Today I went to watch a recording of Casella’s first symphony at the BBC Media City studios. We got to Media City at about 10:30 and joined the queue of people waiting to watch.

Foolishly, I had thought that there would be the two of us and perhaps one or two others, but within minutes there was a queue weaving around the building. The other surprise was that it wasn’t all pensioners. OK, there were a lot of pensioners, but not everyone.

These were free tickets that I’d applied for and had won in a lottery. My guess is that the lottery for Casella on a Wednesday morning in Salford is slightly less subscribed than the lottery for Jools Holland (from which I haven’t yet won a magic ticket). Given that it was free, I was perfectly relaxed with the queueing and being moved from one place to the next before getting in the concert hall. However, there was a good mix of those who believed they should be at the front of the queue regardless (almost all elderly), and those for whom the sanctity of the queue should not be broken and will say some quite awful things about others who violate it (almost all elderly). It’s amazing that there wasn’t a fight, or a walking-stick duel.

We bagged some seats right at the front and opposite the principle cellist. After only a couple of minutes warming up the conductor arrived. The performance itself was brilliant, well worth taking the morning off to see. There wasn’t any indication when it would be broadcast on Radio 3, but I’ll keep my eyes open. In the meantime, if you’re at all interested, this is the symphony on spotify (just the first three tracks):

The conductor, Gianandrea Noseda, was amazing to watch, all movement and passion and sweat. Lots of sweat. At the end of the symphony he looked like he had walked through a shower. My mum was very worried for him.

Then he came back in for the re-takes. Fifteen minutes where the orchestra plays and then re-plays different snippets with almost imperceivable improvements. I thought that the main recital was spot on, but it seems that occasionally there was a slip. The whole process was fascinating. How one conductor and 90+ musicians could pick up a piece of music from some random point in a 45-minute piece and within nanoseconds be right back creating a storm of music.

And then it was all over. There was a brief discussion between the conductor and the orchestra about possibly playing something else as there was still 30 minutes time left. However, one of the musicians had to “take his mum to the hospital” and so that was it. Everyone got up and disappeared, the whole thing was delightful.

After a quick bite to eat we headed back home.

I arrived back in Ormskirk at about five minutes past three – not quite enough time to get a 30 minute walk complete on the way to pick up the children. So I resolved to get 20 minutes in and to include the walk back, which I usually try to avoid, but needs must – very occasionally. I got about 4km, two there and two back. I’ll be better tomorrow.

Later in the evening I got to the gym for 45 minutes. My legs are really aching after the last two days. The session on Monday seemed to have a lot of squats and then running yesterday meant that I was hobbling around through the day. This evening in the gym it was a case of just gritting my teeth and getting through the programme. My abs are quite sore too. I didn’t notice in the day, but as soon as I started exercising I could feel them. That’s what I get for taking a couple of weeks off.