And now, the end is near…

So what better way to finish off a world tour than two nights in Paris. The embers of the tour began with a train journey from Cologne which was beautiful – well the bits I saw when I wasn’t asleep were anyway. It was very quiet indeed, a measure of just how tired we all are – even Sue didn’t bother us with her clipboard and blackberry thing. Still, we needed our rest as we only had time for a quick lunch before a three hour rehearsal at the Salle Pleyel. A very short hour’s break and we launched into the concert. Once again, despite not being very well, Valery threw himself in to the show and we had to play two encores. The Paris audience were very enthusiastic despite it being quite a challenging programme of No 3, No 4 and the third piano concerto with the wonderful Lang Lang. I listened to his rehearsal as I wasn’t in the piece, and he was so great to listen to and watch. He really responds to the orchestra and has a fantastically delicate touch when needed.

 

Yesterday was the final day and for the first time in weeks, none of us had to set the alarm clock. I still woke up early and headed out for a wander and a coffee with friends which turned, inevitably, into lunch. All of a sudden it was time to go to work.

 

I actually felt quite emotional when we got there. I don’t know quite how we have managed it, playing all this Prokofiev, but it shows how great the music and the performances are when I tell you that I haven’t been bored once. We played the fifth symphony for the last time last night and yet again, Valery was picking out different lines that I hadn’t heard before. He had to balance the orchestra differently to our roof raising performance in NYC as the hall in Paris simply can’t take it. But what a performance. We only had the energy to play one encore and then with the cheering still ringing in our ears, we went downstairs to have a beer.

 

It’s been astonishing, through this world tour, I have now got a new second flute, I have blogged thousands of words and I have broken the sound barrier several times in the Classical symphony – but I’m glad to be on the train home.

 

We have played 16 pieces, 41 concerts, 120 players, 14 countries.

 

But only one conductor.

Eurovision

Only 17 hours after arriving home from Tallinn, I am walking out of my front door again, with a fresh set of clothes you’ll be pleased to know, going to Heathrow airport. I think so anyway. As I get in the car I have to make one last check to see that I am going to the right terminal at the right airport. I am. I have the correct passport ( I have two), my flute and my tails-its time to go.

 

After our tour of Serbia, Croatia, Lithuania, Estonia and Hungary last week had been so successful, I was hoping that we may have softened the accusations of block voting in the Eurovision song contest. As we were a British orchestra, playing Russian music, conducted by an Ossetian, I felt sure that our enthusiastic reception at the concerts could only help Lord Lloyd Webber and his crusade to bring the crown of pop glory home. Before that however, we had some more work to do.

 

I have written about Frankfurt before in this blog,(http://lsoontour.wordpress.com/2009/02/13/ich-bin-ein-frankfurter) and I must admit, I really have no idea who reads it-I only get figures not faces-unless you leave a comment of course. If you read it last time, you may remember that I loved the pre concert timing ritual where the backstage staff gave us the 15 minutes till kick off announcement which made reference to the fact that it was now 1945. Well, I think they may have read the blog last time, because at the appropriate time, we all waited in silence as the speaker crackled into life.

 

“ladies and gentlemen of the London Symphony Orchestra, it is a pleasure to have back, you have 15 minutes before the concert. The time is 7.45”

 

The room was filled with the collective groans of disappointment.

 

The hall is huge. Really huge, you can barely see the back. When the last whip crack of Prokofiev 5 was fired off into the hall, you could quite clearly hear it bounce back of the back wall at least a second ofter we played it. Its funny though how differently audiences around the world react to the same pieces. I was interviewed for the TV in Zagreb and the presenter asked what I was expecting from the audience. It’s a difficult question to answer. Well, I suppose clapping would be good, maybe cheering and whistling, a standing ovation is always nice-but to be honest, I never expect anything, but what I get is always different. In Daytona, the audience whooped and shouted at every opportunity, they stood up every night, sometimes when we were only half way through the show. I mean the interval of course, not in the middle of a piece-they may make more noise than other places, but they know when they hear something good. The audiences here in Germany take their music very seriously too, but like to show how serious they are by dressing up smartly and sitting very still and quietly, quite often with a quizzical tilt of the head or a rub of the chin. These are all gestures learnt by politicians and used to great effect when trying to exude gravitas, sympathy or simply writing off the £6000 trouser press on expenses. However, the audience here really does know what it is doing, I must admit to feeling nervous when we play Beethoven over here.

 

In Cologne, last night, you can see the audience as it is a smaller hall and the lights are kept on throughout the show. We played the Classical symphony (the last one-hurray!), and as I looked out, I could see people sat in hard concentration looking, to be honest, a bit miserable after America. However as we sprinted to the end of the symphony, they erupted in applause and smiles and called Valery back on three times. It just goes to show that you can’t judge by appearances. By the time we had played No. 5, they stood up and we ended up playing two encores and I’m sure if we had had anymore to play they would have gladly stayed for more.

 

In my elation at having managed to play all of the Classical Symphonies without spreading it all over the ceiling or dropping the music I had completely forgotten about the tradition in Cologne of providing free beer for the orchestra after the concert! I guess they thought we had worked very hard as there was a young lady with a tray of beers standing right next to the door from the stage. I had finished my first one before my flute was cold and in its case. Marvellous.

 

As you can imagine, I was itching to know if our musical influence in the Baltics had extended to giving the British entry for the Eurovision a lift up the scoreboard. I arrived back at he hotel to find the dregs of the competition being shown on a gigantic television screen. There was no sign of Andrew Lloyd Webber though. I was greeted by Audun, our guest principal bassoon this week who seemed in remarkably high spirits.

 

I ordered a drink and said, “Did we win then?”

 

“Yes we did” replied Auden.

 

I felt a warm glow of patriotic fervour. I’ve watched Wales and England lose so many matches whilst I’ve been away from home which somehow seems to make it worse. So on this occasion, it was nice to have something to celebrate. I turned to Tom at the bar and expressed amazement at winning-he looked at me quizzically

 

“I don’t think we did mate”

 

I looked at Audun, “We won”, he said again.

 

Oh yes, our guest principal bassoon.

 

He’s Norwegian. It appears I may have overestimated our cultural impact.

A New Model

I’ve never actually bought a brand new car, I mean one of those ones where the plastic is still on the seats and the odometer has the delivery mileage only. Being a financially challenged musician and father of 3, the newest car I have ever bought was a year old. It still had that new car smell and I enjoyed it immensely as my previous car had blown up on the A3 and I hadn’t been able to afford a new one for about 6 months. I had to borrow my mother’s car and call in a lot of lifts from friends.

The eagle eyed amongst you will have spotted that the wonderful Martin Parry, 2^nd flute in the LSO retired around a year ago. He had a very long and distinguished career as a flautist, before joining us, he was principal in the LPO and the BBC and studied with the great Rampal and Moyse. When I was a fresh faced young player joining the LSO, he was a constantly reassuring presence at my side, totally experienced, totally unflappable- in fact he most definitely in my mind is a classic car, with the twinkle in his eye, probably an Aston Martin.

So over the last year we have had several flute players on trial with us, as you may have noticed. I wouldn’t dream of alluding to which cars they were, it would be rude, but of course some are more reliable than others. However, if you have been watching closely, you will have noticed that we have a new model in the LSO garage. Siobhan Grealy officially started with us as second flute this week, and I am pleased to say that she is turning out to be a bit of a Porsche. Reliable, stylish but exciting with the ability to put her foot down. She’s probably very expensive too and a future classic. It also means that I am now outnumbered by women in the section by 50%. There are however, worse things in life, at least I can escape to a different dressing room!

I always thought you were supposed to run cars in gently, but this tour has been a baptism of fire. I am writing this on a plane, again, as we briefly return home before leaving again in the morning to finish off the tour. We have done 5 concerts in 5 countries with 5 different sets of banknotes. At times I have tried to pay with the wrong notes, (better than playing the wrong notes, which of course, I never do) and at least twice this week, I have tried to get into the wrong hotel room because it was the room number of the previous hotel. So I am very glad to be able to get home to see the family, however briefly, I think we have travelled even more than Valery himself this week. But probably not.

It was a bit of a shock to visit Tallinn yesterday. It is a lot further north than the other places we visited, in fact I think its as far north as the Orkneys and the temperature dropped considerably, whereas the hours of daylight increased. Tallinn is one of the most beautiful places I have been to and it’s a real shame that we were on such a tight schedule. The hall itself was quite small, only 993 seats so John Lawley tells me, which was a huge difference to Zagreb! It felt very intimate last night with the people in the balcony being directly above some of the basses, I imagine that their seats were vibrating wildly in sympathy. During the rehearsal, the local television station were filming for the news, they wanted some footage of the orchestra rehearsing with Valery. The thing is he hasn’t been too well this week, a touch of bronchitis, but of course he has insisted on doing the shows, but some of the rehearsals had been shortened. By the time we reach this stage of a tour, we have played the same pieces several times and a lot of the balance rehearsal is for…er… well balancing. So on this occasion whilst the cameras waited for Valery to take the stage, Andrew stood up and we launched into the Stravinsky. There were a lot of puzzled looks on the cameramen’s faces, they started gesticulating in Estonian, which seems to be similar to English. We played for a few minutes while they filmed the seemingly driverless juggernaut. When we all stopped playing, this Russian voice boomed out from the darkness of the stalls,

“Brass, please give 20% less and then the balance will be perfect. Please play from figure 36, I need quiet music now”

It was of course Valery. He is one of the few conductors who actually does use the balance rehearsal for balancing the sound of the orchestra. In this hall, the reverberant acoustic meant that we had to ease off at the back so that we didn’t overwhelm the strings. This was completely the opposite of the night before in Vilnius when we had to move the brass closer to the front and ask them to play louder! You just never know.

Once Valery was happy, the rehearsal finished and the tv people never did get their shots, so when I switched on the news as I went to bed last night, I saw lots of close ups of the players and a little bit of a shadowy figure in the stalls. The audience loved the concert, one member of the audience, above the basses, enjoyed it so much, he punched the air wildly looking like he was about to stage dive in the rock and roll style.

He didn’t.

So as we travel back before we embark on a slightly less hectic part 2, we get to rest awhile, change our oil and fill up our tanks with premium grade. After this tour I shall be getting some new tyres and having a rest before my annual service. But for the next few days I shall be enjoying some more fantastic concerts with my new Porsche and of course the the fabulous Ferrari on piccolo.

Next stop Frankfurt.

The LSO has left the building!

The longer this tour lasts, the more I feel like a rock star. I should point out to my family at this early stage of my rambling metaphor that this does not extend to the sex and drugs cliche – although I did have some dessert wine last night in Budapest. I also haven’t thrown any televisions out of the window either -I couldn’t cope with the wrath of Sue Mallet, something Led Zeppelin never had to worry about. Just think how rock history may have changed.

We played in Zagreb a couple of nights ago, a fantastically beautiful town which we sadly didn’t have much time to look around. I only realised as I got my passport out again this morning that we are visiting 7 countries in 10 days, so you can imagine that there isn’t much time for sightseeing. So in Zagreb, there is a beautiful theatre from the nineteenth century. We didn’t play there. There was also a concert hall; we didn’t play in there either. No, we played in the massive sports arena with amplification, which seats 10000 people. Not exactly intimate. We had a seating call, mainly to check microphones in the cavernous hall. Lets just say that Prokofiev 5 had never sounded so loud.

When you regularly get to play in some of the best halls in the world, the thought of playing in a drafty arena isn’t great. My feelings didn’t change when we got there, the stage was tiny in the hall, with a big stack of speakers to pump out the music which we had so delicately honed and sculpted over the last few months. Oh well.

Then something really strange happened. I knew that Valery is quite well known and popular in this part of the world, but I was quite taken aback when I walked into the hall. People had been arriving for quite some time, and of course the concert started late because of the sheer size of the venue. I asked Sue if they had sold many tickets and she informed me tat it was sold out. I assumed she was being sarcastic as the hall does indeed hold 10000, and she is often sarcastic. There was quite a noise coming from in the hall and as I stepped onto the platform with the rest of the band, I was greeted with the sound of 10000 people clapping! I’m sure it must be one of the biggest audiences we’ve had-its like selling out the Barbican more than 4 times. As is often the case at times like this, the orchestra went from being a bit miserable to playing very well indeed, spurred on by the audience. After the encore, I really wanted to shout “Good night Zagreb” extremely loudly down a mike and maybe destroy the drum kit. However I decided against it and stayed on backstage where the organisers of the concert provided us with beer and food-very welcome indeed.

We also have our own personal air crew on this trip,with our own plane. I am perhaps making it sound better than you are imagining, but as we are visiting lots of places, we had to charter a plane for the week. We are very lucky to have I think, the nicest crew on board who have been looking after us. They were able to come to the concert and enjoyed it so much that this morning on the plane they brought round some chocolates for us. How lovely. I hope they come to more concerts, I rather enjoyed being served chocolates!

I couldn’t help notice as well that there were warning signs about what not to bring into the hall in Belgrade. This is quite normal of course, don’t bring drinks, cameras or audio recorders, you know the kind of thing. Except this was a picture notice so that you weren’t in any doubt as to what to bring in. No dogs, shorts, guns or flip flops. How eclectic. How rock and roll – you can record the concert but don’t shoot anyone, especially if they are wearing flip flops.

I must sign off as we are about to start the rehearsal in Vilnius. I am feeling a little nervous, we have a world premiere of a new piece by Shchedrin. To make matters worse, Sharon is wearing flip flops.

I hope they searched her bag on the way in. Rock and Roll

By the way, you may have noticed the pictures of our private jet and lovely crew! Thanks guys, you were great!

Method Music

I trust, ladies and gentlemen, that you are familiar with the theory behind method acting? Roughly speaking (and I’m no expert) rather than simply imagining you are a criminal gangster and acting in a film, you actually rob a bank as part of your research and stay in character throughout the duration of filming. Or something like that anyway. Robert De Niro famously trained as a boxer for his role in Raging Bull and gained the appropriate physique and skills associated with the pugilistic art. This of course made his performance more realistic and is a landmark in method acting. I haven’t actually seen one of his other famous films, Taxi Driver, but I imagine he did a fair amount of minicabbing around Brooklyn for that one. Probably. Back to that later.

Of course in 21^st century classical music, its no longer enough to simply do concerts, you know, an overture, a concerto, a symphony plus interval drinks. Now we all have to have marketing to keep up with other more fashionable art forms. I don’t think that this is a bad thing-if you are passionate about something and want to tell people about it, then its a busy world out there with lots of other distractions. You have to shout about it these days. Its not a new idea, but we often have themes, like many arts organisations. Of course we have always had concert series devoted to the works of one composer. Over the last few seasons, we have had Mahler with Valery and Beethoven with Haitink. Those of you who visit the LSO website will have noticed the various themes, like “Love Brahms?”-well, yes, as you asked.

If you were at the concerts in the Barbican last week, you will have noticed the Emigre series where we programme works of composers who left their homelands. It was a fascinating evening with the Stravinsky symphony in 3 movements and the Scheonjberg Violin Concerto played magnificently by Nicolaij Zneider. The second half of the concert was Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances. I had a chat with Valery the other day about the emigre series and it was very interesting to hear him talk at length about the way leaving your homeland can affect you. In case you were wondering, this wasn’t a random conversation in the corridor, it was a lunchtime talk in St Lukes. Of course all three of the composers had very different experiences and all of them ended up living fairly close to one another in Hollywood funnily enough. However Rachmaninov left a pre revolutionary Russia whilst Stravinsky left a rather different homeland and you can hear the difference in the pieces in the concert.

We played last night in Belgrade, not as part of the emigre series, but the Rachmaninov was played none the less along with… yes, Prokofiev 5. Whilst Prokofiev wasn’t an emigre, he certainly travelled around a lot in his time-at least until his passport wasn’t renewed. Now if you have been reading my blogs over the last 6 months, you will have noticed that they have been popping up with alarming regularity. You will also notice that I often divert from descriptions of the concerts as it is very hard to think up yet more ways of describing how terrifying the Classical symphony is. Only 3 more by the way-boy are we going to have a drink after those! Anyway, I digress again. The reason there are so many blogs, so many sentences and so many words is that there have been so many tours! As my long suffering, patient and beautiful wife pointed out as I unpacked one case and packed another, I have spent more time out of the country than in it in the last 2 months. Which is where we get back to method acting or in our case method music. What better ensemble could you ask for to play the music of emigres, than an orchestra made up of people from every corner of the globe who spend a huge amount of time away from home. Music can make you feel a lot of things, but when you play those searing bitter sweet lines of Prokofiev and Rachmaninov on tour, and you long to be at home with your family, they take on an extra depth. It’s hard on us, but quite something for you.

When I spoke to Valery, I asked him if he thought that Rachmaninov had an idealistic vision of an old Russia which no longer existed. A Russia which he saw through rose, rather than red tinted spectacles, and did he think that this came through in his music? And did he think that Stravinsky had a more realistic view because of his different experience in Russia, and did this come through in his music?

Valery paused and thought for a while. I then expanded my theory. I explained that my father left a small mining village in Wales in the 1960’s. There wasn’t really any work, the mines were closing and he moved to England. I often wonder when he expresses a fleeting thought that one day he might move back home, whether he would be disappointed to find a very different place from the Wales of his childhood. I wonder whether this meant that he had an idealised view of a past which was no longer there. Did Valery think that this was a similar kind of thing which some of his Russian emigre composers had been through?

Valery paused again and then roared with laughter. I asked him why he was laughing. He said

“I love that you compare the suffering of the Russian emigre composers with your father having to move from Wales to live in England!! That is so funny!”

I thought about it and realised how stupid I had been.

Rachmaninov had it easy.

Film: LSO at the Daytona Beach International Festival

We captured some of the LSO working and playing hard at the Daytona Beach International Festival in this video. Enjoy! And do let us know what you think.

The end of the show

I think that Daytona Beach fell in love with Kristian Jarvi last night. Anyone who was at the concert we did with him in the Barbican a while ago will know what I’m talking about. The audience wasn’t quite as full as other shows here-it was a conductor they weren’t familiar with and even less well known repertoire-however people who came will go away telling there friends that they should have been there.

In the pre concert talk, Jarvi spoke passionately about music and why we should be more adventurous in our choices of repertoire. He was also very keen to discuss music education, however, when he swooped onto the stage in black with his long hair and huge smile, most of the ladies fell in love with him before he did anything! As he whipped the orchestra into a bacchanalian frenzy with more percussion latin rhythms than Lalo Schifrin, the audience went crazy. At a party afterwards, he was surrounded by people wanting to talk to him, even the men by now. I think everyone in the hall had fun last night. I think he’ll be back!

But that was last night and today we had our last concert in Daytona Beach. a little light firebird followed by Carmina Burana. It feels like every night, we have pushed the audience to its limits with the music-tonight was to be no exception.

Daniel Harding was at his expressive best in the Firebird and gave a sensational reading. The audience gave us a standing ovation-and it was only the first half! So when we came back on for Carmina, the stage was groaning with the weight of the orchestra, soloists and surely one of the best choirs I have heard, the Bach Festival Choir from Orlando. In fact the stage was so full, the children’s choir had to sit in the auditorium to sing their parts.

The house was full and on tenter hooks as Daniel raised his hands and those famous crashing chords came in. The choir sang as if their lives depended on it, they really were quite outstanding, I’m not sure what was on the pizzas they were all demolishing before the concert, but I’d like the recipe.

Carmina can go on a bit to be honest, and after the first famous chorus, you have to wait about an our until it comes back at the end. On this occasion, Dan kept the tension going all the way through, hardly pausing for breath. The soprano Malin Christensson floated effortlessly above the swaying ostinato figures and Markus Werba the baritone declaimed his parts brilliantly. However, the real stars of this show were the chorus.

As we reached the end, they seemed to lose no energy, it really did feel like a rollercoaster ride. as the trumpets blasted out the final notes and before the audience erupted, one solitary audience member summed up this performance and to be honest, the whole trip.

“Whoooooooo!” he cried, before the rest of the audience roared their approval.

What a concert and what a trip. Daytona Beach is always special and what makes it special is the welcome we receive from everybody here. The staff, the volunteers and everyone else involved make us feel so welcome and we have a great time, so it makes it easy to do great concerts. Thank you all, and we look forward to seeing all of our friends again in 2011.

Despite the joy of the concert this evening, it was with great sadness that we learned of the death of our great friend and supporter Eddie Waters.

Eddie told me once that he was a self confessed groupie of the LSO and followed us as far afield as Japan and the 2007 trip here to Daytona Beach. He was a lovely man who was also very generous, he commissioned Querk by Karl Jenkins for myself, Neil Percy and John Alley to play as part of the 2004 centenary celebrations. Wherever we were playing around the world, he would always sit, as I look out to the audience, about 3 or 4 rows back, just to the right of the conductor, usually in one of his bright red or green jackets! I shall miss the wave we gave each other as I walked on stage every night. We all will.

Rest in peace Eddie.

Mission Impossible

The lovely June and her teapot. My favourite person in Daytona Beach

Tom and Malcolm during Mozart rehearsal

Mozart’s Letters in Deland

Daytona Speedway Rehearsal!!

After a very welcome day off where I personally did very little except move from pool to beach, the second free day saw a lot of us whizzing around at high speed. The organisers of the festival had very kindly organised for us to visit the Daytona NASCAR racing track. Being used to the kind of motorsport we see in Britain, with its turns and tight tracks, I was intrigued to see what makes a sport where the cars go around a huge banked oval track, so popular. Like everything in America, the track was huge. It is 2.5 miles long with a couple of grandstands which hold a couple of hundred thousand people. Two of the three banked corners are at an angle of 31 degrees which means you have to go fast otherwise the car slips off the track.

The best thing about our visit was that we all got to go round the track in a pace car at about 140 mph. Four lucky members climbed in the window of a real racing car and deafened us all with an even faster lap. I’m not sure which was louder though, the exhaust of Sylvain’s screaming! What a fantastic experience-I can only imagine the thrill as fifty of these cars race at 200mph, three abreast. Now I see what all the fuss is about!

I had to make a swift exit, as I had another chamber concert, Mozart’s Letters, over in Deland. Tom, Malcolm, Rebecca, Mathew and I played a concert where some of the letters Mozart wrote to his friends and family were woven in between some of his chamber music. We had the pleasure of playing in the refurbished Athens Theatre, an old vaudeville hall which had a great acoustic and a great audience. To be honest, as soon as Matt opened his mouth and his boomy English accent came out, we couldn’t really lose! After the show, we had a reception out on the street and met some lovely people who all commented that it was so nice to see us obviously enjoying ourselves. Well, whats the point in looking miserable just because you play classical music? Great theatre, great music, great audience,what’s not to smile about? We also were happy as we stayed in Deland after the show and went to a new Indian restaurant called Cress and had a fantastic curry! What a great day.

The following day, we had rehearsals for the last couple of concerts and a free evening. This was just as well as the next day went on forever.

After several of June’s cups of tea, we began with a rehearsal for the family and community concert where we were joined by a group of very enthusiastic young Floridian musicians. They were members of the AT&T youth ensemble and had been working with LSO players all week-finally they played on stage with us. Paul Rismann led the concert, which was conducted by Mike Francis, through a fast paced tour of the Enigma variations and various other pieces. By the volume of the response of the audience, I could tell they liked it!

We had a short break to get some lunch before we began the rehearsal with Lalo Schifrin for the evening show. Its always great for the LSO to let its hair down, but the skill of Lalo’s orchestration and composition means that we aren’t simply a backing band. The orchestral writing in soundtracks like Bullit, Mission Impossible and Dirty Harry are full of power and instantly take you back to the films. He once wrote a score for the Exorcist which wasn’t used in the end – the rumour is that is was too scary – seriously!! I had the chance to put a few questions to him and his wonderful band in a pre concert talk. His CV is so varied and astonishing, just reading it makes me feel like an incompetent musician. He studied classical composition in Paris with none other than Messiaen (who didn’t like him doing Jazz), and whilst playing in a bar was approached by Dizzy Gillespie to join his band. Even Alex Acuna, the drummer in Lalo’s band has god like status – he was the drummer in Weather Report and even played with Elvis Presley! However, the star of the night for many was the multi instrumentalist James Morrison. He played trombone, trumpet and flugal horn brilliantly. I can’t possibly describe what he does, you simply have to hear it, but at several points in the evening he had the LSO laughing at his sheer virtuosity and skill-this man can get higher up than I can!

On the trombone!

At one point he was doing a call and response solo by holding his trombone in his left hand and trumpet in his right and swapping between the two-unbelievable. Please do search him out, you won’t be disappointed.

In the pre concert talk, someone asked how much they practice. There were various answers as you would expect. James however said that he never practiced-he played so many instruments, how would he know which one to practice. He wasn’t joking.

A fantastic night with some truly remarkable musicians. In fact a rather humbling night to be in the company of such versatile and talented men.

I am off to practice.

Flat and Sharp

I woke up yesterday with that familiar nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach. It’s always the same, but before my brain becomes fully conscious I try and remember why it is that I feel off colour. After a few seconds, I remember and crawl out of bed, open the curtains and let the low blazing sun light up my room. The music for the concerto sits staring at me on the table and the cadenzas, which suddenly seem to have more notes than before, spill out of the score. My flute sits expectantly, waiting to be polished and cleaned, and a clean white shirt hangs crumpled on a hanger. As I stand in a hot room, ironing, I get ready as fast as I can , I want to eat some breakfast before nerves prevent me from eating lunch. I don’t have time to sit by the pool today, we have a rehearsal this morning and then I will be playing the Mozart flute and harp concerto with Bryn Lewis. However right now I feel like walking out into the waves and letting nature take its course…

So after managing to eat something I walk over to the Peabody early to warm up. Its a funny thing, but the thought of things like this are often worse than the event themselves. As soon as I put my instrument together and start playing, I instantly feel calmer. Maybe it’s a sense of relief that I can actually play, or maybe it’s just doing something, anything, to take my mind off being nervous. In the heat of the dressing room, a small lizard darts across the chair-does this mean good luck? I don’t know, but I’ve never seen one in the Barbican that’s for sure.

As the stage fills, normality makes me feel calmer and soon enough we are rehearsing Mahler for the second half of the afternoon concert, it gives me something else to focus on. As ever, we have to sort out the offstage trumpets. The first time through they are too loud, so Daniel asks them to move further away. This time it sounds better and Dan asks them to come onto the stage. They actually have a tv monitor so that they can see the conductor, so they see him waving and appear at one of the side doors.

“That sounds great, how far away are you?”

Rod Franks replies,” We moved back to the corridor. We tried to play it from Froggy’s bar across the road, but the cables wouldn’t stretch!”

Daniel laughs and calls for the break in rehearsal.

I fortify myself with one of June’s cups of tea – and then another one – I don’t know what we’d do without her over here- and then return to the stage. Bryn is already centre stage with his harp and I take my place next to him. It’s very strange to stand up the front. I don’t get to do it very often and I know that there are no critics in any newspaper who can compete with my colleagues! The rehearsal goes very smoothly and we actually finish early, I am feeling strangely calm by now and manage to eat a sandwich.

Before we can play the concert, I have to do the pre concert talk with Bryn. Now I’ve done quite a few of these over the years, but I think Bryn is more nervous about it than the concerto! However, once we take the stage, he is a natural. The audience here in Daytona beach always have lots of questions and today is no exception. We find out that he didn’t start playing until he was 18 and has at least 7 harps-or maybe more! By the time the talk is over we both feel quite relaxed and the countdown begins.

I don’t have a ritual before I play, except another cup of tea, but today there is only time to change and warm up again. The orchestra takes the stage, the hall is full and Bryn and I stand in the wings in the darkness with Daniel and Carmine. The door opens and light bursts out towards us, Carmine walks into it to applause and the door is closed. It is dark again. Alan our stage manager asks if we are ready, but it’s a rhetorical question, the door is opened once again and Bryn and I walk onto the stage. I imagine it’s how rugby players feel when they walk out of the tunnel in Cardiff, except quieter. I can see the front few rows of audience, but the rest are cloaked in darkness, silent, waiting for us to begin. It is strange as 3 minutes earlier I was a bundle of nerves and if someone had told me the concert was cancelled, I wouldn’t have minded, yet now, with my flute up and ready, I feel relaxed and excited all at the same time. I guess I must be a natural show off.

It’s not really for me to say how it went, but I was quite happy. Bryn was as ever, marvellous and having the LSO as a backing band is always going to be a treat. Daniel was of course…a super conductor.

If you want to read a review and see a picture (I did iron my shirt), follow this link.

http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Entertainment/Headlines/entMUS01042709.htm

Tomorrow, a group of us travel round the Daytona speedway at 140mph. That’s even faster than Carmine playing Moto Perpetuo.

I think.

Superconductor

Simon Trpceski was a delight to interview, and I pronounced his name correctly you’ll be pleased to know. It turns out that in his spare time he writes pop music, he tells me that at home in Macedonia, he is almost better known as a pop star! He sadly didn’t sing anything for us, but I am going to pay close attention to the Macedonian entry in next years Eurovision song contest.

Simon played the Grieg piano concerto in the opening concert of the festival for the LSO. He was fantastic. He talked earlier about the simplicity of the folk music he played on accordion as a child and how the Grieg was very similar. Of course, it’s the hardest thing in the world to play a simple melody and make it sing, but he did it beautifully. I look forward to seeing him play in London next year.

The second half of the show was devoted to Brahms 1^st symphony. Its one of my favourite pieces and a joy to play. Daniel Harding is the conductor in residence this year and he seems to be enjoying himself. In fact, in the programme for the festival he is described as the “European Super conductor”. I always thought that was something to do with quantum mechanics, but Dan doesn’t seem to mind, he’s so relaxed he’s probably following the path of least resistance anyway. Still whatever you call him, he does make the symphony very exciting indeed. The audience gave us a standing ovation which was our queue to move next door for a party where we all danced to a fabulous big band.

This morning, I managed to sit by the pool for a while before the rehearsal. I haven’t mentioned the weather, it would seem like I’m bragging, and if you are reading this in Britain then lets just say its a bit nicer here. However it was soon time to go to the huge arena opposite the hotel for the LSO Pops concert. Tonight is was all themed around speed. I was nervous as it would mean playing fast-a lot. I was right, flight of the bumble bee was the second piece followed by a bit from Harry Potter where the woodwind players zoomed around like broomsticks. But the prize for the night has to go to Carmine Lauri our leader. He stood up in front of a sea of people and played Moto Perpetuo unbelievably fast. I don’t quite know how he does it-his fingers were moving so fast they were a blur. I saw him afterwards by the pool drinking a beer-well deserved, but I’m sure he was probably dipping his fingers in the water to cool them down when nobody was looking. Tommy Pearson was compere for the evening and did a great job keeping the evening flowing along nicely.

I am writing this bed, despite some of my friends going out, I have turned in for the night for tomorrow its my turn up the front. Bryn and I are the soloists in the first half, playing Mozart’s Flute and Harp concerto or as its known here, the Flat and Sharp. I don’t get to stand up at the front very often so I am a bit nervous. No, terrified actually, and to make matters worse we have Mahler 1 in the second half. before that however I have a pre concert interview to do with the soloist. As even I can’t talk to myself for 45 minutes, I’ll be having a chat about harps and strings and things with Bryn before the show.

I’ll let you know how we get on…