For a change

... an audience reaction shot instead of yet another pianist. This was the evening concert by Pierre-Yves Plat, quite a contrast to the serious ambiance of all the other concerts. It was advertised as jazz improvisations on classical themes, so you might expect someone like the amazing Edouard Ferlet. But no, we got ragtime and boogie woogie versions of the likes of Chopin, Beethoven, Bach, Handel, a tune created by playing a Bach prelude with the right hand and Gounod's Ave Maria with the left... And once the result of The Match was known, We Are the Champions and I Will Survive, with enthusiastic audience participation.

P-Y is a great showman, a bit like Rowan Atkinson but with greater playing ability. "This isn't my piano," he said at one point. "I wouldn't play it like this if it was." You had to hope no-one from the piano hire company was there as he pounded the keys, stamped his feet, jumped onto the stool, lay down on his back crossing his hands over behind his head to play, propped a foot on the keyboard ... He was difficult to photograph as the light was poor and he moved so fast, his hands often just a blur. Very silly and great fun.

The lunchtime concert was more sedate but really beautiful, my favourite of the week along with Anna Geniushene's. Simone Tavoni on piano and Philip Attard on the saxophone. We tend to forget that the saxophone was invented in the 1840s, by accident-prone Belgian Adolphe Sax, so there is classical repertoire for it. Beautifully played and quite mesmerising, despite gusting wind which threatened repeatedly to rip the music off the stand -- they had a top-class page turner in the form of concert pianist Peter Kiss, who clung to the pages to stop them blowing away. Today's set of photos: click right from here.

Last day tomorrow ... what am I going to do with myself all day afterwards?