in the shadow of the wizard

During the interval of a concert on Saturday, my mother came across a crusty old battleaxe she knows from her weekly French class. This lady, starchy, faintly condescending, played the fiddle professionally in various London orchestras thirty or forty years ago. They agreed that it was a fine concert - they'd just heard a performance of Mozart's magisterial Sinfonia Concertante in E flat K364 by the Athenean Ensemble - and after praising the soloists, Jonathan Martindale and Lucy Nolan, my mother's friend singled out the conductor, who had apparently done a fine job too. For Mum, fifty odd years of disappointment fell away in a moment, all the effort and sacrifice of parenthood made worthwhile by the open goal now facing her. "Actually, he's my son", she said.

I have conducted the Sinfonia Concertante once before, in a half-empty Victoria Theatre in Halifax. But here in Didsbury every seat in the church was taken, and there were people standing at the back; at the end, a kind of roar went up from the audience, the sort of response you very rarely get at a classical concert, and one I don't think I've ever heard whilst conducting (and I've done some rabble rousing stuff, from Bruckner to John Williams and back via the Dambusters March). What an exceptional piece K.364 is, and what a privilege for me, Lucy, Jonathan and the players, to walk, for the half an hour it took to play it, in the long shadow of the Salzburg wizard.