Actually the rain, pattering gently on the skin of the dome, provides rather a hypnotic accompaniment to today's music, which is a Bach Cello Suit and the Mozart Piano Concerto K.414, in the version for piano and string quartet. Although there is rain, it's still quite warm, and I see people looking contented and drowsy as they watch rain falling on the canopy and listen to the playing. The audience, or those members who are at all the concerts, are becoming quite confident in their pronouncements, as we encourage them to be, Several people later say that although the Bach was beautifully played by Dickie, it was too long for the sort of new audiences we're trying to win over, and others are quite critical of the acoustics, at least from certain parts of the dome where, for example, the piano overwhelms the strings, or where the bass is lost. Actually today is the first time that we have felt really happy with the balance between piano and strings, as the balance required by a piano concerto naturally favours the soloist. This is my first experience of playing a Mozart concerto with four instead of thirty players, and it's so much more enjoyable to be able to offset one delicate texture with another, instead of pushing against the inertia of whole string sections, and so on. << less