Flow my tears

Spending this weekend at the South Bank's annual Early Music Festival. ("Early", quite rightly, being a somewhat flexible term: we had Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn last night, and tomorrow we're hearing music written in 2006.) With ten concerts in three days, there won't be much time for blogging.

Last night's second concert had the beautiful voice of John Potter singing Dowland, with a wonderful group of instrumentalists: Milos Valent (baroque violin, but sadly no viola due to the current restrictions preventing musical instruments being taken on planes), Stephen Stubbs (lute), Susanna Pell (bass viol) and John Surman, whose clarinet and saxophone, even if they offended my purist neighbour, I thought sensational in passages like this from Flow my tears:

Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell,
Learn to contemn light
Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world's despite.