Leonid Kogan playing Bloch: Nigun. Amazing.

I heard that one a while back and was impressed.

Jethro Tull : Ring Out those Solstice Bells

Happy birthday variations.

Oh yes!!

Love that!

Christus Natus Est - An Early English Christmas, by The Sixteen.

Nice stuff for a relaxing Christmas wind-down

Easy Listening at the BBC, now on BBC4.

Aretha Franklin at the moment. Legendary

Just heard Slade, Merry Xmas Everybody for the first time this year (apart from pupils playing my GuestSpot version ).

Boubacar Traor?, Kongo Magni / Je chanterai pour toi - a Christmas present from Mali.

Brass Construction : 'Movin' '

Henryk Wieniawski, Violin Concerto no. 2 in d minor, performed by Jascha Heifetz

Pick of the Pops on Radio 2. Have just realised the no.1 for early 1994 will be Mr. Blobby

Do I need to revise my "good taste rating" of you? Radio 2 AND Mr. Blobby... in the same sentence?

EDIT: oops - typos

Blame whoever decided that the 1994 chart was suitable airtime fodder

Lauda Ierusalem from the Monteverdi Vespers

The kid next door screaming its 'ead orf...

Grump-Bag x

I'm listening to heavy rain beating against the window!

Frank Zappa - You are what you is.

Fireworks outside...

Mrs S in the shower, singing the first verse of Darke's In the Bleak Midwinter. We're off to church shortly - she's got the first verse and yours truly has the third.

Who has the middle verse?

Er...it's usually the full choir, isn't it?

Hope it went well, Mr and Mrs S!

Verse 2 was full choir, unaccompanied (which was a good job as the organist was a little wayward to say the least). Mrs S was superb as ever, and I got through Ok, although I prefer solo singing later in the day.

The best of 1980-1990 album by U2.

Is that a really short album?

Strauss. Sextet from Capriccio.

I'll get you for that Mr Clari

Sorry I can't be doing with Bono and U2!

Granados - Goyescas (Alicia De Larrocha)... haven't heard them in a while!

Two of my offspring playing piano and singing a variety of songs from musicals - just because they can. It might not always be perfectly in time or in tune but to me it's beautiful!

Consort music for viols by Byrd and Dowland including 'Lachrimae', played by Fretwork... wonderfully evocative... going through a 17th century English phase at the moment

Poulenc: elegy for 2 pianos. I MUST stop listening to all Poulenc's piano works and start writing about Goethe instead!!!

The sound of silence - everyone is now back at work/school/university so the house is extremely large and extremely quiet.

Lux aurumque (Whitacre)

The wind band arrangement of this is thoroughly evil to play, and assumes that most of the clarinet section has lungs the size of hot air balloons...

Haha - yes, I can imagine. Eric is doing a concert in London next month - I will look up details. I might go - although it's a teaching evening and would be tight.

(ed) Cadogan Hall, 1st February, 7.30.

Brahms Academic Festival Overture.

I shall be celloing.

It's the note at the end that gets me. An interminable A. And be careful where you breathe, if it's in the wrong place, there'll be a great big gap

Yes, I've sung it. I think we stagger the breathing at that point!

Which works really well until there's only one clarinettist to play the note

Indeed! I am sometimes the sole soprano on cantoris, and it does feel very exposed.

Ahh - good choice!




I've sung some Whitacre, but can't remember what it was! Morten Lauridsen is similar in that respect at times

A complete Mass on classic fm. We think the presenter must have been taken ill.

My latest 'discovery' - the Huelgas Ensemble.

Has anyone else heard them??

Oh YES. Have some of their CDs: first heard them on radio 3. They are excellent.

Love them too!

Victoria Requiem. The Sixteen.

Rakkas by Sezen Aksu