You know that feeling, when you’re concentrating deeply on the task at hand, really focusing hard, and then suddenly a rogue thought, completely unrelated to what you’re doing, jumps into your head and refuses to leave? Like maybe you’re watching your kid perform in the school play, and just before his big moment in the spotlight, your brain chimes in with, “Did you let the dog out? No? Great. He’s probably peeing on the carpet as we speak.” It’s an unsettling feeling – nothing you can do about it but let it sit and fester while you finish whatever it was you were about.

So, anyway, last night, we were midway through the scherzo of Bruckner’s 4^th at the Royal Albert Hall. Things had been going pretty well thus far in our first Proms concert (Prom 56, in the BBC’s parlance) – Alisa Weilerstein had torn up the Shostakovich concerto, and obliged the cheering audience with a vigorous Bach encore, and Bruckner was sailing right along – and then, just as I finished a run of triplet arpeggios and brought my viola down to my knee, it hit me. The tickets. The two free passes that had been set aside for me as a thank-you for doing the BBC’s pre-concert Proms Plus event, and which I had promised to collect from the box office and hand to Dolly and Chris just outside the stage door at 7pm sharp. Those tickets.

I had utterly forgotten about them.

There was nothing I could do at that point, of course, and as if to give me a bit of extra time to contemplate my idiocy, the universe arranged for one of principal cello Tony Ross’s strings to snap just as we were finishing the scherzo, and rather than go on without him, Osmo turned to the crowd and announced that Tony, who always has spare strings with him onstage since he breaks an unusual number of them, would just be taking a moment to change one, and they should talk amongst themselves. I slumped in my seat, and tried desperately to scan the massive hall for Dolly and Chris. Since I didn’t even know where my reserve seats were located, it was futile.

Tony had his string replaced in short order, and the Bruckner was back underway. The brass were in excellent form – trombones in particular, from where I was sitting -  and what sometimes seems like a slightly overwrought finale sailed past in relatively short order. The audience’s applause was nothing overly rapturous at first, but it built and built, until the whole room was stamping and clapping in time, demanding an encore.

Now, we are carrying a single encore on this tour, but it’s unlikely that we’ll use it much. The three symphonies we’re playing are all barnburners, tough acts to follow, and in most situations, you wouldn’t want to cheapen the impact of something as weighty as Beethoven’s 9^th or Bruckner’s 4^th with a showy display. And even with the crowd bringing Osmo out for a fifth bow, we’d been instructed by the BBC that tonight was not the night for an encore in any case – it had been a long program, well over two hours, and the Beeb really is the final authority on what gets played at their festival. So Osmo took his bow, then grabbed concertmaster Sarah Kwak’s hand and led her off the stage. It’s actually a great feeling, leaving an audience wanting more. The BBC knows what they’re doing.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, my friends, who are clearly as resourceful as I am forgetful, met me at the stage door after the concert. After several attempts, they’d managed to pick up the tickets that had been left in my name and make it into the hall for the bulk of the concert. Phew.

We’re back at it this morning with what will probably be a frantic rehearsal of Beethoven 9. We’ll be meeting the BBC Chorus for the first time (Osmo’s been working with them for several days,) and re-acquainting ourselves with Gil Shaham and his dazzling Berg concerto. Then, in the afternoon, it’s off to London’s Fulham neighborhood for me and two other violists, there to witness an honest-to-God English Premier League match between Chelsea and Stoke City. I’m told that we’re sitting in the visiting fans’ section, and the BBC crew I worked with yesterday warned me very seriously that not only does this mean we must avoid cheering even quietly for Chelsea, we’d better not be caught wearing blue. Duly noted. The Brits take their sport seriously.

I’ll try to get a new entry up before we depart for Edinburgh tomorrow morning, but if I can’t squeeze it in, you’ll hear from me again after our Sunday night concert. Happy weekend, Minnesota! Try to stay cool…

Addendum: Star Tribune reporter Graydon Royce has been tagging along with the tour, and he has a story in Saturday’s editions with great audience reax from last night’s concert. The accompanying photos by Strib photog Jeff Wheeler are also outstanding.

It’s another dreary morning here in London, but the unspeakably perky BBC One forecasters tell me it’s bound to clear up later today, and stay at least partially sunny for the better part of what Brits know as Bank Holiday Weekend. Not that the rain’s been preventing me from getting out and enjoying one of the world’s great cities, but it’ll be nice to stop wringing out my pant legs every time I come indoors.

Speaking of my wanderings, a friend and I happened into the unexpectedly fascinating National Portrait Gallery near Trafalgar Square last night, and were amused to be greeted in the atrium by a full bar and a DJ pumping out deliberately innocuous rock music. Apparently, UK museums have caught onto the same strategy for luring 20- and 30-somethings that the Walker Art Center employs regularly at its Walker After Hours parties, and while the Portrait Gallery gathering lacked the Walker’s impressive numbers on this particularly rainy night, those in attendance were clearly having an excellent time amid the photos and paintings of UK luminaries. (I had to stifle a laugh as I watched one particular college student, who had ignored the sign advising us to set our drinks down before entering the galleries, attempt to slam down the remainder of his cocktail before it was taken away, as he was led out of the Early Tudors room by an unfailingly polite docent.)

I’ve just got a few minutes to blog about today before heading off to our first rehearsal at the Albert Hall, which I can actually see from my hotel window, a leisurely six block walk away. I’m guessing that we’ll spend the bulk of our time on the Bruckner this morning, though we’ll probably have to save enough minutes for a nearly full run-through of Alisa Weilerstein’s Shostakovich concerto. Mainly, this rehearsal will be about re-familiarizing ourselves with the acoustics of the massive performance space, and also reconnecting with each other after nearly a full week apart. (Because of the hectic schedule of the Proms – a new orchestra every single night of the week – our stage crew couldn’t load our gear into the backstage area until early this morning, so even if we’d wanted to rehearse yesterday, there would have been nowhere for us to do so.)

Still, this kind of quick prep and instant recall is what they pay us for, and the rep on tonight’s program isn’t nearly as taxing for most of us as tomorrow night’s Berg/Beethoven 9 extravaganza will be, so we’ve got a pretty decent chance of making a good showing. After the rehearsal, I’ll dash off to central London for a quick lunch with an old college friend who practices Maritime Law in the UK these days, then dash back to the Kensington High Street to prepare for my appearance on BBC Radio this afternoon, just prior to the start of our Prom. It’ll be a hectic day, but with any luck, a memorable one.

Speaking of radio, I mentioned a few days back that both of our Proms concerts would be live on Minnesota Public Radio, and that you could also catch the pre-concert BBC broadcast online. So here, for those of you interested in listening in, is the complete list of live web streams and radio broadcasts that will be available to those of you back in the States later this morning and afternoon:

All times listed are US Central Daylight Time (UTC -6)

11:45am BBC Proms Plus Pre-Concert talk, with BBC’s Martin Handley, MPR’s Brian Newhouse, and yours truly, streaming live on BBC Radio 3’s website. The program is 45 minutes. (Excerpts of this conversation will be an intermission feature of the radio broadcast of tonight’s concert.)

1:30pm Minnesota Orchestra, live at the Proms. You can stream this from the same BBC audio player, but if you’re in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, or the Dakotas, you can catch it in HD radio quality on the classical music stations of Minnesota Public Radio. (99.5fm, KSJN in the Cities, or find your local station here.) Brian Newhouse hosts, live from the Royal Albert Hall. Program to include Barber’s Music for a Scene from Shelley, Shostakovich’s 1st Cello Concerto with Alisa Weilerstein, and Bruckner’s 4th Symphony.

The same broadcast info will apply for Saturday’s Proms performance, featuring Berg’s Violin Concerto with Gil Shaham, and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, featuring the BBC Chorus. I won’t have time to blog again until after tonight’s performance, and depending on how drained I am, I may leave it ’til tomorrow morning. But I promise some new content by the time you wake up on Saturday. (Probably not the video I was hoping for, though – internet connection here has been agonizingly slow, when it works at all…) Enjoy the concert!

The last couple of days have been a whirlwind of the sort of mundanities one must see to before leaving the country for a while: mowing the lawn, doing the laundry, insuring I’ve packed extra viola strings and contact lenses, explaining patiently to the credit card company that yes, that charge from a London internet company is legit, and oh by the way if you freeze the card the first time I use it in Europe like you did last year because you tried to call but my phone doesn’t work over there, we are going to have issues.

But anyway, I seem to have things pretty well squared away with several hours to spare before our red-eye flight to London this evening, so I thought I’d lay out a few of the specific challenges and potential highlights of this little weekend jaunt. Every tour has some unexpected moments, and I gather that a good-sized gaggle of the local media will be traveling with us, so there’s a good chance some of those moments will be documented. I’d never run the risk of jinxing things with specific predictions, but here’s a general list of observations about the week we’re about to have.

Challenge #1: 3 cities, 4 concerts, 4 concertos, 3 symphonies, in 4 days. Yes, we’ll have a bit of time to get our bearings after we arrive in London around noon on Wednesday, but starting Friday morning, it is on, people. We’ll rehearse Friday and Saturday mornings, but time is pretty limited, so we’ll definitely need to be on the ball to pull off polished performances after having not played together since last Friday night.

And once we wrap up the Proms, the real chaos begins. We’ll split our touring party into two groups Sunday morning for the quick flight north to Scotland, but that means that a good chunk of the orchestra won’t touch down in Edinburgh until 3:55pm, a mere 2 hours before our scheduled touch-up rehearsal at Usher Hall. Throw in what I recall to be about a half-hour’s drive from the airport to the city center, the fact that one of Edinburgh’s two football clubs has a match scheduled for right around that time not far from our hotel, and the general fact that the entire city is a madhouse during festival time (there was an hourlong wait for a cab ride when we played the fest in 2006,) and you just know somebody’s gonna barely make the scene in time. (Again, not predicting. Just saying we have a history with these sorts of things.)

For those coming late to Edinburgh, they’ll have to avoid getting attached to the place, because a mere 16 hours after they arrive, they’ll be back at the airport for our early flight to Amsterdam. (And nine musicians who don’t have anything to play in the final concert of the tour will split from the group on arrival in the Netherlands, and immediately board a flight home, thus saving the cost of nine hotel rooms.) That afternoon, we’ll be bussed to the Concertgebouw (we normally stay nearby, but our normal hotel couldn’t accommodate us this time, so we’re staying way the heck out by Schiphol Airport, which, if memory serves, is actually in Belgium,) grab a bite to eat wherever we can find one, then play one last touch-up rehearsal before the 8:15pm concert.

(Why 8:15, you ask? I’ve no idea, and I’ve long since given up trying to understand why European venues have the start times they do. My first international tour with this orchestra included one concert that started at 10:30pm local time.)

Challenge #2: I mentioned that I’m making an appearance on BBC Radio 3 prior to our first Proms concert on Friday. Ordinarily, this sort of thing doesn’t intimidate me. I’ve worked in radio, I’m not intimidated by microphones or (most) audiences, and when Brian Newhouse asked whether I’d step in for this gig, I agreed immediately. But since then, our CEO, Michael Henson, who is British and quite well acquainted with the traditions of the Proms, has been regularly making some downright scary noises about what I’ve gotten myself into. Noises like: “Oh, you’re doing a Proms Plus? Very nice. Best be sure you know your history. They take those events quite seriously, you know.” Or the other night, when I asked him whether the suit I was packing was, in fact, the proper attire for the broadcast, or whether perhaps the pre-concert talks were a bit more dressed down, and Michael recoiled. “Oh, no! Definitely not less formal than a suit!” Leaving me to ponder whether some guests show up for these things in full white tie and tails.

Potential highlight: The Proms are definitely the most high-profile concerts we’ll play on this mini-tour, but I’m actually almost more excited to play the Edinburgh and Amsterdam concerts, because that’s where we’ll be playing the symphony that seems to be fast becoming our calling card: Beethoven’s 7th. Not only is it one of my favorite pieces in general, it seems to play to all our strengths as an orchestra, as well as Osmo’s strengths as a conductor. The tightly wound but sprightly first movement, the lower string-heavy second, the scherzo that gives the horns a true moment in the sun, and the finale that just goes hell for leather from the first moment to the last – it’s everything we love to do, and lately, Minnesota audiences have been going absolutely crazy for it. It’ll be fun to see whether we can recreate that level of intensity abroad.

By the way, if you’d like another way to follow the tour, our Outreach Coordinator, Mele Willis, has put together a fantastic educational site that will go live Wednesday morning is live now. You can get to it here, and if history is any guide, Mele will have a great mix of audio, video, and written travelogues to share. I’ll be trying to squeeze in a few multimedia moments as well, if quality broadband connections allow.

But for now, I need to pack a few more items (like this laptop) and grab a last stateside bite before heading off to the airport. I’ll talk to you from London…