Haitink, Chicago SO, Royal Festival Hall

Strolling into the Royal Festival Hall's private function room on Level 5 last night, I naturally expected it to be crammed with freeloading hacks such as myself on the trail of free drinks, but the room was mostly populated by corporate types in suits. If you want to pull together a menu of prestigious international orchestras in these straitened times (particularly those elusive American ones),  you can't hope to do better than enlist the support of a multinational oil company, and this was the opening night of the RFH's Shell Classic International season.