THE NEW Oboe Concerto by Dominic Muldowney is not the 'yuppie trash' I heard it summarily branded after its premiere at the Barbican on Wednesday. Yuppies, if they still exist, would be confounded by the ceaseless rhythmic displacement of a 25- minute score that rarely gives an unequivocal first beat in the bar. But easy listening isn't far from its agenda, and it must have disappointed anyone who came to the performance - by the LSO, with its own Roy Carter as the soloist - expecting epic virtuosity. What they got instead was a temperate cantabile in something like the light pastoral tradition of Vaughan Williams but with a French refinement in the scoring and a background tapestry of objets trouves: fleeting resonances of Broadway tunes, waltzes, cabaret vernacular that catch the ear like conversations in a crowded room but retreat into the hubbub before you can make sense of them.

TWO MEN are doing a stunning Charleston routine together, the debonair young Baron dancing with such negligent ease and speed and the little Jewish bookkeeper with such characterful zest that, when they raise their champagne glasses and sing a witty song that manages to tuck in toasts from various languages, you feel quite giddy with elation. Or at least you would, if it weren't for the fact that Kringelein, the little Jew, is supposed to be dying from a terminal illness and whatever else the terminally ill may do, you know that it is only in an American musical that they would be inclined to 'dance' their troubles away.

Lillie Klot (Georgia Brown), actress and singer, born London 21 October 1933, married 1974 Gareth Wigan (one son; marriage dissolved), died London 5 July 1992.

Tired but content, Betty Comden and Adolph Green have just returned from rehearsals of On the Town at London's Barbican Centre. 'Great, great voices,' says Comden, proceeding to praise each cast-member by name. 'And we have the marvellous Tyne Daly in the part Nancy Walker originally played. She's brilliant, just brilliant.' Adds the dapper Green, unveiling his trademark wrap-around grin, 'Everything is going . . . wonderfully.'