Today we had a five hour coach journey to Salamanca, across the green hills of northern Spain. The word was around the tour group that this was a special place, and the reality in fact exceeded even its high expectations. Salamanca is a completely breathtaking town. A perfect jewel of renaissance and baroque architecture, unified by a golden stone throughout the city, distinguished by one of the world's oldest universities and one of the world's most beautiful town squares. The remarkable university can be seen directly from the hotel:

The Plaza Mayor is stunning at any time, but particularly at night, when it is lit up, as indeed is the whole city:

And what makes Salamanca particularly special is the fact that it is full of young people - both the many Spanish students who come here, and also the hundreds of international students for whom Salamanca is a magnet for learning Spanish, due to the exceptional purity of the language spoken here. This gives the city a youthful spirit that makes it so much more than being just a tourist site. It's one of Europe's unique vibrant historic university towns - like Padua, Cambridge or Heidelberg.

Like many cities in Spain, the concert hall is brand new. This one, the Centro de las Artes Escénicas y de la Música, is quite small, but well-designed. The acoustics are on the dry side, but it compensates by having a warm and intimate sound quality which gives the music real impact.

On this trip, we are carrying a huge orchestra with us for the second half - six percussionists, two harps, celesta, and many extra string players. Many orchestras do not take the major French works on tour, as they require so many extra players and involve the orchestra in significant extra costs. But right now, with Stéphane Denève as Music Director, we do this repertoire as well as any orchestra, so it makes sense to swallow the extra costs and tour with what we know to be our absolutely strongest suit. So far the strategy has worked - the performances of Debussy's La mer were acclaimed across Germany, and with just one excellent review already in from Spain it's reasonable to hope that the story will be repeated here as we play Debussy's Ibéria and Ravel's La valse. Especially as Stéphane's interpretation of the Ravel really plays to the wild extremes of that work, pushing the Orchestra to the limits of expression time and time again, and culminating in a overwhelming orgy of sound. It's quite something, especially in a smaller hall like the one tonight in Salamanca.

The other side of the coin is, that quite a few players have to wait their turn while Mendelssohn's early romantic overture opens the programme. There are many ways of tackling this, from catching up on reading:

(Nick Reader, Principal Contrabassoon)

to simply sleeping:

(Lance Green, Trombone)

Another cultural fact worth commenting on: in Scotland our musicians come on to the stage during the fifteen minutes or so before the concert and start warming up. Here in Spain the halls are quite insistent that this is not how it is done, so the Orchestra has to adapt to the local practice of congregating backstage and entering all together:

Nicky seemed really pleased with her performance tonight, as well she should be:

The day ended with a few of us having a most magnificent meal with our local agent Dan Segura. I'll introduce you to Dan tomorrow. But don't get me started on the food and wine, which is fantastic!

Tomorrow we have a free morning to explore Salamanca, before heading off to León in the afternoon. It is due to rain all day, which is disappointing. Nonetheless it's a privilege to be here in such a wonderful city.

Simon Woods
Chief Executive

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