Sunny Spoleto Part 2

The concert started about 15 minutes late in Spoleto, partly because everyone coming to the concert was so relaxed, and why not. Its one of the prettiest towns I’ve seen, lots of nice places to sit outside and eat, tiny cobbled streets, and an evening of beautiful music followed by fireworks to look forward to. Whats the rush?

I should mention by the way, that we were being filmed by Italian broadcasters RAI for a television show of the concert next year, so we were under a little extra pressure. Hot lights, cameras on stage and a swoopy boom camera that flew over our heads were all extra distractions. Its amazing how much noise an audience can make simply by sitting talking and moving around whilst we tune up. Its often not until everyone is totally silent and we are about to begin that you become aware of the ambient noises around you. This didn’t really matter as Daniel strode onto the stage, turned to us and launched in Don Juan, all you could hear was the sound of the LSO reverberating off the ancient stone walls which surrounded us.

Gradually the light levels began to drop, Daniel returned to the stage to conduct the Firebird. Now if you don’t know this piece, the first minutes are incredibly quiet, and outside they are almost inaudible. I have to tell you that the Italian audience were incredibly attentive and quiet in seats which didn’t look the most comfy in the world, they also tipped forward down the hill and I imagine, were still a little damp from the earlier deluge. Now when I used to live just off Guildford High street many years ago, I would often be woken up or indeed have my al fresco (thats Italian) wine drinking shattered by the local youth racing up and down on small scooters or souped up cars making a right racket. The young people of Spoleto were not to be seen anywhere, but the second we started playing, very quietly, about 30 swifts decided to swoop endlessly around the courtyard where we were playing. Their shrieks drowned out most of the first ten minutes of the Firebird, and the bird like figurations from the woodwind in the 2^nd part whipped them into a frenzy over my head. I had one hand poised at my umbrella. I have heard that they throw vegetables sometimes in Italy if they don’t like the performance. I couldn’t see the birds carrying any vegetables, but I’m sure they were armed and I only had one set of tails. We scared them off in the infernal dance, but once again in the very quiet horn solo at the end, David was drowned out by the constant shrieking of the birds. Being as famous as he is however, I’m sure its not the first time.

We had an interval of 15 minutes during which time everyone stood up, wandered around and then sat down again as there was nowhere to go. We all looked up at the sky as by now the wind was picking up a bit and it was turning an ominous shade of black. Oh well, the show must go on.

The second half began with a huge gust of wind as we played the opening of Brahms 2. I reached for my pegs and carried on. Its all right when you are a string player, as you have two players to a stand, so at least one of you keeps playing whilst the other puts pegs on everything. I am always left in a bit of a pickle. Take the first page turn of the Brahms. It is pegged to the stand on the left and right hand sides. At the end of the right hand page I have 4 bars to turn, always a bit tricky at this speed, but much worse when you have to undo two pegs. To make matters worse, on the next page is a solo, so I have to decide whether to sacrifice the last few bars of page 1 and peg down page 2 to play the solo; or do I play the last 4 bars of page 1 , turn and leave page 2 unpegged, thereby courting a possible wind induced solo malfunction? I should add that whilst I am making such important split second decisions, there is a camera on a boom swinging over the second violins coming straight at me for my solo. It is at this point that I am sitting on the edge of my chair, my flute on my lap, trying to peg down one side of music with the other peg in my mouth, looking like a right idiot. Should make compelling viewing. I bet you never knew playing the flute could be so stressful.

Sp predictably, music and stands became separated by the wind throughout the first movement. You can always tell when it happens, because all of a sudden the first bassoon, for instance, suddenly stops playing, to be replaced by frantic rustling of papers and usually a fair amount of swearing. We can but hope that there are no subtitles on the TV broadcast. In situations like this, there is very little you can do but laugh, shrug your shoulders and carry on. That is until we reached the second movement.

I was fairly relaxed, I’d kept all my music on the stand, and there were no page turns in this movement so I had 4 pegs on. The wind was whipping across the stage and ominous black clouds were racing across an ever darkening sky. It all started well enough and we reached the half way point when gradually it became evident that it was starting to rain. When this happens in Britain everyone gets their brollies out and we carry on playing under the all weather canopy. There was no canopy and we were getting wet, and the rain was getting harder. Everybody was watching Lennie the chairman to see what we should do, and as quick as a flash, without stopping playing and Daniel continuing to conduct, they had a conversation which went something like this,

“Its raining”

“Yes, I’d noticed”

“Lets get off”

“OK”

It was the quickest negotiation in the turbulent history of the LSO.

The last time I saw the orchestra get off stage that quickly, was when we had the free beer in Cologne a few blogs ago. Of course there was little for us to do but stand under the arch and wait for the rain to pass, which took about 15minutes. We went back on to huge applause, the audience put away their umbrellas and we started the second movement again. I am happy to report that the swifts had gone to bed and the rest of the concert went smoothly. Although the woodwind section nearly all missed the last section of the symphony when the oboe player( who shall remain nameless, but read the last blog if you want to know!) made a basic outdoor concert error. In his relief to get to the last page before more rain, he forgot that he had pegged it down and succeeded in ripping half the page off in a spectacular fashion, he then spent the rest of the piece trying to stop it being blown away. It kind of summed up the day really.

All that followed was a very nice meal and fireworks and a mercifully short night in the worst hotel in the universe before returning back to now sunny London.

By the time you read this, we will all be on a very well deserved holiday and my flute will be in its box until we reconvene for the gargantuan Prokofiev cycle which we will be playing around the world. I hope you have enjoyed our blogs over the last year, let us know what you think. Its been read over 12500 times now and only 50 of you have left comments. Stop being so lazy! Enjoy the summer and see you soon.

All the best

Gareth

Sunny Spoleto: Part 1

Everything was going terribly well this morning. I had breakfast with Henrik, from the Gothenburg Opera, who is playing second flute with us. We had time to catch up about student days in the palatial surroundings of the hotel in Palermo. We were discussing whether to have lunch beside the open air pool in Spoleto or the nearby restaurant; and then it happened, I bumped into Mark from the office. Thats the LSO office nothing to do with Ricky Gervais.

“Bus leaves in 5 minutes guys. Oh, and by the way, its chucking it down in Spoleto.”

I’m sure some of you will be having a moment of schadenfreude about now, and certainly I feel I may have mentioned the lack of rain here a little too often in the last blog. However, my perfect day of lounging by the pool followed by a concert in the outdoors was in doubt. Now I am going to have to word this very carefully, as I don’t want you all to think that I am not totally committed to my job, but, well it did occur to me about 5 seconds later that as my outdoor lunch and swim would have to be cancelled, then there was the slightest chance that perhaps the same fate might fall on the concert itself. Of course dear reader, this would be awful for me, a night off in a beautiful hotel in Umbria in July, thank goodness I brought a book or I would have been bored.

This is where the day really started to go pear shaped. We arrived at the hotel/spa/leisure complex (their description). My basic creative writing skills cannot do justice to the strange beige atmosphere that greeted us in the foyer, the lift doors which tried to kill you if you weren’t quick enough, the crackling polyester bed linen, which had already been used by the previous occupier of the room. Or the inexplicable tackiness of the carpet in my room, and yes I am referring to both the Pollackesque design and also its keenness to liberate my flip flops from my feet. I could tell you about the mad woman on the desk who was sending people to eat at the local pizzeria, a ten minute walk in torrential rain-it was closed. Despite being told it was closed, she continued to send people there. I quickly realised this must be some form of queuing system for the hotel restaurant (the two bars were closed). There were so many people trying to get in to have lunch, that she was forming a giant circular system to prevent the restaurant being overwhelmed.

The restaurant was overwhelmed.

I sat down and waited for a menu, to be told that there wasn’t one but you got what you were given. As a waiter approached my table with a big bucket and a ladle, I and several others decided to make a break for freedom. I couldn’t stand a hungry afternoon in my box so I leapt on a bus which was going into Spoleto, a 40 minute drive away. The rain was getting harder..

Spoleto is a very beautiful place indeed, even in the rain. We saw the area where we were going to play, possibly. There was a stage in front of a lovely church and then the square and road sloped naturally upwards to make a raked seating area. It was a lovely sight and completely waterlogged. Oh yes, there was no weather protection for the orchestra at all. Now a few drips here and there are ok, but some of the stringed instruments in the LSO are worth a small fortune. Some players bows alone are worth as much as a conductors fee, if you can possibly imagine such a high figure, and that varnish isn’t the same stuff you put on your fence to protect it from the rain. A shame as they do some very nice colours. I was now getting very concerned that we may be forced to have an evening off.

Sharon and I had lunch in a lovely little family restaurant with a few other friends and we watched as the rain just kept on falling. It was very nice food involving lots of truffles, the local delicacy . We were seriously considering whether to ask what time they opened in the evening as quite clearly the concert wasn’t going to go ahead, when suddenly the clouds parted, it stopped raining and the sun came out. Well you can imagine our relief.

Gradually, the orchestra arrived on various coaches, and we tried not to look smug having not spent the afternoon in the hotel. We all drifted down to the stage which was covered in people drying the chairs, Carina was putting music on the stands, and extremely well dressed Italians were drinking wine before the concert. The sunshade was in front of the stage to protect us from the now searing heat, which fortunately was now needed. We had our regulation clothes pegs to hold the music down just in case it got windy, but right now there were no clouds in the sky and we looked set for a lovely evenings music making. What could go wrong?

I’ll tell you that tomorrow.

A Hot and Steamy Sicilian Night

If you are reading this in England, you might want to go and check your email for a moment and come back in five minutes.

We left a very wet Stansted Airport at 9am this morning, and landed 3 hours later at Palermo airport. If you are enjoying the English summer of rain, I have to tell you that it is 30 degrees and very sunny here. It is a huge contrast to the concert earlier in the week in St Pauls where we concluded the Mahler cycle with number 8. It rained a lot that day. If you missed the concert, you can still hear it on the BBC website or if you go over to St Pauls, you can probably still hear the reverberations. Or you can wait for the CD release later on in the year,

Anyway, back to Italy. We are here to do two concerts with Daniel Harding, playing Brahms 2, Don Juan and Firebird. After arriving at the hotel we had a quick lunch, fortunately, being in Italy, it is culturally relevant to have a quick bowl of pasta, and it always tastes better than in England, I expect its the rain-sorry to rub it in.

We drove straight past the concert hall, I hadn’t read the schedule, as it turned out that we were playing outside. Now I have a soft spot for outdoor dates as I spent every summer of the first 5 years of my career in muddy fields with the Bournemouth Symphony-happy days. We played on an open air stage with no roof, no chance of rain you see. Sorry! I was concerned at the ambient noise during the rehearsal, the stage was surrounded by Cyprus trees full of crickets who felt the need to join in. However, I am happy to report that they stayed quiet for the show. Sadly the local dog population did make their presence felt during the quiet bits in the second half.

Its always strange playing outdoors as the lack of reverberation makes it feel like you are playing in a dead box. It is quite difficult to judge how loudly or quietly you are playing as well. Rather disconcertingly, the applause was very quiet, although as it was fairly prolonged, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Even the dogs and crickets.

We began with a hot and steamy performance of Don Juan with a beautiful oboe solo from our guest principal oboe, David Theodore. Wearing tails is never my outfit of choice, but in the humid Italian evening it was almost unbearable. So as the opening of the Firebird competed with an offstage mobile phone ringtone, a cool breeze drifted in from the east, physically and musically. Most welcome. Almost as welcome as the cold beer after Brahms 2.

At the end of a very long day, most of the band drifted into the centre of town in search of a quick bite to eat. My small group managed to find a lovely little place down a small side street which it turned out had a kitchen 5 minutes walk away, not a good sign especially as the pizzas arrived two by two over a 30 minute period. Always being sensitive to local custom and traditions, and having had pasta at lunchtime, we all decided to eat pizza.

It was the worst thing I have ever eaten in my life. Probably the equivalent of an Italian having his first roast beef and Yorkshire pudding in one of those reheated carvery/refectory places. Next time I pass the one near me and see some tourists, I’m going to take them round to my mums for a proper roast dinner.

Still apparently there is an outdoor pool at todays hotel. And still no rain.

I’ll let you know how we get on.