Photograph: Josephine Gilmour

With some careful planning, I was able to do a recording of Cimarosa’s L’Olimpiade with Les Talens Lyriques in Paris in the days off between the performances in Antwerp (16 December) and Lyon (19 December). On 22 December, I enjoyed a day off in Brussels with my wife, who had come to Belgium to coincide with the end of the tour, after the performance in Lyon (see picture below). Our free day in Brussels fell in between the Malonne (21 December) and Bruges (23 December) concerts. 

The final concert at the Concertgebouw in Bruges was particularly thrilling. By this stage of the December D major marathon, I was ‘half man, half Sudafed’ as a seasonal cold and winter burnout was catching up with me. However, I made it through with flying colours thanks to a timely dose of nasal spray (as one of my colleagues put it, 'they don’t teach you that at college’) before No. 54, which lasted until the rousing end of the concert (and the encore; a reprise of the first movement). Bruges was also teeming with people who were attending an outdoor festival in the square outside the Concertgebouw. These scenes were reminiscent of the market outside the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, where I played this time last year, with Les Talens Lyriques. There were thousands of people exploring Bruges city centre and its picturesque Christmas markets.