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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.
At this moment in time, we are flying up the coast to San Diego where we have a concert tonight before going on to Costa Mesa. It says on the schedule that this is a “Ryanair style flight”.
I have no idea what this means.
As it is St Patrick’s day or St Patty as they insist on calling him over here for some reason,(I thought she was a Charlie Brown character), I thought that a Ryanair style flight might be some kind of upgraded groovy charter for fashion designers and models. We of course would fit right in. However, now that I am wedged firmly in my seat and have been shown the prices for the drinks and ‘appetizing snacks’, I fear I may have misunderstood the concept somewhat. We all had numbers on our boarding passes and had to line up next to the appropriate pole with our number on. After standing around for half an hour I got bored and went to get a coffee, which of course got the queue moving straight away. I leapt back into my alloted slot and when I got to the front of the queue he called my number and I said “Bingo!”
“I’m just doing my job sir, please move along or we may have to deplane”
I have no idea what this means.
Maybe bingo is a terrible insult here, and I find the thought of somebody deplaning me rather unpleasant. Still, I am now on my stylish flight safe and sound with my plane firmly still in place.
We are leaving San Francisco and I think I have left a little bit of my heart there. We had a great time, such warm and friendly people and I have to admit to getting a thrill playing in Davies Symphony Hall. I tried to get a t shirt for my dad, sadly they didn’t have any but I did get a picture of me next to the “Davies after hours” late night concert series poster. They have a lot of pictures backstage of artists who have performed in my hall. There is a picture of Valery from 1990 and loads of other celebrities, I have uploaded a picture of some of them, which I’m sure the LSO office will enjoy…
I’m feeling a little tired today as it was a very long concert last night and I have to admit to enjoying some “Davies after hours”myself which was mainly libation based. The show began with No 2 which is probably the loudest symphony, and at times unrelenting. I wasn’t playing in that one but could still hear it thundering through the walls for 35 minutes by which time the audience looked pinned back into their seats. You could almost hear a collective sigh of relief as the pounding gave way to Beethoven’s Piano concerto No 5 with Volodin. It was fascinating to hear him play such a different piece after his stunning playing the previous night, although this time he used both hands for the whole concerto.
By the time we went back on for the second half it was already 10pm and jet lag was still lurking despite the backstage coffee which was the same viscosity as crude oil. But as ever with Valery at the front, no matter how tired we all feel, he manages to whip up a storm. We played No 7, one of my favourites, with its cheeky last movement and that fantastic melody from the first movement. Its one of those times when the sound of the band takes my breath away. The big tune starts off quite low and soars in a huge arc which make it completely orchestral as the range it encompasses would take you from bass to soprano if you tried to sing it. But the wonderful thing about it is that it is played in about 3 octaves at once from the basses right up to Sharon’s piccolo and the sound is immense. Valery said in the rehearsal he thinks it sounds like a giant bird soaring over the mountains. He asked us to make as long a phrase as possible and not to flap our wings too much! By the time the melody returns near the end of the last movement it is at its grandest and as I looked up in the concert, Valery was conducting with a big smile on his face, arms outstretched like a giant bird. We knew just what he wanted and I remembered the soaring birds over Alcatraz the day before. The audience roared their approval and we did a little encore.
It was some Prokofiev.
It has been 20 years since the LSO was last in San Francisco. I hope we don’t leave it so long next time.
More soon…
Backstage in Davies Hall, San Francisco
Yet again ladies and gentlemen, I am writing this sitting on another train somewhere in Germany. I seem to spend a disproportionate amount of my time blogging on trains. I’ve finished my book and have yet to start the next one, Sue the shark is sitting with the vice chairman discussing all sorts of important stuff which I don’t understand, so I have a bit of peace and quiet. When we reached the Essen Hauptbahnhof this morning, it was snowing heavily. I guess it was my fault for complaining about the drabness of Paris, and as a Brit abroad, I feared the worst and waited for the announcements heralding mass hysteria, train cancellations and mindless statistics about snowfall. However much to my surprise, all the locals carried on as normal. There was already grit on the platform which makes me think that they actually knew in advance that it was going to snow-clever chaps these Germans. The train on the opposite platform arrived normally, and it was at this point that someone shouted that we were on the wrong platform. So all eighty or so of us had to rush down the not-slippery ramps and make a desperate dash for the train going to Frankfurt. We all managed to get on in time and provided some rush hour amusement for the Essen commuters. I held my breath though as I had already foreseen the ironic situation which I felt sure would ensue; after all the silly British people ran to get on the train, it would of course be canceled due to EXTREME WEATHER CONDITIONS!!! As the doors closed I tried to think of the one line which, despite our predicament, would reduce my colleagues to helpless laughter and forget the hardship of our situation. Imagine my astonishment when the train pulled smoothly away with absolutely no traction problems whatsoever. Doubly impressive given that before the train had arrived, I had quite clearly seen some leaves on the line. I thought that this kind of efficiency is the sort of thing that normally only happens in Japan, but it seems that German efficiency is also second to none…so sadly my hilarious quip had to be saved for another day of travel chaos. All I could think of saying was Vorsprung Durch Technik from those car adverts about efficiency. Roughly translated it means- You call that snow? You should see January in Mannheim.
Roughly.
Anyway, last nights concert went well. That is after we found the scores. Just as Carina was about to put JEG’s scores on, she couldn’t find them. JEG thought that he might have left them in his hotel, so superfit stage manager Alan ran to retrieve them. Thank goodness he is so fast. The hall in Essen is nice, but its another one where they leave the house lights on and we stare at you and you stare at us. I thought that the audience looked bored all the way through. It made me try and play even better, but they still looked bored. However as soon as we finished No 5 they all cheered and stood up to applaud. I guess they had a look of intense concentration on their faces and weren’t bored at all-they loved it. It is always a bit scary playing Beethoven in these parts though-long tradition you see.
The hall in Frankfurt is one of my favourites (I seem to say that a lot).Its a grand looking building which makes every concert feel like a real event. The foyers front of house are very ornate with big sweeping staircases and velvet curtains which exude faded glamour from a bygone era. Backstage there is a cafe for performers which has one of the most scary women in Germany serving. She can only communicate by shouting, Ja very loudly and to be honest, unless I am very hungry I use the chocolate machine in the corner. Its more sympathetic. As we finish the rehearsal, ushers shoo us off the stage even though we have finished early. They want to open the doors to let the audience in. So we all trundle off to the dressing rooms to get changed. Despite avoiding scary cafe lady and the stage sweepers, in the relative calm of the dressing room, every once in a while a very loud voice comes over the tannoy to let you know how far away the concert is.
“Ladies and gentlemen of ze orchestra, it is now 1915”
Concert starts at 8, so I’ve got plenty of time to get changed and buy some chocolate. A short while and one cufflink later, another earsplitting announcement.
“Ladies and gentlemen of ze orchestra, it is now 1930”
It may seem a bit arty, but most people like a bit of peace and quiet before the show. However with all this efficiency, there was no way we were going to miss the show with all these announcements going on. I was starting to think that I may have mistranslated Vorsprung durch wassisname. This was confirmed by the hoots of laughter at the final announcement before you go on stage.
“Ladies and Gentlemen of ze orchestra. It is now 1945”
Phew, thats a relief! The men in the bandroom cheered.
Basil Fawlty is alive and well.
After C.S. lewis decorated my back garden last week, Paris seems rather drab. We arrived yesterday to a grey and miserable city, cloaked in a wet blanket of cloud; despite the travel nightmare which was last week in London, I began to long for the crunchy snow again. Still we are in Paris, its raining-but its lunchtime. So we head off to Chez Michel, an old haunt which my group of friends and I return to year after year. If you were to open a chain of French bistros in London and wanted every cliché in the book to make it feel suitably French, then you could do worse than copy the style of this place. It has a small menu and a killer set lunch served on small simple tables, the house wine is far better than most things you’ll find in a British restaurant. The walls are covered in old yellow prints of Paris, none of which hang straight and the the service is surly but efficient. Best of all, you can eat like a King for 30 Euros. Although in these times of apologetic bankers that doesn’t get as far as it did, its still pretty cheap. So, after depositing our luggage in the Hotel Terminus Nord we trudged to Chez Michel in the pouring rain and I began to imagine my onion soup steaming in front of me. Imagine the look of horror, dear reader, when we turned the corner and, sacre bleu, the sign said Fermé! Not a regular fermé though, it was a fermé final. The end of an era. The tables were stacked up and a pile of tablecloths lay unwashed in the corner. I don’t like to blame the financial services industry for spoiling my lunch in Paris, but it was raining, I was tired, so I did.
We did end up having a nice lunch in the end, so all was not lost, but all too quickly we were on the bus to Salle Pleyel for the rehearsal. In case you didn’t know, we are here playing Beethoven with Sir John Eliot Gardiner who I shall now refer to as JEG, time is pressing. If any of you have been to the concerts you’ll know how different the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) sounds with him on the box. I’ll be honest with you, its been a steep learning curve with JEG and the LSO over the last few years. Our first attempt at Beethoven was taxing as we were used to playing it in a particular way, lots of vibrato, plush sound and with a degree of reverence normally reserved for religious figures. JEG came along and blew all of that out of the water, he insisted that I play with no vibrato at all (although he does let me sneak in a tiny amount these days), and if he heard the slightest wobble in rehearsal, he would quite happily bellow across the room “Stop vibrating Gareth!” Thats not something thats been shouted at me very often. As well as the wobbling , the strings were asked to play starting with their bow on the string to change the sound of the attack, and the sforzandi are punched out like a championship boxer. Its all very hard work, but the results, for me at least were like a revelation. Beethoven 5, that most abused of pieces, is churned out more regularly than Only Fools and Horses at Christmas, and yet with JEG it becomes a revolutionary piece of music once again. Its like he’s taken a very dusty old painting that everybody is used to looking at and quite comfortable with, and blown the dust off to reveal details which had been forgotten about. Take for example the last movement, the piccolo makes its first entrance having sat for half an hour waiting. Normally you can’t hear its chirpy little runs, but JEG has thinned down the textures from a heavyweight to flyweight and Sharon zips through the orchestra like Ricky Hatton. Now that the sound is leaner, when there is a fortissimo or punchy accent, they really have a huge impact.
JEG gave a little speech in London about his feelings on the famous opening motif and its revolutionary content, you know the one. Da da da daaaaah. After being woken up by the tune on a mobile phone by commuting bankers (sorry guys) for years, I’d quite happily never play it again. However, the other night it was one of the most exciting things I’ve done with the orchestra for a while, and I suddenly realised what an extraordinary piece of music it is. Paris was no exception. JEG gave a speech again, in fluent French, and as he pointed out, they like a bit of revolution in France.
I feel exhausted after these concerts, they really are incredibly hard work, plus I have an ear infection and can’t really hear anything out of my left ear, which is just as well as Emanuel is coughing his lungs up and sniffing a lot. What a pair we are, his face buried in a hanky and me with a finger permanently stuck in my ear hoping that this prod will be the one that lets me hear again. I hope we make it through to the end of the tour.
As I said, its very tiring playing like this and we have had a very long day so we are very grateful when we get back to the hotel. Most people go straight to bed. Actually, some people go straight to bed. Maybe. I am persuaded to go to the restaurant under the hotel however. Its a cathartic experience really, and we go some way to laying the ghosts of Chez Michel to rest. Its got the same table cloths, the same surly service, even the same menu. As I tucked into my onion soup, I realised that after my second glass of Cote du Rhone, all of these bistros look the same anyway. We come back to Paris in May. I hope the credit crisis doesn’t deepen further, as unlike Chez Michel, this restaurant is right underneath the hotel. I didn’t even get wet.
Essen tomorrow.
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