Today we are having a rest day, with only the thrills of hauling a suitcase full of groceries up three flights of near vertical stairs to report on. Instead of describing my plans for an ice cream and massage parlor on the second landing, I want to tell you about the concert we went to last night.

We were in the main hall of the famous Royal Concertgebouw for an evening of Russian music: Shostakovich’s second cello concerto and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. The Concertgebouw is small hall, pretty much a square box with rounded corners, a small small gallery, and ornate decorations, including the names of composers many of whom nobody listens to any more. By some act of luck or genius it has perfect acoustics. The sound of the orchestra is perfectly balanced and every instrument sounds clear and crisp. The SFO in Symphony Hall San Francisco sounds muddy in comparison.

The program notes were only in Dutch, so I will give my interpretation of the music as best I can. We started with the Shostakovich. The first movement seems to be a Soviet worker waking up with a hangover and wallowing in self-pity. By the second movement it is lunchtime. He has a few glasses of vodka, and inspired by the thought of his contributions to the current five year plan, he begins to cheer up, but then goes back to wallowing in self pity. In the final movement he is back with his family, getting drunk again. He had forgotten the five year plan, and spends some more time wallowing is self-pity. He is, after all, Russian.

In the intermission the hall empties as the entire crowd heads for the bars. Is it a social thing, or is a half-time drink an essential part of the Dutch concert going experience?

Scheherazade is a delightful and whimsical piece of music that I have loved since childhood. What’s more the titles of the movements in Dutch almost make sense in English. There are no prizes for working out what Der Zee en Sinbads Schip or Feest in Bagdad mean.

The only mental block for me is the bit that goes Dum-di-Dum, de-diddly Dum-di-Dum, as that takes me right back to the old BBC comedy radio show I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again, which featured John Cleese and The Goodies before they were John Cleese and The Goodies. They used that bit as the theme song for a thirteen part adventure serial The Curse of the Flying Wombat. In case you are wondering how hysterically funny these shows were to a thirteen year old boy, I suggest you find a thirteen year old boy and play this to them.

This being Amsterdam, where the main leisure activity is climbing staircases, the conductor and soloist had to make a long ascent and descent of a red carpeted staircase every time they take a curtain call. It’s good training for grocery shopping.