Well, the New Year has started musically for me in a pretty large scale fashion. In the new huge Auditori in Barcelona there was a palpable sense of excitement amongst young audience and performers alike for one of the biggest projects imaginable ... Schönberg's GURRELIEDER ... under the baton of a wonderful conductor new to me, EIJE OUE, who steered us all through the very noisy and potentially treacherous waters of this enormous piece with great understanding, flair and a keen ear for the solo lines. I enjoyed the quite revolutionary part of the Speaker immensely, and Eije and I found I think a pretty magical spark in performance. Schönberg asked for five hundred male singers in the huge hunting chorus and even more for the final sunrise chorus. Barcelona didn't quite manage that number but when that final glorious C major music took fire people on stage and in the audience were in tears. I noticed one gentleman sitting just in front of me who was unashamedly crying as the waves of sound washed over us all ... watching that one man's personal response to the piece as it unfolded made the performance for me. It is astonishing how much a responsive audience can bring to a performance! I hope that gentleman comes to many more of my concerts ... and not just to weep.

On the other hand, I've just left La Folle Journee de Nantes, where this year's theme is "Schubert dans tous ces etats". Almost two hundred (yes!) concerts of Schubert's music over five days in halls of all sizes obviously need sizeable sponsorship, but the concert with CAPPELLA AMSTERDAM and DANIEL REUSS of Schubert's Mass in A flat, an exquisitely refined and understated setting, got off to a bad start right from our first steps onto the stage. We, the performers, could all feel the audience was there for the canapés and champagne, and they obviously had consumed quite a lot in the interval before the mass. Maybe it wasn't the programme for a Sponsors' gala, but I left the stage after the performance feeling disgusted and annoyed. I am happy to say that audience got a far better performance than it deserved! Two days earlier in La Fleche there had been a wonderful audience of villagers, including one small boy in specs in the front row who enjoyed every note of the choir and inflexion of the instruments. I made a point of speaking to him and his parents afterwards and encouraged him to join a maitrise or choir as soon as he could. He was the ideal listener, eyes and ears wide open. He also told me Pere Noel had brought him a Scalextric for Xmas.

I first sang in Munich about twenty five years ago (A Gurrelieder with Zubin Mehta and the orchestra of the Bavarian Radio) and it was a joy to be back there with that splendid orchestra and CHARLES DUTOIT singing Mephisto in Berlioz La Damnation de Faust. Two capacity audiences (2,700 seats) were listening keenly to Berlioz and Nerval's take on the Goethe legend. With my two super colleagues GREGORY KUNDE and RUXANDRA DONOSE that piece feels like an old friend now, well run-in after many happy performances, and yet we still all manage to find new things to say in it. Its next scheduled outing will be in November with Mr Dutoit and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus ... my debut with that great orchestra.

Now it's back to Amsterdam for three weeks, and my students. It's the time of year when they all get sick, and even more neurotic about impending exams, so I end up being more nurse and shrink than voice-teacher. They are all so penniless and tired from having to do other jobs to support themselves. Of course they still want to take long holidays in the sun or mountains when term is over, but I remember that I used to work furiously during the holidays to earn money so that in term time I was able to do the musical graft and go to concerts and rehearsals ... To me they often seem to be only part-time students ... and no one ever got anywhere in the music business by being less than two hundred per cent committed ... I just hope they learn that sooner rather than too late.

Things I am looking forward to later this month:

• Matthaeus Passion (arias) with Adrian Thompson (evangelist) and the choir of the Westerkerk under Hein Meens in the beautiful Westerkerk Amsterdam on Sunday 24th February. It will be lovely to see Max van Egmond singing in the choir but also quite daunting having him there since I grew up listening to his definitive Bach recordings!
• Mendelssohn's ELIAS with Heinz Holliger and a dream cast of colleagues in Strasbourg on Friday February 29th.
• More Berlioz with Dutoit, this time L'Enfance du Christ with the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich, March 4,5 and 6.

More news next month. Groetjes.