sue Oates recognised immediately - she knows her piano music!) and that it was the fifth of his Gnossiennes. And here's an mp3 of it (sadly a different pianist, but you can't have everything!)

Couple of things to finish. The Manchester Evening News reviews the Cello Festival, but doesn't mention us. And I only just found out that the Hallé are only doing four Proms this year, because theyre playing in the Manchester International Festival - The Ground Beneath Her Feet with Mark, and The Cunning Little Vixen with Kent Nagano! (and the lovely Ed Gardner)

I discovered this while I was looking up Carl Davis's sport-themed concert, because someone's written a Fantasia on Football Songs which is to be performed at it, and he emailed me to ask if I know the origin of the tune "Wem-ber-lee, Wem-ber-lee"... which I don't. Do any of you?