The Britten-Pears concert, with Britten's new cycle of Hardy poems.  All have power, and his particular forthrightness, and poetic reading of the words: those I was most impressed by were The Travelling Boy, with its reiterated figure in the accompaniment, a bouncing futile phrase with the frustration of To Lincolnshire to Lancashire to buy a pocket-handkercher; and the last, Before Life and After, which is noble like a slow dance, a sarabande-like solemn climbing.  Pears was singing very well, his Nacht and Traume superlative, and a Schubert I didn't know, Sprach der Liebe, most beautifully phrased.  He began with a Mozart Masonic cantata, and there was the very same emphasis in die Wahrheit that Alec pointed out in Zauberflöte.  As for Britten, a head with no chin, a pounce like a weasel, and a total attentiveness and identification with the music.