In the first of Limelight’s Musical Journeys, Christopher Lawrence basks in the applause around Poland.

 

Years of escorting tour groups to concerts and operas from Oslo to Los Angeles to Cape Town have taught me that one sees the true measure of a city’s people in the way they applaud. Which must make Krakow one of the most generous places in the world.

Here in the Philharmonic Hall, a former Catholic Assembly centre built by an Archbishop who served cold porridge to the Nazis, local piano poster-boy Piotr Anderszewski and violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann have just played a Schumann sonata. The audience rises to its feet within seconds. Flowers are proffered by elegant young women who then climb onto the stage and engage the players in conversation. The sound of sincere approbation swells to a climax as musicians and their admirers exit stage right, smiling and waving. I can’t wait to see how they look later in the neon glare of the marble-lined neo-Baroque...