The organist librarian

Two wonderful Proms. Schubert quintet beautifully played and Pittsburgh SO under Manfred Honeck Mahler 1. Anne-Sophie Mutter played the Dvorak. I took party invites to mosaic group. Had to make do with chocolate cake instead of fruit tart at Peter Jones. Sketching at V and A and David Owen Norris on nature in music - he is brilliant. Saw Colin Hartley.

Tuesday swam 30. Clearing up and checking wills and Heythrop money form - £1050 a year. Both of us to pre-Prom talk - Petroc Trewlawney interviewing the chair (horn) and director of the orchestra. Their chair of board of directors gave $42.5 million, another couple gave $5 million so they could tour to promote the city .They are accompanied by a team encouraging businesses to move to Pittsburgh which is now an attractive place to live. The orchestra took a 9.5% pay cut and donated $1000 each. They work in hospitals and schools and every primary school child in the city hears the orchestra at least once a year so truly a community project. Our orchestras have much to learn! Fascinating and the prom was stunning. Lohengrin prelude Act 1 - those gentle strings showing the German origins of the orchestra, Wolfgang Rihn played by Anne-Sophie Mutter like the cheese on the vegetables to get the kids to eat the veg (not to my taste). A wonderful memorable Mahler 5 (with score). Again 2 encores

Writing this at 3.25 a.m. having come home late and now woken up again! The joys of insomnia! Proms plus literary Ian McMillan and former Children's laurate Michael Rosen and the poems they chose read by the lovely Imogen Stubbs. The poem had to be inspired by music played at the Proms. The 8 year old winner wrote of the bright cat inspired by Liszt's first piano concerto. The older child's poem seemed pretty remote from the Firebird to me but the adult winner was clearly inspired by the Lone ranger and William Tell overture. All the poems we heard had an element of surprise and worked well. The Pittsburgh symphony orchestra conducted by Manfred Honeck played Braunfels Fantastic appearances on a theme of Berlioz, Beethoven piano concerto no. 4 (score) Helene Grimaud and Tchaikovsky 5 (my score). Stunning playing and brilliant encores too - Carmen and an American dance. What an orchestra! Notable that they play before and during interval too on stage.