Ho ho ho. It’s the Blog Christmas Special!

Dear Father Christmas

I have been a very good boy this year and I know you are rather busy with all the little kids and stuff but if you get a moment there are a few things I would really like for me and my 95 friends. It’s just that this year we have had a bit of a nightmare travelling around the world. Don’t worry, I’m not asking for your sleigh or anything but if you could do some magic that would be cool. You remember that volcano earlier this year ?

http://lsoontour.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/the-esraehtniniap-volcano-thingy/

That was a right pain when we tried to fly. The snow earlier this year even stopped the Eurostar despite the fact that it goes under the sea. Its just that we find it really difficult; take for example this weekend. We were due to fly to Zagreb on Saturday morning and then Palermo on Sunday morning and fly back after the concert. Its hard enough as it is but when you add snow, well of course as you know we don’t do snow in Britain so we just sort of give up. Except at the LSO of course. I left my house at 5am and it was -10 degrees, I slid around the M25 and up the M11 to Stansted. There was already a covering of the white stuff, just enough to look Christmasy, however I knew that if we were at all delayed I would still be in England long enough to see the newspapers resurrect their snow pun headlines and also to see Sue Mallet spontaneously combust. This would be a bad thing of course. Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who was conducting, was worried about his cows in Dorset, I was worried that if we did get away, we wouldn’t get back, and we had two sets of instruments going to the two venues, one by air, one by truck and the charter plane was filled with cellos and violins. Pretty complicated even by your standards.

Anyway, I don’t know whether you had anything to do with it, but we took off on time and it wasn’t until we reached Zagreb that we heard about the huge amount of snow in Britain which paralysed the country. Radio and television shouted about TRAVEL CHAOS and it gave newspaper editors the chance to ‘dig out’ their best puns (see, it’s contagious). The strange thing was that when we landed in Croatia, there was loads of snow and it was much colder than at home but everybody seemed to be carrying on as normal.

Anyway, the concert was really good and I particularly enjoyed the way he made the string players stand up to play the Italian Symphony because apparently that’s what they did when it was first played. I should point out that the basses sort of half stand and half sit anyway on their bar stools and the cellos didn’t stand up of course, that would have looked silly! Anyway, if you could sort out the climate for us that would be grand.

The other thing I would like you to sort out for us, if you get a chance is the international instrument transport problem, or as we call it the Dijon Syndrome. You may have heard that a few years ago there was yet another strike by somebody and the LSO instruments got stuck on a motorway and we all had to borrow instruments from friendly locals and play the concert in Dijon in our jeans.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article3517049.ece

It was something that we didn’t want to repeat and so this weekend we had two sets of instruments – what could go wrong? As you are pretty much welcome the world over and don’t have to worry about visas, carnets or petrol (although I guess you don’t get to collect as many air miles as me) I had better explain a few things. When we travel in the EU its all fine and dandy, we chuck the instruments in the van and then Dan and/or Alan drive them to where we are going whilst we stretch out and relax in the economy section of the plane. When we get to the hall we always find the van waiting for us like a homing pigeon.

When we travel outside the EU, we have a thing called a carnet. I don’t really know what this is but it seems to be a list with all the instruments on it, probably similar to the billions of letters you get from kids. Miriam, Sue and Alan take it very seriously indeed. It’s like a passport for our instruments and works well as long as we make sure that we only have what is on the list on the way in and the way out. It stops us using the LSO as a front for international snare drum smuggling, which as you can imagine is a huge racket.

This weekend was complicated as Croatia is not in the EU, but Italy is. As it was such a tight turnaround we had instruments on one van going to Croatia with a carnet and another set going to Italy on another van, as well as many people carrying there instruments on the plane. It should have been really simple but it snowed. In Northern Italy. In fact it seemed to snow directly on the van and as bad luck would have it, Italy is the other country in Europe that cannot deal with snow. What are the chances of that happening? Unlike you, the van drivers can only drive for a certain number of hours before they have to rest, and despite the fact that they didn’t move for 6 hours this still counted as driving and so we found out in Zagreb that the instruments wouldn’t make it to Palermo in time. Dijon Syndrome. Oh dear, but wait a minute, can’t we just take the instruments from Zagreb to Palermo instead? Miriam and Sue looked at me like I was an idiot and just said “Carnet” in unison. Oh, the carnet. So of course despite the fact we had all we needed for the concert the next day, they had to go back because they were on the list and they weren’t coming in. To take them off the carnet at this stage would have been illegal, and would have caused Sue Mallet to explode. This would be a bad thing. If we took into account the instruments we were hand carrying we needed:

2 violins

2 cellos

2 trumpets

7 double basses

3 trombones

2 timpani (calf headed please)

On a Sunday in Italy. I am happy to tell you that a car was dispatched to get some of the smaller items from the van and we borrowed some timps and basses from the Palermo Opera. We didn’t ask you as you would have been too late .

I hope this list isn’t too long, but it is Christmas and there is one more important thing I would like. If you could keep an eye on my colleagues please, they all work so hard and need a bit of looking after, even, and I can’t believe I’m going to say this, even the conductors. There were extraordinary scenes this weekend when we played in the opera in Palermo. As I mentioned earlier, the strings were standing for the Italian Symphony and I’m happy to report that this didn’t stop Maxine Kwok-Adams wearing heels so high she was even taller than our leader Roman who is 8’6 in his socks.

http://intermezzo.typepad.com/intermezzo/2010/12/wiener-ladies-change-their-pants.html

As they were standing, we in the woodwind and brass had extra high risers and in Palermo we were about 6 feet up in the air. I quite liked this as I am vertically challenged and often can’t see, although for a piccolo player, Sharon didn’t really enjoy the dizzy heights as much as I thought she would. Backstage at the opera was a huge area full of props and sets, one side of the room was covered in a massive rock face and the other side looked like it was from an opera with a ball scene, which doesn’t really narrow it down much. As we passed through a very small passage to get onto the stage, I couldn’t help notice that there was a stage revolver which had just been left on a shelf, presumably for someone to pick up in a fit of rage at the end of (insert opera of your choice). Most of the players made the joke about taking it on stage, or saying it was a shame that (insert conductor of your choice) wasn’t conducting etc. You can imagine the scene although I hasten to add that they were only joking. Certainly a high percentage anyway.

After the interval the glamorous Palermo audience waited in the glorious surroundings of the opera house for John Eliot. Imagine my surprise when he came striding confidently across the stage brandishing the aforementioned revolver, and pointing it at the audience too! As you may well realise, the whole point in these stage props is that they look like the real thing, so to all intents and purposes, it looked like he had pulled a gun on the audience and then waved it around and pretended to shoot in the air thereby starting the Italian Symphony at a great lick like a sprinter from the blocks. Anywhere else and this kind of thing would possibly have been amusing and slightly surreal, however, I don’t like to deal with stereotypes, but it seems to me that the last place you want to start waving a gun around at the audience is in Sicily. I quite like John Eliot and I don’t really want to see him sleeping with the fishes just yet and more to the point, I was standing right behind him. I don’t mind telling you that Sharon and I ducked – the show must go on you know. I looked to the wings and saw Sue Mallet looking on in disbelief, she looked like she was going to explode again. This would be a bad thing. John Eliot had scolded me the previous night because I used vibrato on one or possibly two notes, but this evening with the revolver lurking on his stand, I didn’t take any chances and played with no audible wobble (once my nerves had settled down anyway).

Funnily enough though, it was a tremendously exciting performance and we dashed back to the airport afterwards to find out whether the TRAVEL CHAOS in Britain was going to allow us to return. I’m happy to tell you that we all got back on time at Stansted airport who seemed to have had the brilliant idea of moving the snow off the runway thereby enabling the planes to take off AND land. Brilliant. After I had cleared the snow off my car I trundled around the M25 and finally got to bed at 2.30am, a two day tour which felt like a week. It was only when I got home and switched on the news and saw those poor people who had been sleeping for two days at Heathrow that I realised how lucky we had been to go anywhere!

By the time everybody reads this, we will have repeated the concert at the Barbican and dispersed for the Christmas break which is well earned. We have been all around the world this year and we continue next year which I no doubt will be keeping you updated on. I just have a few presents to get but not before I have put my whistle in its box until January and dry cleaned my tails again.

One last thing Father Christmas, if you could wish all the staff at LSO towers a very merry Christmas and a nice relaxing time away from emails and phone calls, and also please wish all the readers of this blog seasons greetings and a peaceful new year. We all look forward to seeing you in 2011 somewhere around the world.

Best wishes

Gareth

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