Edinburgh's Christmas and New Year celebrations have changed this year.  The town looks lovely but some old favourites like the torchlight procession have gone and pretty well all that made it an individual and interesting place to visit in the way of street theatre and participative games has been replaced by commercial entertainment and augmented opportunities to eat, drink and spend money on more of the same tired old cheap jewellery, funny hats, wooden grotesques and healing Christmas candles.

A haiku  lamenting their failure of imagination should be carved into the skulls of those responsible.

There was no failure of imagination in how the conductor used his whole body to sweep the whole orchestra along in Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra.  He waved his arms, bounced his head back and forth, threw his body from side to side and actually leapt in the air with arms stretched above his head as he brought the work to a conclusion.  He wasn't a young man either. 

I'd never heard this music before but I loved it and can see Lutoslawski rivaling Shostakovitch in my desert island selection.  One of the gems glittering in the silver lining that lies under my not having been recycled into August: Osage County is that I won't have to forgo the Shostakovitch concert I've a ticket for in May.

There was another musical treat for me last night when I saw the transmission of Verdi's Falstaff from the Metropolitan Opera.  This larger than life character was played by the very large Ambrogio Maestri who was wonderful.  The show is a riot of comedy and in this production the scene that culminates in Falstaff being toppled into the Thames from a laundry basket was simply stupendously staged and performed.

Maestri is obviously a keen eater but he's also a keen cook and his risotto was wheeled on during the interval entertainment.  Even more entertainingly he misunderstood the interviewer's request to try some and picked up a spoon ready to dig in himself.