It has just come to my attention that someone actually wrote a review of my performance of the Vaughan-Williams concerto.

When I sat down to perform I noticed a chap sitting right on the front row, "in the line of fire" with the business end of my tuba pointing right at him. I asked him if he would like to move, but he declined.

It turns out he's a local music fanatic (his words) called Andrew Wardle and he wrote the following on his Band Club blog:

"The highlight of the evening was surely Ralph Vaughan Williams's Tuba Concerto in F Minor. The other pieces would have made the event well worth attending, but this made it a must attend. I was lucky enough to have the very best seat in the house (you'd be amazed how often that happens) as Nicholas Tollervey gave his excellent rendition of this all too rarely performed work. He read it off the sheet as well, unusually for a soloist. They can usually just get away with playing a piece of music, and leave the hard work to the orchestra!"

It's a good job he wasn't reading the score over my shoulder otherwise he'd have spotted my "deliberate" mistake that only myself and Graham (the conductor) noticed. :-)