I've now listened to it again on the radio, and can report that Pinchas Zuckerman's performance of the Elgar Violin Concerto last Sunday at the Proms was fine, contrary to what I guessed at when I first half listened to it. There were occasional imperfections of tuning, and some of Zuckerman's phrasing was not quite to my taste, being a little too swoopy and glissando-ed for my entire liking. But it certainly wasn't the "mediocre" performance I thought I had half heard on the night. Quite the reverse. The Prommers gave it a loud ovation, and they were right to.

So, apart from the obvious, not listening carefully enough, where did I go wrong?

I think there were two things happening which had me confused about this performance. First, I think the sound on my TV is very unsuited to bringing out the best in the performance Zuckerman gave of this piece, and to performances of violin concertos generally, come to that. Digital radio, plugged into my medium-fi, was far better. By lowering the treble and beefing up the bass, as is my taste, I spared myself the scratches and hisses that often go with violin concertos, especially difficult ones with lots of vehement bow-hitting-the-strings-really-hard passages. Thus purified, the excellence of Zuckerman's performance sang through, past all the scratching and hissing I heard, or think I probably heard, on Sunday.

But second, I now think that I blamed the messenger for the message. Simply, I now believe that I like this piece less well than I told myself I liked it. I especially don't care for the first movement movement.

Listening to the radio this afternoon, once this thought had occurred to me, I realised how much more beautiful the orchestra tended to sound than did the violin. And whereas on the night I blamed Zuckerman for this (regarding the piece itself as beyond criticism), now I think I blame Elgar. All that scratching and scraping. How much more beautiful those orchestral legatos sounded, with their long and generalised string sound, with discreet brass and woodwind reinforcement to create that unique Elgar sound.

Notice that the quality I am complaining of in Elgar's solo violin writing is the very thing that my TV's scrappy sound system with its excessive treble and inadequate bass emphasised. All that frantic scratching and scraping. On the TV it was all an order of magnitude more scratchy and scrapy.

I listened to several other performances of this piece before hearing Zuckerman's performance again, as I promised I would, and none of them ,ade much of impression on me (although I did find myself admiring the one by Kyoko Takezawa with Colin Davis and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra on RCA). And I think it was the music I was failing to respond to. After all, if a young Zuckerman, a young Nigel Kennedy, Heifetz even, didn't work for me, it must be me and the music that are not in sync. With messengers like that, it has to be that the message itself is unwelcome.

Please don't misunderstand me as saying that you shouldn't like the Elgar concerto, or worse, that you should stop liking it on my account.

The slow movement and the final movement, with that long and soulful cadenza, are better, for me. And Zuckerman played those movements very well indeed, although again, with the occasional tiny blemishes of tuning and phrasing that would probably be redone in a studio recording. But if I had really been enjoying the music such things would not have bothered me. I would have tuned in to the wonderful things that Zuckerman was also doing, with what is, I know, for many many people, a wonderful concerto. Definitely my loss.