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This afternoon we say goodbye to New York for another year, fittingly playing Mahler’s ninth symphony, probably one of the great musical farewells. It is one of those pieces that everybody seems to have in their minds a perfect interpretation, whether it is the coolness of some or the emotional torment of others. Bernard, more than any other tries to give an interpretation that does what Mahler asks. As the end of the final movement draws to a close and the violas slowly expand the melody to silence, it feels like a dignified farewell rather than a terrifying journey into darkness. As we were rehearsing yesterday morning, I sat back and listened to the warmth of the string section and despite the sadness of the music I couldn’t help smiling at the beauty of the sound being created around me.
Playing Mahler is a bit like doing a big jigsaw puzzle. There are so many lines going on at the same time, so many rhythms and different dynamics that you really do have to pay attention to what is on your page. Quite regularly the clarinets will be playing ff whilst the flutes are playing the same line pp with a sudden crescendo to ff on the last two quavers of the phrase. If you play what is written it has a very different effect to simply playing loudly all the time. Very often the long line of the melody is cut up between five or six instruments, each one playing a fragment of the phrase. It takes a great deal of skill to knit the parts together. Going back to that article I mentioned earlier on in the week from the Guardian, I can’t think how on earth an orchestra would manage to play this symphony without a conductor. They really are like a film director who has a vision of the whole picture, directing the actors to do the right thing at the right time so that the final cut becomes clear. It’s almost impossible to get an impression of how it sounds from within the orchestra, you can see to many of the building blocks; much like looking at an impressionist painting, you have to stand back to see whats going on. Or in the words of another great artist, R. Harris, “Can you tell what it is yet?”
A lot of the rehearsal involves practicing tempo changes (there are a lot) and balancing instruments. However, not all fortes are created equal as we discovered yesterday. There are vulgar moments when instruments shriek out from the texture and there are others where we all have to seamlessly merge from one to the other. Quite often an encouraging gesture or a hand raised is enough to achieve Benard’s required balance, but yesterday Lorenzo was-a little enthusiastic in one of his entries on bass clarinet. Bernard stopped the rehearsal.
“Bass clarinet, I know that it says forte for your entrance, however I am sure that the bass clarinet that Mahler used was not as good as you!”
Point made, Lorenzo disappeared back into the texture.
As we say goodbye to New York this afternoon with a farewell of a piece, we also sadly say goodbye to one of our longest serving members, 2nd oboe player John Lawley. John has been central to the LSO for many years and was chairman of the orchestra for a long period. However, aside from all of the politics, boardroom dealings and sponsors dinners that he has attended over the years, I know that for John, it’s the music that matters. As we audition for new oboe players, it simply emphasises how good John is at his job and how experienced he is, and how hard it is to replace people like him.
After all the speeches are over this afternoon and the achievements are listed, we will be left to say goodbye in the way we know best, by playing music. John once said to me that the best thing about his job was that whatever arguments you had with people off stage, and however bad you felt, once you got on that stage and started playing, it was all forgotten, nothing else mattered. I know what he means.
I may have imagined it, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I slept in my own bed yesterday, or was it the day before? After the Prom where socks were blown off and Christine Pendrill astonished us all with her fabulous cor anglais playing, we all had a short time to turn around. I got back home at midnight, packed my bag again and then slept briefly before getting up at 5.30 to go back to a weirdly empty Terminal 2 at Heathrow. I know at some point I was in the mountains in Gstaad, but this week has been so ferocious in its intensity that I’m really not sure when. Yesterday we were in Milan. No wait, that’s where we landed, we went to Stresa and played a show in a small hall in which we only just managed to fit on the stage. I think that most of the audience are still attached to their seats such was the volume in the compact space. We came out in the the late evening to torrential rain and a river running down the hill to the lake. This meant a quick dash back to the hotel and then a bowl of Pasta and some wine before bed.
I have to tell you at this point in the blog that I will be revealing two amazing secrets about Valery and his philosophy on conducting and also his super human time travel. Brace yourselves.
If I had a penny for every person who asked me how we follow the maestro I would have heavy pockets. The questions normally involve key phrases like fluttering hands or sweeping gestures or toothpick. There is a very simple answer. I think in one of my more prosaic moments, I described the look in his eyes or something like that,which still stands. However, I am normally asked by people who aren’t professional musicians how we follow him. Put it this way, I’ve never had a string player from one of the other London orchestras asking me how we follow the conductor, he already knows the answer. Its our job. I’m sure nobody asks Lewis Hamilton how he drives so fast without crashing, or the Queen how she manages to look so royal. No the truth is, its his job to conduct and our job to follow-simple as that. I had this theory (which you can imagine took me years to come up with) confirmed by Valery in the rehearsal for the concert. During the Shostakovitch, one of the trumpets asked him if he was going to give 2 or 4 beats in to the last movement or if he was just going to start. Valery smiled and paused for a moment.
“Well” he said thoughtfully, “ Basically it works like this. I move, you play”
He did. We did. Sorry its not a more mystical explanation.
I had a chat to a very nice lady from the choir at the proms (Hi Amanda) who said how much she liked reading about our exploits on the road. She seemed to enjoy the glamour. Now, to be honest, although my room at the hotel was lovely, the water in the basin was brown, although some people didn’t even have water so I guess I was lucky really. Of course, just when I’m thinking that we could do with some glamour, you get a day like today. The journey from Stresa to Salzburg is quite tricky involving going to Munich for some reason. Anyway, we were very lucky to have our own charter which had been provided by our great friend and supporter Yoko. It means an easy check in, sit where you like and there is no need to worry about annoying civilians! It also means a short bus ride and a direct flight, saving us hours of travel time.
Of course, as Kathryn pointed out, Yoko never does things by halves and this was no exception. This is where it starts to sound like I’m making it up-but truly, I’m not.
You know how Valery is always seemingly in about 3 places at once and he jets around the world twice as much as other conductors? Well, today we discovered his secret of time travel.
The cockpit door opened as he walked onto the plane and a familiar looking figure came out to greet him. It took me a while to realise who it was because he was such a huge figure in my childhood. It turns out that Valery’s pilot is none other than ex Formula 1 champ Niki Lauda. Move aside Stig, get out of the galaxy Han Solo, you’ve got no chance with this team at the front.
I took a picture of them together just in case you don’t believe me but stopped myself buying the Niki Lauda frisbee in his on board shop.
So now you know the secret of conducting and how Valery gets around the globe so fast. But don’t tell anyone I told you.
You might be interested to know that we arrived in Salzburg 30 minutes early.
Valery Gergiev ladies and gentlemen.
Higher. Faster. Lauda.
Two weeks into my holiday, I decided that I could no longer ignore the pile of paperwork and accounts on my desk. It is difficult to relax with a bulging in tray sneering at you, so I woke up one morning and decided to tackle the mountain. It was of course the hottest day of the year, so most of my receipts were damp by the end of the day. However, after the recent political expenses scandal, I payed particular attention to my train fares and taxi receipts. I finished by the afternoon, and as fortune was smiling on me and the sun was still high in the sky, I decided to clean my own moat instead of paying someone else this year.
After sorting out my affairs, relaxing and spending some much needed time with my family it was time to get the tube out of the box and get back to work.
Ouch.
You know how athletes spend time easing gently back into training after a break? Wimps the lot of them. We came back to a Valery rehearsal-full throttle. 6 hours of Schnittke, Shostakovitch 8 and 11 and La Mer which we pretty much repeated the next day. My back contorted into its normal crooked positions and the old tensions surfaced within hours. Trouble is, thats what works and sounds good, so there you are.
Anyway, yesterday we got up at an hour my body hadn’t seen for 3 weeks and travelled to Ljublijana. I’m glad to say that we arrived in time to have lunch in what is a very beautiful city. I ended up in a place which claimed to be the oldest restaurant in town-having said that, I’m sure I’ve been to another one that claimed the same thing, but that may have been in Swindon, I forget. Anyway, it was full of traditional fayre the like of which we don’t get in London. I decided to have the local venison which was lovely and preferable to the “Foal with Salty Cheese Pie”!
Can’t stand salty cheese pies.
After a meal like that, I could feel my body attempting to hibernate, however, we had a rehearsal of Shostakovitch 8 and La Mer, or as Kieron calls it, The Mother. The hall in Ljublijana is tall but not very deep and has one of those shells around the back of the stage to reflect the sound back into the hall. It is very effective and was a pleasant surprise.
I’ve written before about Valery’s way with French music and today was no exception. His interpretation of La Mer is of a murky threatening sea, constantly moving forward and has a huge amount of power. Shostakovitch 8 was the second half and found me down the line playing piccolo. I love playing this part for three reasons.
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It has solo playing around the orchestra which I get to listen to as I don’t have much to do. It takes my breath away what my colleagues can do.
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I get to be a thorn between Sharon and Siobhan
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I play mainly in unison with Sharon, very high and loudly and she does all the high quiet stuff and fast tricky bits while I sit back and relax.
It would take me ages to list all the fabulous contributions, so if you want to hear it, we’ll be at the Proms on Monday or you can listen online, radio 3, iplayer etc etc etc next week.
Of course, as I write the blog, I shall pick out my section as being particularly fabulous because I can. As Principal flute, I play almost all of the time, however sitting next to the picc, I was aware of how long you have to sit there not playing and then come in on some horrifically high quiet bit, like in the 4th movt. funnily enough Norman Lebrecht mentioned this in a blog he wrote after our Mahler 9 prom. He pointed out that Sharon sits for very long periods not doing anything and then suddenly has to leap into action for a short time. Its a bit like a goalkeeper in a 0-0 cup final draw after extra time being confronted with a penalty shoot out. They haven’t done much for 2 hours, but they don’t half earn their money in a short space of time and often save the day. That was my analogy by the way, not Norman’s.
Anyway, the point is that in Mahler 9, Sharon sat there for ages not doing anything whilst Siobhan and I sweated away and then she suddenly floats in at the end of the movement like some kind of celestial presence. Mr Lebrecht noticed that instead of sitting there looking bored she was actively involved with the performance of those around her. Now I know thats its in her best interests to at least look as if she’s enjoying my playing, but she really does follow whats going on around her which is why she sounds so fabulous when she does finally make an entrance. That was his point and I agree with him.
I can tell you that in Shostakovitch 8, she most certainly does not sit there unemployed but plays her socks off whilst I sit there looking like I’m enjoying it.
Its not difficult. Unlike the piccolo part.
So if Norman Lebrecht is at the Prom on Monday night-if he was impressed by Sharon doing nothing-then I hope he has his socks firmly in place as she may very well knock them off.
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.
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.
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, 2nd 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.
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 21st 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.
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.
“You haven’t filled in the green form sir”, said the man at immigration.
Here we go again, I thought.
“Oh I’m sorry, I see you have a work visa so you don’t have to fill in the green form (just the white and blue one actually)-its just most folks come here on holiday, I haven’t seen many work visas”
This is what happens when you get off the plane quickly, because very shortly he was about to see about one hundred work visas. So then the questions began. He was very friendly, it’s just that I was tired and being asked questions is not high on my to do list right now.
“So you’re here with the London symphony? Cool!”
I know whats coming next.
“And what instrument do you play then?”
If had a dollar for every time I had been asked that at an airport I would retire. It’s not that I mind being asked, it’s the response that I get when I say that I play the flute. Its normally along the lines of-that’s for girls or I used to play the recorder or even are you gay then? I sometimes make something up and say I play something manly like the trumpet, but the my bag gives me away.
“I play the flute” I say with a big cheesy grin, and await my fate.
“Awesome” he says.
“I’m sorry?”
“Awesome, its awesome that you play the flute man. Have a great trip”
I am stunned into silence, smile and walk off with testosterone in my step feeling…well…awesome I guess. Nobody has ever said that the flute is awesome before.
So after landing in Orlando with a dance troupe from Aberdeen and lots of families going to Disneyland we get on some buses and drive to Daytona Beach. I am one of the lucky ones on the first flight, as half the orchestra are delayed at Gatwick for 3 hours and don’t arrive at the hotel until nearly midnight. We are greeted at the hotel by the lovely staff and volunteers of the festival who always welcome us so generously and although we are feeling a little tired, it almost feels like coming home here. After a few drinks in the Ocean deck bar on the beach we all head off to bed, the main LSO concerts start after the day off, however I have a chamber music concert on the free day so I am anxious to get some sleep.
Of course jet lag as usual ruins my sleep and at 6.30 am I am running down the beach. Usually we come in July when it is unbearably hot, but as I step out in my running stuff, the sun is obscured by cloud and I feel a little chilly! Daytona Beach is famous and seems to go on for ever. A huge expanse of sand that you can drive on stretches into the distance and I enjoy blowing away a few cobwebs by running barefoot through the shallows. I feel like David Hasselhof-sort of. In the last 10 minutes of my run the sun breaks through and I realise that although this is April, it is still really hot here.
So later on in the day, a group of us go to the News Journal Center across the bridge to do a concert called Music of the British Isles. This is not Elgar and Ades, but a collection of folk music we arranged from the four home countries. We have some well known and lesser known tunes which are interspersed with readings from famous writers like Dylan Thomas and Shakespeare (who was 445 on the day!). We played the concert once before in Daytona and it went down so well we were asked to do it again. I was very lucky to have a fabulous group of players (Sarah Quinn, Malcolm Johnston, Rebecca Gilliver, Neil Percy and John Alley) who not only played beautifully but were game enough to stand up and read poetry as well. Sarah read in Irish, I read in Welsh (badly) and John would give Ken Brannagh a run for his money with his lovely readings of a some sonnets. It was a fun evening which included some partisan cheering from certain sections of the audience-I think Malcolm may have paid some ex pat Scots. After so many sad songs from Wales, we ended by playing some of the sea songs which you hear on the last night of the Proms. Of course we knew that everyone would want to join in and so I bought some party whistles-those ones that you blow and a long paper tongue unravels with the squeak. It wasn’t until I opened the packet that I realized I had bought giant ones which when extended were about 3 feet long (see the picture). I can’t tell you how funny it looked seeing a group of grown ups blowing raspberries at us whilst the paper bit tickled the person in front. And the person in front of them too. If you were at the concert, thank you for being such good sports, I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!
I have just returned from a rehearsal today (Friday) with Dan Harding for tonight’s concert. we are playing Brahms 1 and Simon Trpceski is playing the Grieg Piano Concerto. I have to go now as I am interviewing him before the show, all I need to do is figure out how to pronounce his name. I’ll tell you how it went very soon.
It’s one of those days on tour when you’d quite like to be able to pop home for a bit. I don’t know whether its the mid tour blues, or if its just a case of homesickness, but today, I’d quite like to be at home. Its mothers day back in the UK and I have been on the phone to my own mum and also my wife who is a mum herself – of my kids in fact. Technology is a wonderful thing and because of the webcam on my laptop I was able to not only talk to my family, but I was also able to inspect the cuts and bruises from various rugby matches and bike accidents.
After speaking to my mum, I was reminded of the need for motherly care no matter how old you are. I had just got changed and came up the stairs in Chicago to see Tim, our principal cellist fiddling with his socks. It was one of those horribly long days where we had to check out of our hotel before the concert which meant making sure we had everything we needed for the rest of the day with us. Quite regularly, somebody forgets a bow tie or something, but usually a spare is found in time. This afternoon, he had forgotten his black socks. Now if you think where he sits, at the front, this is quite important, especially as the ones he had on were black and white stripes. The scene that met me at the top of the stairs was of Tim colouring in the white stripes with a black marker pen. They were thin stripes, and it was taking him ages. After he had finished, someone suddenly found a spare pair of black socks. Funny how they only appeared after all the white stripes had gone. So maybe in future tours we should take a mum with us for moments like this.
The concert in Chicago was fantastic. It is a wonderful hall with an incredible history and the orchestra played out of its skin-this usually happens when another orchestra is resident, especially as Chicago Symphony had played the night before-we had something to prove. As the final notes of No 5 flew out into the hall the audience leapt to their feet. I don’t remember this happening before in Chicago. Valery was smiling again, but this time it was after the Classical symphony, so I relaxed.
There was no time to stop though, we had a plane to catch. We were on the last one out of Chicago to New York City, one of my favourite places on earth. Like a lot of the band, I was feeling tired, it had been a long day and I dozed off on the plane. When I woke up, New York was unfolding beneath us. It was nearly midnight and the lights along the linear street patterns glowed bronze. The various bits of the New York area looked like an elaborate Christmas decoration made of copper which glistened in the winds below. Just like a child staring up at the tree with its twinkling lights, looking down on NY, my home for the next two days, I began to feel that same excitement. You never quite know whats going to happen.
That familiar journey (I can’t remember how many times I’ve been here now) through dull looking suburbs never quite prepares me for the breathtaking sight of a floodlight Manhattan as you approach one of the bridges. When you first see it from the bus, everybody stops talking and just looks at it, almost pinching themselves to check that they are really there. In the middle of a long tour away from home, friends, family and my mum, the sight of the skyscrapers glowing the way they do, looking just like in the movies is a very comforting sight.
Despite the fact that it changes every time we come here, it never really changes at all. It’s noisy, smelly, exciting and always welcomes us with open arms. Its good to be back.
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