Twenty seven IAML conferences ...

Episode 3: 2012-2022

2012 Montréal (Canada)

Our trip to Montréal began with a flight from London Heathrow, finally arriving mid-evening at the McGill New Residence Hall on the Friday just prior to the conference. Most of Saturday was taken up with Board meetings, then in the evening we attended the Board dinner.

On Sunday morning members of the Board conducted the first test of an electronic voting system for the election of Board members early in 2013. It was based on open-source software from a university in the Philippines. An interview for IAML’s first Web Editor also took place.

All of the week's sessions were housed at the Centre Mont-Royal, a city centre conference venue. Monday's business for me included chairing the Strategy Committee that had reached the final stages of considering how IAML’s current structure might be updated for greater effectiveness in the future. There was also a Publications Committee meeting in which we mostly discussed the website and whether it needed to be renewed. In the afternoon I had one further session to chair on behalf of the Programme Committee.

At the end of business, I headed off toward the McGill New Residence with a friend who was also staying there. The sky had quite quickly gone very dark and we were soon caught up in a torrential thunderstorm. We took refuge part way there under someone's porch until the rain eased, but by then everything was already completely soaked.

There was an evening reception at the Grande Bibliothèque (Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec). We were very late leaving while I dried out and by the time that we arrived at the reception, we had missed both the tours and most of the food and drink.

On Tuesday afternoon I presented the conclusions of the Strategy Committee to a full plenary session. I was somewhat relieved, and the tech support staff seemed mildly surprised, that my iPad connected smoothly to their display. This was early days for such radical ideas. That evening we attended a nice concert of a capella music by Taverner, Tallis, Gibbons and others at Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours seamen's chapel.

On Wednesday afternoon there was a guided walking tour of old Montréal that included a visit to the Gothic revival Notre Dame Basilica and concluded with a visit to a maple syrup establishment – très canadien!

Thursday afternoon's Council session overran seriously: first, one member was questioning the legal status of the Strategy Committee, and that was followed by a debate over what IAML’s relationship was now to RIdIM. Fortunately, with time running out, someone moved 'that the question be now put'. After the vote we had just 20 minutes to vacate the building and then to get to Redpath Hall for the evening’s concert to be given by Quatuor Bozzini.

On Friday morning I chaired an open IT Committee meeting that despite very few attendees came up with lots of interesting ideas. At the end of the afternoon, the final Board meeting took place after the General Assembly and Closing Session. This was a year that we decided on our own dinner arrangements rather than attend the closing dinner – organized to take place at La Sucrerie de la Montagne (Rigaud), set in a maple forest.

To make the most of our long-distance trip to Canada, the next morning we flew to Calgary, and took a shuttle bus onward to Banff where we would stay for the next six days. Among other things we experienced: a cable car ride to Sulphur Mountain,

some free concerts at the Banff Centre, and a trip onto the Columbia ice field (glacier) in a large 6 wheel bus specifically designed to negotiate the steep icy slope up onto the glacier.

Other entertainments for us included watching and recording the sound of the enormous freight trains passing through Banff, as well as watching the antics of a family of young ravens that were often visible on the roof of our hotel.

One evening we ate at a Banff restaurant punningly named Melissa's Missteak. We also discovered that Banff has a very classy public toilet where a recording of the pizzicato movement from Ravel's string quartet was playing – a pleasant encounter, but Ravel really deserves better.

2013 Vienna / Wien (Austria)

For our trip to Vienna we left home on the Wednesday prior to the conference, travelling by Eurostar train to Brussels, then onward to Köln (Cologne) to meet a IAML friend before boarding the sleeper train to Vienna. Our train’s arrival on Thursday morning was into the Westbahnhof which at that time was the night train terminus while the new Hauptbahnhof was under construction. As we had expected, we were far too early for check-in at the wonderfully named Hotel Strudlhof, so we left our luggage and set off for a first look around Vienna.

One of the first visits was of course to Café Sacher to sample the famous Sachertorte. (Heretical comment here: I’ve had better chocolate cake.) The temperature in Vienna was already heading into the thirties Celsius, and on returning to our hotel later, we found our room to be rather too warm; the air conditioning seemingly had failed throughout the building, and had already been off for three weeks, while awaiting a replacement part.

Saturday was the day of the Board meetings that took place in a very warm university room. It was with great relief therefore that on my return I found that that the hotel's air conditioning equipment had been repaired that day. In the evening the Board dinner took place at the Melker Stiftskeller, a subterranean restaurant near Schottentor. When we emerged around 22:00 the temperature showing on a nearby display was 32℃.

Meetings scheduled for Sunday morning had been cancelled for lack of business so the first session that day was Council 1 in the afternoon where we discussed IAML's future structure. The delightful opening reception that evening took place in the airy quadrangle of the Rathaus.

On Monday my last session of the day was a closed Publications Committee where we discussed appointments to the positions of Web Editor and deputies, as well as appointing a designer for a new IAML website. That evening we attended a reception and guided tour at the spectacular Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.

Tuesday’s sessions included a Roundtable between the Board and National Representatives, and I had one session to chair on behalf of the Programme Committee, on Promoting Access to Music Archives.

At the end of that afternoon we had been invited to a small pre-concert drinks reception at the publisher Universal Edition, whose office was in the Musikverein building. Following the reception we were led through passages and across an upper level of the Großer Musikvereinssal to the smaller Brahmssaal where the evening concert of early music played on instruments of the period was to take place.

Wednesday afternoon's trip was to Mödling where we visited the house in which Arnold Schönberg (Schoenberg) lived during the period when he was developing his system of dodecaphonic composition.

After that we travelled onward to Baden bei Wien where we saw one of Beethoven's summer residences, as well as the park where Josef Lanner and Johann Strauss played waltzes for public dancing.

Thursday evening's concert took place at the Schlosstheater Schönbrunn where a chamber group played a programme of early Webern, Schoenberg / arranged by Webern, and a piano quintet by Bruno Walter.

At Friday's General Assembly my second three year term as a Vice President was confirmed, sharing responsibility for the Publications Committee with Joseph Hafner. That evening the final dinner took place in the prestigious surroundings of the Palais Ferstel.

We stayed in Vienna for another two days before boarding a sleeper train back to Köln and then onward to Brussels and back through London toward home in East Sussex.

This visit became the start of a kind of love affair with Vienna which has led us since then to find four excuses (so far) to return, even if only briefly. Memories include a visit to the Secession building with its Klimt fresco; art galleries and famous Konditoreien – Café Central’s Schokozauber must be experienced at least once. All of this with the added delights of tram travel; a climb to the top of the Stefansdom; Zanoni e Zanoni for gelato; the winding bus route up to Kahlenberg for views of Vienna, followed by local wine and cake at a Heuriger in Grinzing.

2014 Antwerp (Belgium)

The journey to Antwerp began with a nice easy rail journey: into London, Eurostar to Brussels, then a double-deck ICE train to that most impressive of stations Antwerpen Centraal.

Finding a tram from there to the deSingel conference venue proved more difficult than we expected until we found that our tram stop was not in the square outside, but in a subterranean part of the main station.

Saturday was the day of the Board meetings, followed by the Board dinner at a fairly nearby restaurant. There was something of a dearth of restaurants close to deSingel so during the week the organizers had cleverly arranged for a mobile – select your language here – chips/French fries/frites van to be on site for the duration of the lunch breaks. There was also plenty of local beer available on tap inside, near to the registration desk.

A wet Sunday morning was a good opportunity to catch up on reports before the afternoon Council 1 session which ran on longer than expected while points of exception were raised against already agreed changes.

That evening the opening reception took place at Elzenveld. Not knowing the area we failed to get off at the nearest tram stop then, as we got off at the following stop, the heavens opened and several minutes were spent waiting in the tram shelter for the rain to subside. At the reception the gathering was treated to the first performance of a specially composed beer canon – to include audience participation.

After Monday’s plenary session there was a closed meeting of the Publications Committee to discuss website matters. At the end of the afternoon after chairing a session for the Programme Committee, I joined the President, Secretary General and President-Elect to meet a group of three Latvian representatives who were proposing that we should host the 2017 conference at the new National Library in Riga.

Tuesday morning’s programme included the Roundtable for national representatives, and I had one session to chair for the Programme Committee in the late afternoon. That evening there was a concert of Flemish violin music from today and from the past that took place at Concerthall AMUZ.

Wednesday was the day of the trip to Gent/Ghent, starting with a coach trip from deSingel at 08:30. On arrival in Gent, we heard first a fascinatingly detailed and analytical presentation on Jan Van Eyck’s Lamb of God Ghent altarpiece of 1432, followed by a presentation on the restoration of old instruments based on their iconography. A short lunch break preceded a visit to St Bavo’s Cathedral for a short organ concert and a viewing of the Van Eyck altarpiece. Then we all embarked for a boat trip along Gent’s waterways, to end up at the wharf of the City Brewery Gruut.

After settling inside we were able to sample three different beers, accompanied by nibbles while we were told about the various herbal ingredients and techniques. That was followed by a short concert of music from the medieval Gruuthuse Manuscript. I think this was probably the most memorable of all of my IAML Wednesday tours.

Thursday included a slightly fraught Publications Committee meeting and the second Council meeting of the week during which Council voted to abolish itself in favour of a new two-tier structure – with two not unexpected votes against. Since the meeting overran we all had to rush to get to a composer’s portrait (Lucy van Hove) concert of the Royal Flemish Philharmonic in the deSingel Blue Hall conducted by Martyn Brabbins.

Friday began with a very useful session about the way that Wikipedia works, where we were encouraged to create new topics, and update existing topics. In the afternoon the tail end of the Council meeting that was carried over from the previous day ran straight into the General Assembly where the Council was formally voted out of existence. We then had to rush back to our hotel to prepare for and get to the final dinner that took place on de Badboot – a floating open air restaurant with swimming pool.

After the conference we were for several days guests of a couple of German IAML friends. Our journey with them on a hot day turned out to be one of those mini journeys from hell. Everything went well as far as Brussel Noord but the train from there toward Köln came to a stop at Liège Guillemans and stayed there for a long time. It was not clear if this was a train failure or an infrastructure problem but we were all directed to leave that train for a different train back to Verviers. On arrival there, a full train’s worth of passengers with accompanying luggage crowded out and squeezed onto three, later five, very full coaches that then drove us toward Aachen. A train toward Köln was waiting for us there but was already very crowded with people travelling toward a festival in Köln. Onward from Köln a local train was similarly crowded so it was with great relief that we all reached our final destination.

2015 New York (USA) – not attended

For personal reasons I knew well beforehand that I would not be able to attend the New York conference. I was able to manage a single unsatisfactory link into a Board meeting via the President’s laptop. [Though remote sharing technology has progressed a lot since that time, linking into an in-person meeting via someone’s laptop remains most unsatisfactory for seeing and hearing what is happening.]

This was also the year of my retirement from the British Library Sound Archive so attendance at sessions in future conferences gets rather more patchy.

2016 Rome / Roma (Italy)

Due to other commitments, we were unfortunately not able to travel by train to Rome and instead flew from London Gatwick airport, arriving late evening. After baggage delays we finally arrived at our hotel not long before midnight. Saturday we then treated as a tourist day, visiting the Colosseum and Palatine Hill, but it was hot, and remained that way for the rest of the week.

Tired and hot after walking around we spotted a small restaurant with outside seating and decided to stop off for a little food and drink. The final bill came as a bit of a shock with rip-off tourist prices – lesson learned for the rest of the week! That evening as the temperature fell to a more manageable level we had a pleasant walk to join the Board dinner.

The conference setting this year was the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Sunday for me was occupied with Board meetings morning and afternoon. That evening the opening session included an open rehearsal by the Juni Orchestra in the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia's concert hall.

Wednesday afternoon’s walking tour was based around the former homes of the Accademia Santa Cecilia. At the Pantheon we managed to get inside to look up at the huge and impressive dome though the whole floor space seemed to be stuffed, wall to wall, with far eastern tourists so it was not easy to move around. (Early afternoon in summer must surely be one of the worst times to view this masterpiece of Roman engineering.) Nearby I spotted a plaque commemorating a visit to Rome by Thomas Mann.

As the afternoon progressed it was so hot that the tour began to take its toll of us, so we escaped a little before the end to return to our hotel, and thence to a nearby restaurant.

On Thursday evening there was a showing of the 2014 documentary film Santini’s Network (La rete di Santini) about the 19th century abbot, musician and collector Fortunato Santini, who amassed a collection of important music that might otherwise have been lost comprising some 20,000 titles in 4,500 manuscripts and 1,200 prints. The collection was purchased after his death and transferred to Münster in Germany where it lay neglected for 40 years until rediscovered by Edward Dent.

On Friday I chaired what turned out to be one of the most interesting sessions of the week: TEI, MEI, FRBR, Linked data. Then, following the second General Assembly and Closing session, I attended my final Board meeting, marking six years serving on the Board.

Later, in the evening, the closing dinner took place on the top floor of the Forum Hotel that had an open air view across to the Colosseum.

There was one important, if peripheral, takeaway for us from Rome. At the Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall stand in the exhibition area we acquired a free one-week pass to the Digital Concert Hall. Once we had tried it at home, we were easily persuaded to take out an annual subscription, and have continued to do so every year since then.

The slow return home entirely avoided flying. First we took a train to Milano Centrale where we would change to our second train but had arranged to meet IAML’s then webmaster and his family at the station. Then we travelled onward to Varenna on the eastern side of Lake Como for a two night stay. At the end of that brief stay our next train took us along the shore of Como to Tirano where we had booked a trip on the Bernina Express. This train is anything but an express, starting as it does by trundling along the streets of Tirano like a tram before climbing through the Alps with spectacular views before finally descending to Chur in Switzerland.

After an expensive night in Zürich our homeward trip continued via Paris and Eurostar. [The date of travel is important in this context. The UK had just narrowly voted to leave the European Union and that had then – no surprise – caused the UK currency to plummet against the Swiss Franc and other currencies.]

2017 Riga (Latvia)

The Riga conference took place in the new National Library building alongside the Daugava River. The conference hotel was almost alongside with fine views of old Riga across the river.

For this conference the standard week had been foreshortened by one day because otherwise it would have run into the midsummer holiday with return transport difficulties for conference attendees.

From the outset we planned this as a long and interesting journey by train and ferry. From London, Eurostar took us to Brussels, and our onward train to Köln had been carefully planned to allow us plenty of time there to have a nice meal at Café Reichard which is very close to the Köln Hauptbahnhof. Following that our next train took us to Hamburg for an overnight hotel stay close to the station.

The next morning it was onward to Copenhagen. Though this is no longer the case, at that time the journey involved the train carriages being shunted onto a ferry at Puttgarden on the north German island of Fehmarn to cross the Baltic Sea. At Rødby in Denmark they would then be shunted off before running onward to Copenhagen. That journey now takes a long route around that requires two train changes while the enormous Fehmarnbelt tunnel under the Baltic from Denmark to Germany is under construction.

From Copenhagen we should have had a through train to Stockholm, but SJ (Swedish Railways) not unusually it seems did not have approval for that particular onward train to cross the Öresund Bridge into Denmark so we had to travel across by local train to Malmö to join the Stockholm train.

Our hotel in Stockholm was chosen to be near to the ferry port but still sufficiently convenient to access the city centre by public transport. We spent a lovely couple of days in Stockholm meeting IAML friends and wandering around Gamla Stan (the Old Town). On our second evening we walked to the overnight Riga ferry by means of a convenient passage and covered bridge directly from the back of our hotel straight to the ferry embarkation area. After a couple of hours on deck in evening sunshine while the ship meandered through the Swedish archipelago we moved down to the restaurant and settled down at a table with a sea view before retiring for the night.

In the morning on waking we were able to see the Latvian coast. We disembarked later that morning and walked along the riverside path and across the bridge to the hotel. The room that we had booked turned out to be small and at the rear of the building with noisy air-conditioning plant just below the window. It seemed well worth upgrading to a ‘business’ room – the cost differential not being large. The difference was striking though with lots of room, an outside balcony and a view of the old town across the river.

Saturday’s opening ceremony at the National Library included a short recital on the Latvian Kokle a box zither related to the Finnish Kantele.

The buffet food and drink were very well provided so everyone stayed a long time.

I shall add here that the Riga conference bag was far and away the best ever and we still have ours in fairly regular use years later.

Sunday morning’s plenary session was possibly the most interesting of all those I have attended over the years. It was a fascinating and moving story by the composer Ēriks Ešenvalds of the research that went into the composition of his Aurora Borealis symphony. That same evening we were treated to a concert by LATVIJA, the superb State Choir of Latvia that included works by Ešenvalds.

The next day I joined the end of the Forum of National Branches to try to persuade national representatives to accept branch-specific mailboxes rather than the usual mail forwarding to their own inboxes but that largely fell on deaf ears.

General Assembly 1 that afternoon was followed by an interesting tour of the National Library building.

Our chosen Wednesday tour took us a short distance by coach for a guided walking tour in an area of Riga that is replete with Jugendstil architecture. It was a little windy for lots of standing around but we saw many fine examples of the style.

On our final morning (Thursday) we walked across the bridge into the old town to find the midsummer market in full flow. So many people were wearing floral head garlands that we decided to buy our own to wear at the closing dinner that evening. The meal itself was self-service, and was particularly well attended since it had been included in the conference fee. Some of the Latvians attending were wearing their floral garlands, and after food and entertainment, fellow attendees who felt deprived were provided with the materials and opportunity to make their own garlands with varying success.

The following morning due to time constraints we flew back to London Gatwick via Copenhagen. With luck and careful planning, that was, I hope, my last ever flight.

2018 Leipzig (Germany)

The journey toward Leipzig by train turned out to be rather more 'interesting' than we had planned. Almost from the start things went awry when our Eurostar left London St Pancras International 35 minutes late. That resulted in missing our planned onward train to Frankfurt am Main which would mean missing the subsequent connecting train from there to Leipzig. Having messed up, Eurostar booked us into a nearby hotel at no charge, so we headed into Brussels for a nice evening meal before settling in.

The following morning we set off for Frankfurt (M), but things continued not to run smoothly. With no seat reservations we had to stand for part of the journey there. However, we arrived on time and headed for our Leipzig train, but due to some kind of platform information confusion we found ourselves on a train that was moving out earlier than expected, and another passenger told us that it was headed for Hamburg Altona. Fortunately, a very helpful DB train manager worked out an alternative path for us, changing in Kassel and Braunschweig. We arrived at Leipzig Hbf in time to for us to get to our hotel and to walk to the opening ceremony.

On the way to and from sessions I spotted a small shop that clearly takes an interest in the history of sound recordings.

There was a reception at the National Library on Monday evening after the sessions so we took a tram to get there. On Tuesday morning I joined the later part of the Forum of National Representatives to present the national reports webform that was designed to capture information in a consistent layout for easier comparison of reports. That was followed in the afternoon by General Assembly 1, and then there was an evening concert by Amarcord – a 5 voice ensemble.

On Wednesday morning I skipped sessions and in the afternoon we joined the Wednesday excursion: a tour of the Thomaskirche and the Bach Museum / Bach Archive. A very interesting tour on another decidedly hot day.

That evening the concert was given in the Leipziger Stadtbibliothek by the Leipziger Synagogalchor. That finished rather later than expected so we decided to skip the following reception and head off for something more substantial to eat.

As an early part of our planning for this conference we intended to take one day out, travelling away from Leipzig. My initial plan was for us to travel by train to Dessau and then to revisit the park and gardens at Wörlitz but that came to nothing when I discovered that railway engineering work would make the journey there and back in the day difficult. Instead we decided to take a train to Halle (Saale) to visit the Händelhaus Museum, and if time allowed, also the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte – home of the Nebra sky disc. Unfortunately we soon realised that there would be insufficient time to go there as well and get back to Leipzig in time for the evening concert. We found the visit to the Händelhaus Museum very worthwhile with displays of historic instruments, lots of information about George Frideric Handel (Georg Friedrich Händel) along with little staged audiovisual displays of some of his operas.

Back in Leipzig, after eating we headed for a concert of Catholic church music from the Dresden Court in the Paulinum.

There were several interesting sessions on Friday before General Assembly 2 and the closing session. Wandering around Leipzig I spotted a statue of Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, who studied medicine in Leipzig.

Friday’s final dinner took place on the 29th floor of the Panorama Tower near to the Gewandhaus.

The next day, Saturday, we managed to get tickets for an organ recital and then an evening concert in the Thomaskirche. Finally, on Sunday we had a pleasant and uneventful trip home by train, changing at Frankfurt am Main and Brussels.

2019 Kraków (Poland)

For our journey to Kraków we needed to make a very early start from London so had booked into a hotel fairly near to St Pancras International station. Taking advantage of being in London we managed to visit an Edvard Munch exhibition at the British Museum in the afternoon.

Our trip was planned to be bookended by short stopovers in Vienna. A Eurostar train took us first to Brussels then Deutsche Bahn ICE trains took us to Frankfurt am Main and then to Vienna where we spent the night before taking a train to Kraków the next morning.

On our arrival in Kraków mid afternoon we made our way on foot to the Dom Profesorski hostel where we had stayed on a previous visit for a mid-year Board meeting. After settling into our room we headed out to the main square with the famous Kościół Mariacki (St Mary’s Basilica) – yes, the one with the hourly trumpeter.

Once there we headed for the first of several visits that week to a place we had discovered on our previous visit: Wedel Pijania Czekolady. For the true chocolate lover this is probably the closest approach to heaven, with chocolate cakes of various kinds and very dark hot chocolate that is made so thick that a square of dark chocolate floats on the top.

On Sunday evening the opening ceremony including a short concert by Capella Cracoviensis took place in the Auditorium Maximum of the Jagellionan University – the conference's main venue. Heavy rain earlier in the day unfortunately meant that the original plan to use the old courtyard was considered too risky.

Monday’s most interesting session for me included a discography of director Ingmar Bergman's record collection. In the evening there was a piano quintet concert at the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi.

Tuesday had one interesting session on the preservation of original carriers and digitization in performance archives, including a tutorial on IASA-TC-05 on storage and handling of audio and video carriers. The afternoon ended with General Assembly 1, then in the evening there was an organ concert at the Church of St Anne where the 1723-24 organ is the only one in Kraków that retains the sound of the time of J.S. Bach.

Wednesday afternoon's excursion was a coach trip to Pieskowa Skała Castle, set in the Ojców National Park.

I attended two sessions on Thursday that included interesting papers on Harrison Birtwistle's vocal music at the British Library, and Kaikhosru Sorabji’s letters to Philip Heseltine.

A concert by Sinfonietta Cracovia in the evening took place in the Church of St Catherine.

Already Friday was upon us with some interesting papers on music ontologies and databases. That evening a coach took us all to the Royal Castle in Niepołomice for the final dinner with an entertainment of early dance in period costume beforehand.

The following morning, Saturday, we travelled Kraków-Wien by train with some delay that was resolved by helpful staff. This was to be another short stay in Vienna to encompass the usual cafés and galleries as well as the tram and steep winding bus journey up to the high point of Kahlenberg.

Our Wien-Brussels trip included an already announced bus replacement as far as Passau which was impeccably managed; onward trains to Frankfurt am Main and then to Brussels though were both delayed and finally Eurostar managed to be an hour late leaving for London.

2022 Prague / Praha (Czechia)

We travelled of course by train to Prague, leaving home on the Friday, travelling by Eurostar to Brussels where we had booked an overnight stay for an early start the next day. We were up early for an 06:25 train to Frankfurt Flughafen (airport) where we were scheduled to catch a 10:01 train to Regensburg ... but the train was not indicated on its platform and clearly was not going to arrive. Back up at the Reisezentrum we asked what had become of our train and were told after some investigation that it had been taken straight through to Frankfurt (M) without stopping. We were rebooked for different trains to get us to Prague. The first one was then 20 minutes late out of Frankfurt (M) toward Nürnberg where we had just enough time to change platform for our next train on a small country line to Schwandorf. From there, one further train took us to Prague, arriving early evening where we walked to our hotel, encountering other IAML people along the way.

The hotel turned out to be very near to the Palladium shopping centre where we later discovered a subterranean café called Kavala Creperie that served excellent cake along with coffee or good Czech beer. A waitress took the orders and they were delivered by a so-called ‘Bellabot' robot server that trundled along to the appropriate table. The air conditioning in Palladium was also most welcome with very hot days outside.

The very pleasant opening reception took place on Sunday evening in the courtyard of the Klementinum, a part of the National Library. This was a perfect opportunity to catch up with lots of IAML friends.

On Monday morning I attended an interesting opening plenary session but after that, due to the heat, I spent some of the day back at our hotel, just venturing out to eat at lunchtime. Then we both headed off for the evening concert that was held at the Národní muzeum (National Museum).

The programme, given there by Cancioneta Praga, began with works by each of four Czech composers: Smetana, Janáček, Dvořák and Martinů, then followed that with short characteristic pieces from various countries around the world.

On Tuesday morning after an interesting first session I slipped off to fulfil some pre-trip research and find a place named Choco Café for a nice cup of very thick 85% hot chocolate. A lunchtime visit to Kavala Creperie for cake and beer preceded my return for a relatively short General Assembly 1.

The evening concert in the Zrcadlová kaple (Mirror Chapel) of the Klementinum was given by the Epoque Quartet and included works by: Franz Xaver Richter, Jan Kučera, Antonín Dvořák, Astor Piazzolla, Oliver Nelson and John Williams.

Wednesday, turned out to be a fine example of how not to rely absolutely on the programme. I was a little late setting off for the first session but was not worried because the paper that most interested me was to be the middle paper of the first session. Unfortunately it turned out that the speaker for the first paper was not present at the conference and it seems that an attempted Zoom connection had also failed, so by the time I arrived the paper I wanted to hear was already half way through. Nevertheless, what I heard was still interesting.

That afternoon’s tour was to the 68 metre Klementinum Astronomical Tower (170 steps to the top)

and other historic parts of the Klementinum including a former monastic refectory that is now a reading room for the National Library.

Thursday’s presentations were the most interesting of the week for me, covering preservation of sound recordings in both physical and digital formats with the opportunity also to catch up with a former British Library colleague who delivered one of the papers. The evening concert of baroque music given by Capella Regia Musicalis took place in the St Salvator Church of the Klementinum.

At various points during the week I had been feeling a little unwell – not Covid, though that did infect several of those who were at that conference. By Friday I had decided to take things very easy, and started by skipping the first session that included a paper on Iannis Xenakis that I had wanted to hear. After lunch I skipped General Assembly 2 and closing session.

We both had tickets for a guided tour of the Jugendstil interior of the Obecní dům (Municipal House) that evening that would precede the final dinner.

Although it was very close to our hotel, I thought that there might be quite a lot of standing around and decided to stay in our room while my wife took the tour by herself. We then met later for the final dinner in the Smetana Hall of the same building.

The next morning we were up early for breakfast and a tram ride to the station in unexpectedly heavy rain. On arrival in Vienna for a four day stay our plans for the usual visits to galleries and cafés were somewhat curtailed by my intermittent health issue. Finally, a sleeper train took us from Vienna back to Brussels for a Eurostar train to London, and then home.

Postscript

This third part has taken me so long to complete that in the meantime the 2023 Cambridge conference has both come and gone so I might perhaps have added some further observations. My attendance though was minimal – just Sunday evening to Tuesday morning, so I shall draw a line at this point. Cambridge was both too close to home, and too expensive for this retired person. Somehow it is easier to justify such expenses when they involve travel to another country.

We had already decided against Stellenbosch – too far, too expensive and it would necessitate flying – the Swedes have a word: flygskam – literally flight shame (at the excessive amount of carbon burned in the process).

Looking forward though to Salzburg 2025, extending of course to Vienna. Taking increasing age, and a self-imposed flight ban into account, I think that conference might well turn out to be our last ... though if one of the Nordic countries were to make a proposal for 2028 onward ...

Maybe international in-person conferences will become rarer anyway setting online access against the carbon- and other costs of widespread travel.

The alert reader might note that not all of our train journeys ran as smoothly as might have been hoped for. Despite that we would not have swapped them for flying. We see interesting places along the way and have a proper sense of arrival rather than just dropping into a foreign city.

All images © Antony Gordon