A view from a room

I moved yesterday from one nice house on the Castleton estate to another, smaller room but bigger view. A good trade!

A Little Night Music gets on to the stage today at last - for a three session day.  It will be a hard three days before the opening on Friday night. The orchestra joins this evening and then we hope for plain sailing with each of the two casts.  I am leaving on Thursday so I will miss out on the final product.  But I expect to see enough to get the idea.........

I should have a class this evening if anyone is up to it given all the rest that is going on.  We shall see.

Meanwhile in my new housing we have Richard Stilwell, Stanford Olsen, Daniela Costa (Castleton's exceptional Italian coach from Florence), and Jacob Soelberg from Copenhagen. This is a nice family!

Jacob Soelberg runs the Nikolai Malko conductors competition of which Lorin Maazel was the Jury Chair in 2012.  This year's winner was the Venezualen (yes another one) Rafael Payare.  Before the Beethoven 9 on Saturday Rafael conducted a sizzling performance of the Leonora Overture no 3. This was an excellent demonstration of the skills he must have displayed at the competition.  He is a horn player and clearly in tune with the players.  They seem to have appreciated this very much.  With the prize of €20,000, and a string of engagements around the world, the door is open for him. Having walked through it confidently I hope he will flourish.

It is yet another lovely day here and mercifully cooler - just 78 degrees at 10 am and going up to 86, far short of the 100 plus we had on Saturday.