I first bought a subscription to Tempo because I thought I ‘ought’ to do better at keeping up with contemporary music; but I continue to subscribe because I find it the most interesting reading on music I know. Informative, even inspiring, and my collection of CDs has grown in ways I never expected.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra under Charles Münch and Pierre Monteux, now celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary, included what can only be called a triumphant visit to the Soviet Union during their recent European tour. They went at the invitation of the Ministry of Culture, and the orchestra and its management had therefore the standing of official guests. From the first rather overwhelming welcome on the tarmac at Leningrad it was clear that no effort would be spared to make the visit a success. The hotels were provided by the Government and we had our own restaurants, where four enormous meals were served each day. Never less than five interpreters were available both for official business and for the well-arranged sightseeing tours of which everyone took full advantage, and throughout we were conscious of a feeling of immense goodwill, official and unofficial, on all sides.

We all know that the Symphony of Psalms was ‘composed for the glory of God and dedicated to the Boston Symphony Orchestra’, but we don't always notice that this wry equivocation is appropriate to a work whose theme is the relationship between Man and God. A comprehensive and suitably illustrated analysis of the work in those (or any other) terms would fill at least a booklet. Here we must confine ourselves to the exposition and a few representative developments of the Man/God ‘theme’.

Way back in the mists of time, in the decade when I was a card-carrying Prommer (1977–87), the BBC used to arrange (and maybe still does) a meeting between us regular Prommers and the Controller, Music – the man whose choices governed two months of our lives every year. Robert Ponsonby was the incumbent when I first had a season ticket and John Drummond was at the helm when I left London for a job in Paris. We never had the impression that anything we said made a blind bit of difference, but at least it allowed us to get things off our chests; all the Controller had to do was fend off our questions and comments with the oiliness then customary with the high functionaries of the BBC (they're all wonderful now, of course) and our silence was obtained for another year. (I remember Drummond contemptuously dismissing the music of Respighi as being beneath the dignity of the institution; Roger Wright, I gratefully note, does not share Drummond's snobbish ignorance, but I also note that neither the Concerto gregoriano for violin and orchestra nor Metamorphosen, both orchestral masterpieces, has yet been heard there.)

Britten's Nocturne for tenor and small orchestra was written during August and September 1958 and was first performed at the Leeds Festival on October 16th, with Peter Pears singing the solo and Rudolph Schwarz conducting. The first London performance, conducted by the composer, was given on January 30th, 1959, at Friends' House, Euston Road, as a tribute to the memory of the late Erwin Stein.