A tale of two, or should that be three(?), dances

I had a feeling that something was going to happen. This season had been going so well, with brilliant back-to-back performances from the Hallé (31 January) and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (4 February) that I was half expecting something to come unstuck.

And, on Tuesday 16 February, it duly did, when the Czech National Symphony Orchestra came to Nottingham to give its final performance of its UK tour. Advance ticket sales had been very good, we had a charismatic young soloist for a performance of Bruch's 1st Violin Concerto, and we were even going to get a performance of Taras Bulba by Janacek - a twentieth century masterpiece and one of my personal favourites - so what could go wrong?

As it happened, the M1 went wrong. An accident forced the Czech NSO coaches to find an alternative route, which put its rehearsal of Taras Bulba (we were the only venue on the tour taking it) back by nearly half an hour. This had a knock-on effect on the schedule (which was already tight) with the result that the pre-concert talk overran, causing an uncomfortable squeeze as our concert-goers(which would normally have filtered into the concert hall from 7pm) filled up the restricted space on Level One. I don't need to tell anyone who was there that this wasn't the ideal way to begin a concert - and for this, on behalf of the Royal Concert Hall, I can only apologise. We do have some lessons to learn from the experience and, rest assured, we are looking at ways to avoid this happening again in future, whilst bearing in mind the constraints of our venue. Hopefully you will see some positive outcomes in the near future.

The other thing that caused some bewilderment was the omission of one of the items in the programme. When I booked this concert I was happy to take three of Dvorak's Slavonic Dances because I felt that, together with Taras Bulba, this would make a substantial enough second half, roughly equivalent in length to a standard Romantic symphony. However, for some reason that is unknown to me (and which I will be taking up with the promoter), only two of the dances were performed, not only leaving many of you uncertain whether to applaud but also significantly shifting the balance of the second half.

I've had a few emails from concert-goers about this and I have to agree that it did make the second half feel short but I do want to take this opportunity to clarify something else which has concerned a couple of people who have contacted me. This concerns the presence of an After Hours performance on the evening of the 16th February and which has been put forward by some as a reason for the shortness of the main concert.

Whilst acknowledging the feedback about the concert on 16 February I want to reassure all concert-goers that After Hours concerts have not been scheduled at the expense of any of the main concert programmes. In fact all of them were scheduled after the main concert programmes were agreed. This is clear, I hope, from the other three concerts in the season that are (or were) followed by an After Hours performance and which are at least of a standard size. Indeed, the Northern Sinfonia programme on 15 April is particularly generous in terms of length and that's with a 30 minute After Hours performance following it.

Where there was some effect on the Czech NSO concert was in the fact that there were no encores. In this case, to allow us to begin the After Hours performance at a reasonable time, I did request that there should be no encores. These are usually quite common following Eastern European orchestra visits and I do understand that they are quite popular, but they aren't everyone's cup of tea (I do get messages occasionally from some patrons saying that they detract from their enjoyment of what's come before) and I felt that it wouldn't do any harm not to have them on this occasion. With the short second half, though, I can see why some people felt a little short-changed.

When we began the After Hours concerts this season I was aware that there could be some rough edges since we'd never done them before. On the whole I'm really happy with the way they've been received and I do intend to continue them in future seasons, as a way of offering contemporary music and less well-known repertoire in an appropriate context and without forcing them on those who don't want to hear them in a main concert. However, they won't ever be scheduled at the expense of the main concerts (in terms of timing or quality) because that really would be a spectacular own goal given how well the main series is going. It's my intention only to give Nottingham Classics audiences the best concerts we can get, with a wide variety of repertoire and to offer more, rather than less, great music each season.

However, I do admit that, in retrospect, and for several practical reasons, it would have been wise to avoid having After Hours performances after European orchestra concerts, which involve more complicated logistics. And for this reason we'll be restricting After Hours to those concerts that feature UK orchestras. Not only will it be less stressful to the Royal Concert Hall's hard-worked stage crew but it'll also mean that you get your full quota of encores!

I hope that's clarified the position about late night performances. Weather-permitting, I'm off to the Association of British Orchestras conference in Glasgow next week, but do feel free to respond to this blog if there are any issues you want to take up. I'll get back to you when I return on Monday 1 March. Will it feel like Spring then? After another 3 inches of snow today I really hope so!