I don’t like Christopher Maltman much as a rule. Some people think I don’t like him because I’m jealous of his muscles but that would be really sad. I only notice his muscles because he gets them out every chance he gets and starts doing press-ups, it gets annoying. How come the girls never do stuff like that? And then he’s a bit smug, like he doesn’t want to be properly funny. He was miles funnier in Don Pasquale but usually he just sort of struts around loving himself. He’s like a tenor. His voice is okay but it’s easy to think of 10 other baritones with more interesting voices.

But in this he was singing Mahler. Christopher Maltman singing Mahler sounded boring to me but it wasn’t like that when I started listening. He sounded well cool and he did make it interesting. Maybe he is just miles better when you can’t see him loving himself. Some people just are. I was listening thinking like wow did he get replaced by someone? But no he must have been good all along and I just didn’t notice. Sometimes you just don’t.

That wasn’t the whole concert though, there was this piece called Circulating Oceans by a bloke called Toshio Hosokawa, this was a UK premiere. It was good in a weird way. Then there was this Shostakovich Symphony but I got a bit bored with that, I usually do.

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