Fantastic Prom last night: Rattle and the Berlin Phil doing Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan, and Messiaen's Turangalila. The latter was particularly startling - it's the sort of bells-and-whistles stuff that Rattle excels at. The whole 78 minutes of joyful, crazy, overheated ecstatic wonder was completely hair-raising.
I had the fun of sitting really quite near that remarkable instrument, the ondes martenot, which did its marvellous ethereal sighing and histrionic whistling. (My friends Carrie and Rob afterwards used the words Star Trek and Moomins.) The programming was very artful - it made me hear the Tristan quotations in the Messiaen properly for the first time (even though I realise they are very obvious in movement eight). At the end, 6,000 people went bonkers. And they say there's no audience for modern music.
Anyway, if you can get to the Royal Albert Hall tonight for Rattle's Brahms Three and Shostakovich 10, then do. Or glue yourself to Radio 3.
