On the rocks

generalities as “short but sweet”, packing in “drama and emotion”, “a fragile glass figurine”, “a work of very distinct parts” (yes, the symphony had four movements!) and “a generous second movement”.

But where was the music criticism? She does not write about the music in any depth. She omits detailed comment on the interpretations the soloist or the conductor placed upon the music.

Instead we are told what a “lovely, lovely person” the violin soloist is; how she vanished for 30 minutes because she “climbed inside” the concerto and “was trying to speak to us from inside her violin”.

We learn that the conductor has a “closeness to the orchestra” and knows exactly where to take it to deliver music that both moves and thrills”. Where to take it? What on earth does that mean?

None of this is the level of music criticism that Ken Walton led us to expect from the Scotsman and it was unfair to expect your excellent ballet critic to provide it.

JOHN MCCOLL Netherby Road, Edinburgh I was amused to read that Norway, the UK and the US are selling ice cubes to Iceland a country with 269 glaciers. Right on cue up jumps a Friends of Earth spokesman trumpeting that this is “threatening to wreck the planet”.

Climate change scientists are warning that Greenland’s ice is melting and if this continues sea levels could rise by seven metres. In 1989 scientists said global warming and rising sea level would wipe entire nations off the map by 2000.

The environmental lobby are ever ready to play the global warming card no matter that past prophesies have never come to pass.

CLARK CROSS Springfield Road, Linlithgow