From the Front!

I have blipped the wonderful Symphony Hall in Birmingham before and been to several excellent performances there. This time, though, we had a completely different experience!

Partly on the advice of Orchid99 and partly just for a change, I'd booked seats right at the front for tonight's concert. And what a concert! The Academy of St Martin in the Fields were visiting, along with Joshua Bell and Stephen Isserlis, and the programme was Haydn Symphony No.13 (directed from the cello by Isserlis), Mendelssohn Symphony No.4 (directed from the violin by Bell), and the Brahms Double Concerto (conducted by Ian Brown). The whole concert was absolutely wonderful, and being so close made it very exciting. The Brahms was amazing, but, for me, the stand-out of the evening was the Mendelssohn - the Italian Symphony is one of my favourites anyway, and this was utter magic!

It was an interesting trip to Birmingham in general. We went early, having been warned that Justin Bieber (the third JB, after Johannes Brahms & Joshua Bell) was doing a gig at the NIA. The whole of Birmingham city centre was teeming with young girls bedecked in Bieber merch, which provided much amusement for us. We shopped at the Bullring and round about - I got a model submarine to build and some CDs and the Wonderspouse bought some books, and we had a snack supper in the foyer of Symphony Hall.

An excellent excellent day! It seemed like quite a lot of effort to go trekking up to Birmingham on a Saturday, but was SO worth it! :-)