Mumbling on

Though of course, the Bristol Balloon Fiesta wasn't the place to be seen in 2010. Mumbles, Swansea was the hub of excitement this August weekend, with teams of intrepid, fancy-dressed Mumblers taking to the water for the annual raft race. After watching the homemade constructions jostle for a place on the startline for five minutes, and with a good 15 more to go before the race began, I left them bobbing merrily in Swansea Bay, budding Columbos ready to take on the lengthy paddle to Knab Rock. Who won? Who knows.

Sky drift

Balloons, hot air balloons. Drifting gently over Bristol on the breeze. Colour was so 2009; this year it's all about sepia.

Good penguin fact

... (of which you can never have too many, might I add) ...

Six-foot penguins used to live in Antarctica. Not really the icy continent that we'd recognise, though. Back then, say 50 million years ago, it had a sub-tropical climate; as it cooled, the penguins got smaller. I'm sure that's the scientific explanation. Definitely. It's a fact.

These girls are in haste!

Royal Albert Hall. Between the early evening and late night Prom two friends sit in bar giggling over sandwiches and orange juice.

'What's the time?'
One checks phone. Replies.
'Oh. Oh dear. The Prom starts in six minutes. And we need to pick up the tickets.'
Action. Both get up, scoop up bags. Start to run. Through bar, up stairs. Up more stairs again. Which way is best? They're at door 6, the tickets are at door 12. Through door into inner corridor. Keep running. Halfway round the Royal Albert Hall. Arrive at door 12. Pull door handle. It's locked. Gesticulate frantically at steward in oh-so-smart red coat. Unlocked. 'Where are you going?' 'Tickets!' 'Well, go go.' Run to box office desk. The foyer is deserted. Hurry out name. Tickets. Two programmes. Check. 'It's door 3'. 'Door 3, where is door 3?' 'That way.' Run back to first steward. Hand over tickets. Other door... he points. Then runs with them to next steward, who has to scan the barcodes on the tickets, a la Sainsbury's. 'Hurry up, these girls are in haste!' Said girls crack up laughing. 'Don't laugh, the worst is to come!' Oh no? Where are our seats? The other side? He's just kidding. Unable to speak for laughter – 'these girls are in haste' – they arrive at the door which isn't so far away after all and are let through the red velvet curtain into the inner sanctum, ready for the concert.

Sunrise and skeletons

More Brendel this weekend, this time courtesy of the Cheltenham Music Festival. Possibly my favourite moment from the pianist's fascinating lecture-recital exploring character in Beethoven's piano sonatas came when he turned to the Waldstein Sonata. The piece is also known in French as 'L'aurore', meaning the dawn. One misguided German critic, Brendel recounted, misheard this nickname, calling it instead 'L'horror'. Cue Brendel's performance of the opening, with its pp repeated C major quavers, with his teeth bared, chattering in time with the repetitions like a clanky skeleton.

Here's Brendel playing the third movement of the Waldstein (I couldn't find the first, or the skeleton impression, I'm afraid).

Alfred Brendel

After a weekend spent in Plush, Dorset, to write about a festival set up by pianist Alfred Brendel's children, I've been having a bit of a Brendel moment.

Here's the master with Schubert's Impromptu in G flat major, Op. 90 No. 3.

A concert of sylphs or elves

French composer Erik Satie once wrote a piece called Vexations, in which it's suggested to the pianist that the theme might be played 840 times. Somehow that title hung over me as I headed to Bath for Joanna MacGregor's Chopin Mazurka-fest.

OK, time-wise, performing all 58 Chopin Mazurkas isn't such a herculean task, fitting into, ehem, a mere three hours. Performing them's one thing; how about listening to them? Surely wall-to-wall Polish-folk-dance-inspired piano miniatures on a Sunday morning would be too much of a good thing? Even, dare I suggest it, a bit boring? Coffee was needed.

Caffeine consumed, the Chopin-listening began. In an unbroken flow, with no room for applause, Joanna MacGregor launched into this consuming musical world. As her programme jottings noted, the pieces range from 'wittily joyful', to 'plangently melancholic', 'robustly merry' to 'wistfully delicate'. Played in chronological order, what was most telling was that, once Chopin had got over the initial teething period in this form, they were remarkably stylistically homogenous. Not much of a journey, but the whole was a refreshing experience.

Over to Berlioz: 'There are unbelievable details in his Mazurkas; and he has found how to render them doubly interesting by playing them with the utmost degree of softness, piano in the extreme, the hammers merely brushing the strings, so much so that one is tempted to go close to the instrument and put one's ear to it as if to a concert of sylphs or elves'

Canonic Chopin

'If the mighty autocrat of the north knew what a dangerous enemy threatened him in the simple tunes of Chopin's mazurkas, he would forbid this music. Chopin's works are canons buried in flowers.' Robert Schumann

Off to hear the complete Chopin mazurkas in Bath – all 58 over three hours. Heaven or hell? I'll let you know later on…

A is for Arditti, B is for Beethoven…

… and C is for catastrophe.

Oh dear. The Arditti Quartet did not come through triumphant with its recent performance of Beethoven's Grosse Fugue at the Bath Music Festival. The scrappy first note set the tone; the poor ensemble and tuning scuppered the piece. So much for hearing a performance bringing out the modernity of Beethoven's testing, puzzling string masterpiece. This just brought out the under-rehearsal. Seemed they'd saved their bowing hours for the Birtwistle, Dausapin and Schnittke that followed.

Bristol by boat

Gender equality

French fact. (Best look away now unless you like details about grammar.) As you probably know, French has masculine and feminine nouns. You have to make all your adjectives (and for other reasons sometimes your verb endings) agree in order to create sentences with harmony of the sexes. There is rhyme and reason to how you go about doing this, but not always. Why, for example, do you write 'la petite fille' for granddaughter, with an 'e' added to 'petit' to make everything agree, but do you leave 'la grand mere' without an 'e'? In fact, grande-mere means 'tall mother' not grandmother. Turns out 'grandmere' is a verbal relic, a hangover from the candlelit days of medieval French, when words stuck close to their Latin ancestors. And in Latin there was a group of adjectives (in the third declension if you must know) that don't make all the genders match up. Grand's great-great-great-[repeat as necessary] grandmother's etymological ancestor came from this set of nonconformist adjectives. So there you go. Spread the word. Go on, do.

Conundrum

Oh Beethoven. A crescendo through a tied note on the piano? How am I meant to play that?