We attend the opening concert, with the Octuor Paris-Bastille (a wind octet) playing Gounod, a Russian all-girl string quartet playing Gubaidulina, and an Irish string quartet playing Brahms. For most players it's unusual to play only one item in a concert for which normally they would expect to be thoroughly responsible. In this format, which I guess is designed to provide the audience with a full palette of impressions, each group has only one chance to bond with the audience, and how they do so will inevitably be compared with how other groups do it in the same concert. Once again it strikes me that wind players have a more pragmatic approach than string players. This is partly to do with their repertoire. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Do composers write more superficially for wind players because they know what they're like, or do wind players merely respond to the repertoire? Why do composers appear to focus their deeper feelings on string and piano music? I don't think this is a prejudiced view, since I've often heard wind players complain about the relative shallowness of the works written for them. << less