Poland’s premier orchestra is currently touring the UK, and by happy coincidence their schedule aligned perfectly with mine. They opened the tour at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall today with a programme pairing lesser-known Polish works with Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Beethoven’s exhilarating Seventh Symphony.
It was a pleasure to be back at Symphony Hall after quite some time away. Classical concerts remain one of the few places where I’m comfortably younger than the average audience member. Perhaps a love of classical music comes with age — though, as usual, I seem to be ahead of schedule.
In any case, I’ve always had a fondness for the Polish people, and today I spent an afternoon with some of their finest musicians.
Dr Martin James 