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I don’t know what the French for joie de vivre is, but I left mine somewhere on the Barbican stage on Thursday night after Daphnis and Chloe. Well, really it was after a week which began 2 weeks earlier which had 2 performances of Daphnis, La Mer and a couple of concerti as well. For good measure we did a quick Damnation of Faust as well on Tuesday night. Sadly the devil was ill. You can’t rely on anyone these days.
Anyway, the reason I am trying to find out some key French phrases is that this weekend sees us on the Eurostar on the way to Dijon. I got home after the concert at midnight and had to leave for St Pancras at 6 am. Its fair to say that the train was very quiet indeed.
Now if you are familiar with recent LSO history, the mention of Dijon should set alarm bells ringing. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, let me take you back in time…in time…in time…
It was way back in, ooh, 2008 when we set out for our first ever trip to Dijon. We had been working the night before and all the instruments were on the van overnight through the tunnel. At 7.15am Sue got a call. She knows that usually means impending disaster. It was.
We arrived in Dijon on time. Our instruments didn’t. In fact they were still in England and there was no way they were going to arrive in time. It was at this point that the good people of Dijon rallied round with community spirit finding instruments for us to play on. Old ladies turned up with cellos form their attic. Young musicians bought their violins in and local music shops donated flutes so that the concert could go ahead. If it had happened in London, people would have been sing phrases such as “Ooh, its just like in the war” and “Blitz spirit”. I wonder what they say in France. So the concert did go ahead with Mahler 7 played on an odd selection of instruments with half the orchestra in concert clothes and the other half in jeans and t shirts. It sounded like the LSO but quieter, especially when the violas found two pages of their photocopied parts missing in the last movement.
So this time the van left a day earlier and arrived early and we sat quietly on the Eurostar. I had already told Sue to leave me alone as I was tired and she was sat far too close to me. It was nice and quiet while we waited to depart-until the phone rang.
To cut a long story short, Bryn our principal harp had fallen off his bicycle on the way to the train and was in hospital with 6 stitches in his head and blood all over the place. He was not coming on the trip, partly because he was concussed but also looking at the picture he sent us with his head in bandages, face covered in blood and a car down one side, the French would never have let him in.
And so followed a frantic round of phoning harp players around Europe, mots of whom were working, unavailable or about to give birth – seriously. Of course, as we were doing La Mer, we really needed 2 harps and so plans were afoot to get a player to city airport to join Valery on his private jet to get to Dijon on time. Now I know how stressful it is playing with the LSO for the first time, but listening to Jemma on the phone was hilarious.
“Hello, yes is that (harp player). Yes? Good. My name is Jemma, I am the orchestral manager of the LSO. Now I know you’ve never worked with us before but we’d like you to come in with us, are you free today? You are ? Great. well, do you know La Mer? No?Never mind, if you could get to city airport by 12 and get on a private jet to Dijon, it doesn’t have a number, and you’ll find Valery gergiev waiting for you. Get on the plane with him and he’ll get you to Dijon where you can sight read La Mer, oh and Shostakovitch 11 too, I forgot that one. There’ll be a limo to take you and Valery from the airport to the hall. Is that OK?
Hello?
Hello?
Are you still there?”
Karen fortunately managed to get hold of an old friend of hers who lives in Paris and was able to come down. He knew all the music and was fantastic. It also meant Valery didn’t need to make small talk all the way on the plane, which was nice.
After 15 minutes of speeches, the audience at the hall started clapping and drowned out the speakers in true revolutionary style. They left and Valery swept on for La Mer. I waited to see the look of shock as the good people of Dijon finally found out what we are supposed to sound like on proper instruments-no offence to the instruments form last year, but we did sound better. Its a great hall too and you’ll be pleased to know that we all found our joie de vivre, but I was very glad to see my bed at the end of the day.
Next stop was Paris where we have a residency at Salle Pleyel one of my favourite halls. Valery asked us to play quieter so that we only sounded seismic as it is so reverberant. However as the end of Shos 11 approached ,the pedal hit the floor and the beautiful Parisians were pinned back in their seats once again. Nicolas, the harpist was over the moon as he had been unable to get a ticket to the show in Paris, it being sold out for months. In the end of course he was playing in the concert and had a much better seat than anyone else!
I’m actually writing this on the Eurostar after the afternoon concert, which those of you who are on twitter can see a picture of. Its very quiet on here, even Jemma has stopped taking calls, Sue is asleep. Oh, no she’s not actually, but she isn’t talking for once. Valery is away from us until December and we have some time off at last.
Only joking, we are recording a new film soundtrack at 9 am in the morning until it gets dark, and the composer and conductor are on the same train home!
Its never dull here, but boy am I tired. Next stop in a couple of weeks is New York City. Stay tuned, but for now its Dijon and on and on and on …
Bryn didn't win his scrap with the pavement...
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.
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.
Although I am in Basingstoke today, I shall not be filling you in on backstage gossip as it isn’t really a tour. However we travel to Paris on Monday with Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Visit the site for regular blogs. If you are suffering from blog addiction then you might be interested to know that a few players and staff are now on twitter. Members will be tweeting on twitter all the time, not just whilst on tour. If you don’t know what it is go to twitter.com and search for us. Sign up and impress your friends with your intimate knowledge of the LSO, or just impress your younger friends with your techno savvy ability. But sleep safely in the knowledge that I will continue to provide you with my usual highbrow musical dissertations and discourse combined with pretentious musical analysis. Now where is my travel adaptor…
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