Chamonix Lead World Cup

I've been watching the lead climbing from Chamonix over the last couple of days — like everyone, I was a bit thrown by the mid-week schedule — and the results have been interesting. The general feeling seems to be that the qualifier routes were a bit odd, with lots of people falling at the same point. Some very strong climbers failed to make it through in the men's competition — I really feel for Sebastian Hallenke, who was distraught after slipping off a very chalky sloper fairly low down — and in the women's comp, only Janja Gambret topped the route. The men's final started slightly oddly, with the first climber out topping the route, followed by three more tops, with the competitors differentiated on time — I think they were drawn on count back to previous rounds. Likewise the women's route saw three tops, with Anak Verhoeven saying that she felt the route wasn't really hard enough to challenge the athletes — which, given her amazing performance in the European Championships, isn't much of a surprise...

Proms 2017: First night

Superb start to the 2017 season, kicking off with the world premier of Tom Coult's St John's Dance. Igor Levitt and Edward Gardner had a particularly nice dynamic in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3, and Levitt closed the first half with a pointed statement: Liszt's piano transcription of Beethoven's Ode to Joy. But the real standout piece of the evening was a stunning performance of John Adams' Harmonium. The rapid, rhythmic opening, a setting of John Donne's The Negative Love, featured supremely clear and beautifully articulated singing from the combined forces of the BBC SO Chorus and the Proms Youth Choir. The second movement, Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop for Death, was quiet and polished, blending smoothly in to the ecstatic setting of Wild Nights before dropping away to pianissimo finish. I don't think I've every heard Harmonium performed quite so well.