 Attended a performance last night of Le Grand Macabre at the Barbican, London. An immensely good performance and riveting from start to finish. It was great to have the London Symphony Orchestra on stage, which meant we could relish the score's fabulous textures which bristled and shimmered and hooted and blasted and everything in between.
It was thrilling to be able to attend the first performance of my Aspects of Work in the Pre-Raphaelite Gallery of Manchester Art Gallery where Ford Madox Brown's famous panorama of Victorian life is beautifully displayed.   The only chance I had recently of catching up with Julian Jacobson and Mariko Brown who have formed an exciting piano duo http://marikojulianpianoduo.com was to go to their rehearsal in Birmingham last week.
A single remaining, inexpensive amphitheatre seat tempted me to venture to Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Royal Opera House yesterday afternoon.
 Recently attended an operatic relay from Royal Opera House in the local cinema. Heard much about these events and wanted to experience one for myself, but I have to admit I was dreadfully disappointed.
Although as a youngster I certainly wanted to write, I felt a pre-requisite of becoming a composer was a thorough knowledge of musical history and musical language. The study of harmony and counterpoint from medieval methods through to the serialists absorbed me until my mid-twenties - along with the process of becoming a musician.
We recently celebrated Verdi's 200th birthday. I arranged a kind of party in Newbury, invited locals to Come, Sing or Listen, and Drink. I might well have added Eat, since a beautiful cake was made in his honour. Verdi's not my favourite composer - I don't think I have a real favourite anyway - but I wouldn't have wanted to organise this occasion for anyone else. Verdi's special. You don't have to be a revolutionary to write good music. You don't have to adopt a musical language which is up-to-the-minute, or even avant-garde. You just have to write good music. And in Verdi's case, he wrote in a style which is so much his own that you can't mistake it for anyone else. Once he gets into his stride, he doesn't imitate anyone else. And no other composer sounds like him. Therefore that makes him individual.
Compare him to Wagner. Everyone started writing like Wagner. And if Verdi's heir is Puccini-cum-Wagner - well, then everyone started writing like Puccini, and Hollywood still does! The late Romantic style is common currency, a sort of Esperanto of music, to be consumed globally like MacDonalds! Verdi - not so. A rock-solid individual. I went last night to see my daughter in a school play. Since daughters don't always communicate very thoroughly with their parents I had no idea what it was.
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