Proms 4. The world’s greatest living pianist

I should have been at the Proms last night as well as tonight. Instead, we’ve gone to Winchester. Last night I should have been seeing a celebration of English music, but instead I was eating fried rice in Winchester. Tonight I’ve travelled from Winchester to see the world’s greatest living pianist, and I’m writing this on a delayed train back to Winchester that is going slower than a bicycle. It’s a problem with a broken train blocking the main track.Because I was perhaps the last person to buy a ticket for this concert, I was seated in a loggia (a box to you and me) that contained eight seats in two rows. Once an efficient, perhaps even officious, woman arrived, I learnt that I was sitting in the wrong loggia. I should have been next door and soon was.The orchestra was the Munich Philharmonic founded in 1893 and once conducted by Gustav Mahler, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Bruno Walter, and Rudolf Kempe, not all at the same time. Famed for its performances of Bruckner, it gave the first…