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Improvisation was a feature of most of their own concerts - they would have abhorred what calls 'cookie cutter' interpretations. Of course they would want us bristling with our own imagination. Not least, because that is what turns the audience on. That is what a performance is. Yes, you can rush out and buy the latest recommended recording of the piece and listen to it at home - but that is not a performance. It might inspire how we want to perform on the day, but that alone is not going to keep music alive and creative. I enjoy historic performances, but I'm much more interested in what's going on at our own live musical events. However, this is not a call for anarchy. Each of us, including you, knows well enough what adds to a performance in its own particular context. Freedom, artistic or political, has to be balanced by sensitivity and emotional intelligence. But it is that leap of imagination, the unexpected, that is going to make you gasp with delight. The unexpected and unrepeatable.

A couple of things have got me brooding. I went to a number of Celtic Connections shows, enjoying the easy going atmosphere and infectiously engaged audiences. I envy that so much. I'm not dissing our own audiences, but I am hinting that I sometimes feel that we've missed an important bus. And sometimes I even feel that we, the players and critics, might be guilty of being a bit like those surly unwelcoming bus drivers. Andrew Marr, in a recent Radio 4 'Start the Week', was chatting to John Adams ("the world's most successful composer") and Adams was retorting that despite his success, his music occupies only the tiniest space on a shared shelf at the back of a CD store - classical, folk and jazz occupying only about ten percent of the global shelving. Taking part in that conversation was Philip Ball, whose book has just been published. (He gave an illustrated presentation of the book at on the same day.) Between them they seemed to agree that classical music is opening up a little - something easier to achieve within American culture. They agreed that one of the great barriers is the prevailing idea that we have to 'understand' music, and have specialist knowledge. No. We have to feel it. Philip Ball's main thesis is that we all have a tremendous innate facility for music - music in all its aspects - and we all already 'know' all that we need to know. He calls music 'gymnastics for the brain': no other human activity lights up the sensors in every area of the brain at the same time. Educationalists increasingly talk about the importance of music in developing emotional intelligence - though for heaven's sake don't look to me as proof. When Abreu set up he insisted that it was under the Ministry of Social Development, not the Ministry of Culture - it was never to be seen as 'culture'! And the rest is the most extraordinary story in the history of music.

One of my heroes, the vocalist Bobby McFerrin, was at Celtic Connections. There's no-one on the planet better able to make everyone feel that music, singing, and dancing are absolutely natural to all of us. And he'll get any of you scrabbling up onto the stage to prove it. He also relates the story of how his friend, Yo Yo Ma (another of my heroes), was in Africa 'sharing' his music. Ma was trying to copy down a shaman's song, missed a few lines, asked the shaman to repeat them, and the shaman sung a load of completely different music. 'No' said Ma. 'Yes' said the shaman - because a piece of music can only exist in one place at one time. The Indian percussionist was another 'must see' at Celtic Connections. I've been into Indian classical music as long as Western, so I couldn't miss him. His guests were the amazing rampacious Celtic trio, the phenomenally successful Norwegian soprano sax improviser, , and the Indian singer, . Indian classical music is rooted in intellectual rigour and virtuosity equal to anything in the world - and it's never written down - it only exists in one time and place. "At the outset, you think everything is segmented into classical music, jazz and all those other genres," Gurtu says, "But when you approach music in a more spiritual fashion, you notice that the spirit the music is built on is the same everywhere." I could hardly believe it when the Indians really got going, leaving Lau and Garbarek looking as though they weren't sure which end of the instrument to hold......and the Glasgow audience baying for more. You should hear Indian audiences at Indian music sessions - or at the CBSO's qawalli concerts, where the sound levels in the middle of the audience were measured to be higher than in the middle of the orchestra. I'm not suggesting that every musical event should end in this sort of celebratory riot, but it's possible that our communities, not to mention us players, should take this bus trip more often. Actually, we had a spectacular bus trip last Thursday night. If you weren't there, your life is the poorer. Christine Brewer singing Strauss songs......the audience looked ravished. The orchestra bristling to Donald Runnicles......what a buzz. A huge audience, plus players, staying behind for the coda.......Christine doing Burns songs, with Donald on the ivories. It felt more like a community event than I can remember. Unrepeatable.....except that some of our guys could jam along if you want a Burns Night sing for a Coda.

Talking about the CBSO, after four years absence returned for two performances of . The huge Symphony Hall sold out two nights in a row. (How many more nights could have been sold out?) One of the reviewers raved about the sense of 'community event'. I envy that. I wouldn't hope for a better complement. Mark Padmore, the inspired evangelist at that performance, talking during the interval, expressed what I am fumbling at.....squared: Engagement, Community. And, after many years in historical performance, he also is moving on - to a re-engagement in the present. "There was no performance tradition in Bach's time." "There was no maestro culture in Bach's time." I complained to Andrew Manze that, since I joined the SSO, the historical performance movement has robbed us of a lot of baroque repertory...."it's not what we should be doing". Well, here was Simon Rattle doing the symphony orchestra version - to packed houses. What would Bach have wanted.....here, and today? Something unrepeatable.....?