A Lark Ascending

It's a Danish hot drink, like Ovaltine.

Disc 46 - 48/5/90/56 Actually music for Oct/Nov. Most of the advent cantatas are scattered across the set. Back on calendar in ten days. My second favourite Janacek opera (after The Cunning Little Vixen). Really engaging production with what I assume are Kafka allusions (actors at the side constantly recycling scenes). The final act is absolutely glorious. 5, 6, 7 The ideal Xmas gift for your Brexit relatives. Lovely disc - includes my favourite English 'classical' Chrimbo piece - Finzi's 'In Terra Pax'. Conjures up the sort of crisp, cold winter nights we almost never get at this time of year.

I really liked that. I think there were three seasons in all - they decided to quit while ahead. Also watching a Danish series: Not brilliant, but watchable. Reminds me of the sort of thing they used to make in the 70s. The lead character is really annoying - constantly going where she shouldn't, walking into crime scenes, having instant rumpy-pumpy with a doctor who is treating a graze, entering houses with open doors (there seem to be a lot of those in Jutland) etc. If the sign says 'Keep Off The Grass', don't walk on it! (I'm so jazz!)

Same as my avatar: A couple of mine houses on the north coast of Cornwall at Botallack, a few miles from Land's End. Since I took this some years back the whole area has been rebranded 'Poldark Country'. The photo would be impossible today - bare-chested blokes with scythes everywhere.

Short biography with lots of reasonably good reproductions. I knew very little about Klee so this was useful. No 7 in Hill's sequence of detective novels. Typical of the genre; but Hill adds an extra dimension in her exploration of family dynamics and also a very timely concern for the pressures on the health service and social care.

I noticed a huge Mozart box set advertised to commemorate 225th. When did we start commemorating the 225th? Ah, the record industry.

That I'd have liked to have heard. I saw Frith a couple of years back in a tribute concert to the late Lindsay Cooper, first time since the 70s. He doesn't get over here much, rarely beyond London. The match with Halvorsen sounds fascinating.

Never seen this before - good, old fashioned war film but despite the usual hero-portrayal it doesn't try to hide has arrogance and tactlessness. Didn't they make long films in them days? Been watching this over the last week. Standard cop thing with young policewoman somewhat compromised (a bit like 'Marcella' last spring). Enjoyable (with a nice Brighton setting) but a very messy ending - too obviously left hanging for a sequel.

T'was a lovely day. Donald's nemesis silently make their way towards the Scottish coast. Rotenburg, Germany - Wind turbines stand out of the fog as large parts of northern Germany were under thick fog Photograph: Stefan Rampfel/AP https://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2016/dec/05/best-photographs-of-the-day-ice-skaters-and-tigers

Christmas with Ralphy. To be honest, a bit overblown. Oooh, this is a goody! I've had a thing for bassoon's since Henry Cow in the '70s. Some astonishing virtuoso playing on these pieces. Contemporary music but colourful and accessible. Aho I'm familiar with but Fagerlund is a new name to me.

This is the way to do it: The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in a pub. I'm not sure performing it in a private house (or 'salon') is going to do much more than feed its existing audience.

Epworth, North Lincolnshire (where the Wesley's came from and not far from where the Pilgrim Fathers first got it together). Beautiful winter's day.

Listened to both discs whilst tromping round North Lincolnshire footpaths in scenes not unlike the cover. Like most English music of the 1890s and nineteen-noughties, very much in thrall to German music, especially Brahms. The Quintet in D major (with clarinet AND horn) is real fanboy Brahms. Towards the end of each disc in slightly later pieces you start to hear the distinctive voice coming through - folk song and hymn tunes. It might be apprentice stuff, but a delightful set all round. Disc 1. A mixture of Anon, Josquin, Victoria, Praetorius, Clemens Non Papa. Clearly no Slade or Wizzard when you spend Xmas with the Tallis Scholars.

Frost covers a valley near Chapel-en-le Frith in the Peak District - Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/gallery/2016/nov/30/cold-snaps-frost-ice-around-uk-in-pictures

Expect a professor of ethnomusicology at your door at any moment armed with notebook and recording equipment. These dying folk traditions must be captured. With any luck you might end up on a Smithsonian record...or with your sounds absorbed into a highbrow string quartet (don't forget to ask about royalties).

No. 3 again. Still fog. Have yourself a Baroque little Christmas.

He's on at least one of the early Graham Collier records - 'Down Another Road' I think, which was 1969. I first came across him when a track from 'On Loan with Gratitude' was used as the 'Jazz Today' theme. Be nice to see that get a CD release - Stan doesn't even have it featured in the discography on his website.

Very enjoyable record.

Nikki Iles and Stan Sulzmann (Crucible Theatre Studio, Sheffield) Two of my favourites - the third time I've seen Nikki this year (fourth if you count her one song guest at the Norma W. event last month). I'm not sure if she has much of a profile beyond the UK - expect she plays in Europe (most Brit musicians have to to survive) and I believe she has links with Canada. Marvellous pianist from the Bill Evans/John Taylor school. Stan is one of the lesser known heroes of the Taylor/Wheeler generation who seems to have only got his due recording wise in recent years. An evening of mainly familiar standards which can (for me) be a bit of a snooze. But Iles and Sulzmann have come up with fresh arrangements, sometimes with intriguing little preludes or codas. I often find myself wanting the theme statements to be over (how many time do you need to hear the theme of 'Body and Soul'?) so the embellishments and variations can begin. Almost throughout you could hear the improvisation kicking in right from the start of the theme, keeping you interested throughout. At no point did you lose track of the harmonic contours - not 'out' music in any shape or form - yet both piano and tenor kept things in constant flux. Beautiful sound in the Crucible Studio, commented on by both musicians (and Nikki wanted to take the piano home). The lack of bass and drums allowed the textures of the tenor in particular to really shine. Not sure if it was intentional but there was a lovely prelude where Stan was playing alone and the piano strings were gently resonating with strange harmonics. Lovely evening.

No. 3 off latter. A tough listen. With the help of a guide the overall structure of each movement seems quite conventional. But keeping the themes in mind in order to hear where they go is not easy. A few details emerged from the fog in the third and fourth movements but I think this is going to need a lot more listening to make sense of. Disc 10 of the latter - choral music. A mixture of Brahms-like German-ness (though I imagine the lyrics are about the need of the workers to own the means of production rather than nightingales, forests and indifferent rural maidens) and agit-prop. 'The Internationale' creeps out at a couple of points. This morning:

Tyne and Wear, England - The Princess Seaways arrives at the Port of Tyne at dawn Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA https://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2016/dec/01/best-photos-of-the-day-a-rainy-ride-and-libyan-clashes

I enjoyed that when I read it a few years back (hadn't thought about it's connection with our current rush to 'independence'). Agree about it losing its grip - an interesting idea that doesn't quite sustain its promise.

This morning:

Chris Wood All by himself at the National Centre for Early Music in York (inside St Margaret's Church, Walmgate) Utterly brilliant as ever. Superb guitar playing coming out of the long tradition from Graham/Jansch etc, beautiful voice, songwriting unlike anyone else that I've heard. Wood manages to combine a music deeply marinated in the English tradition (musical, literary and with an acute sense of landscape and social history), possessed of a cold rage at, as he put it last night, what has happened to the world 'on our watch' and a deep yet unsentimental love of family and community. [English rooted he might be, but he's not chauvinistic - we had a song with a Bossa rhythm and one by Dock Boggs] When it comes to singers writing contemporary songs (increasingly about what it's like to be an ordinary person bewildered by a world coming apart at the seams), he's way ahead of the field. I suspect most contemporary British songwriters would acknowledge that and just stand back in awe. Highlight of the evening - 'Hollow Point' - his casting of the London police shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005 into traditional English ballad form. A case study of how to write a political song without resorting to off-the-peg slogans. The venue is an old church that was de-consecrated a long while back and turned into a performance venue, principally for 'classical' early music. With churches across the country struggling to get congregations in double figures it shows what can be done to make the buildings socially useful whilst retaining their character.

Attractive, slightly brittle neo-Romantic from the 1930s/40s. A bit Waltonish.