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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.
It’s funny how it’s possible to feel a little lonely in a city the size of New York. There are so many people and yet it is always at this point in the tour when my thoughts turn to home. Don’t get me wrong, I love being here, it’s just that sometimes I wish my family were here too. It has to be said that technology makes keeping in touch much easier. It isn’t so long ago that I remember queueing for the pay phones in the hotel lobby – now there are no pay phones in the hotel lobby. However the best thing these days is Skype. Now I’m sure that all my readers are hip young dudes and know what this is, however for the benefit of the technologically challenged amongst you I shall explain briefly. Skype is a little computer program that allows your computer to become a telephone, you actually talk at the screen and the person you have ’skyped’ hears you from their computer speakers. As it is done over the internet, and we have free wifi, it means you can talk for a long time without cost. Brilliant. It gets even better. You can also see the people you are talking to and they can see you too-its just like Star Trek but without the captains log. My kids get very excited when I phone home as to them, all of a sudden, dad is actually in the computer screen talking to them; they get to show me the stuff they’ve done at school, my daughter shows me cuts on her knees and all the other trivial things of family life which take on enormous importance when you aren’t there.
I thought I would skype just around tea time yesterday. Now picture this, my daughter, who is waiting for her tea is playing with big cook, little cook on the BBC website; they are making cyber bread which I am told she has just put in the oven. My daughter guards her time on the computer fiercely as she has to share it with her two bigger brothers who of course try to dominate it. So as I said, she is sitting happily playing when all of a sudden my face appears on her screen, automatically closing down her bread making program. I can at this time see her in my laptop screen.
“Hello darling, it’s daddy, how are you? Are you being a good girl, I’ve missed you”
It’s at this point that she screams and starts having a tantrum (She’s 5), but manages to say,
“Oh dad, I’ve waited ages to play on this and now your head’s stopped my bread and it’s not fair.”
She then ran off in a huff.
I guess that’s a good thing that she isn’t missing me as much as I am missing her. Anyway, she did regain her composure and we did have a chat later on which made me walk around NYC with a spring in my step, not feeling so lonely anymore.
I felt very lonely again today, although in a room full of about 200 people. It was on stage in the concert at the Lincoln Center. This might strike you as a little odd. Tonight we played Das Lied, some of you may have heard it in London. Typically for Mahler, he orchestrates the huge forces so that at times the singers are pitted against the full force of the LSO and at other times he thins the texture so that one solo line weaves around the soloists. I have one of those lines and boy, does it feel lonely.
I have noticed the sensation before when playing Prelude de l’apres midi; the silence surrounding you is deafening. When we rehearsed Das Lied, it was the first time I had played it in my life. This is scary when Haitink is standing in front of you- I mean, he knows how its supposed to go for goodness sake. I had done my homework and the solo cadenzas with the mezzo fitted. If you don’t know the bit I’m referring to, it is a couple of bits which just involve the cellos holding a low note very quietly indeed and then the flute and mezzo weave a sinuous thread around each other until just the flute is left to gradually descend into nothingness. It can be a spectacular moment, but is absolutely terrifying to pull off in concert. The reason being that you don’t realise how lonely it can feel until there are 200 people watching and listening and suddenly the orchestra is still, hardly daring to breathe. You don’t notice in rehearsal, people are moving around, coughing, writing things in their music; you know, it takes a lot of effort to actually be quiet, and it never happens until the show. It was this evening with the polished hush of Avery Fisher as the 4 bars before my bit gradually became almost inaudible, the silence pressed in on my ears and I felt totally alone. Its that oppressive silence where everything around you seems to stop. It’s a bit like when you wake up early in the morning – it’s quiet, but just normal quiet. You can hear the leaves on the trees, the cars going past and life humming away in the background. That is like the rehearsal. And then there are those mornings when you wake up early and there has been a heavy snowfall – a really deep quiet. The snow seems to absorb the sounds of the cars and leaves, and until you open the curtains, you can’t be sure that someone hasn’t removed the life outside your window. That is what it feels like before I play the cadenzas – everything goes quiet and all my colleagues around me don’t move or breathe in case they make a noise – there is a brief pause after the descending scale and then we are off again to the end.
It’s a wonderful, lonely moment. One of many for me in New York City.
There was an article in the Guardian the other day about conductors – you may have seen it. It was charming in its way and continued the long history of confrontation between players and maestri and was intent on showing how over inflated their fees are. Well, we could argue about that forever, but it was strange how little of it mirrored my experience. Here is the article
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/06/orchestral-conductors-pay-cut
By the time we reach the concert, a large proportion of the hard work has been done in rehearsal and a lot of what is left for the conductor to do is to inspire. The one thing the writer says that is very odd, is that during a concert she barely has time to look up to see the beat as she has too much to do! Also that the success of the concert is pretty much down to the players with very little input from the conductor. Hmm, not with Bernard on the podium. I think any discussion over the difference a conductor makes could be settled when you here the LSO play Mahler 9 with Haitink on one night and Gergiev on the other. I’m sure you’ll each have our own personal favourite, but I don’t think any of you would say that we sound the same!
I thought of this when we were rehearsing yesterday in Avery Fisher Hall. If you google Bernard, you’ll find hundreds of articles that usually include a phrase which says something like, “economical gestures and a man of few words”. It’s true, he also has a great sense of humour. The thing is that he doesn’t always say much, but he shows so much in his conducting; so much so that when he does say anything, its astonishing that a few words can make such a huge difference. Let me give you some examples-in fact, he hasn’t said very much more than this all week!
Schubert 5 is one of my favourite symphonies, it gives me a huge feeling of happiness as we dance through the first movement, much like being a kid waking up on Christmas morning. Just like when you unwrap your stocking and enthusiasm overtakes good manners, its easy to start ripping the paper off a little too fast. In rehearsal, you could sense that the orchestra was getting a little too over excited for the simplicity of line Bernard was asking for. He stopped us,
“OK, these accents on the bar-lines are a little too much now, yes? Nothing harsh, just a bow to Schubert please. Once more.”
And that was it. A small sentence with a huge impact, we all knew what he meant. Other conductors would have to sing what they wanted or would have gone to great lengths to explain how the accent was to sound. Bernard just wants a nod in the right direction. In this respect he is very like Colin in that he trusts the players judgement as well as his own. To use an over worn cliché, it really does feel like we are making music together.
The opening of the slow movement is quite tricky and Bernard was anxious that we did it quick enough otherwise “It sounds boring already”. So we played it and he smiled. He graciously stopped us at the first repeat mark.
“Well, that really was very good indeed. Lets do it again to make sure!”
We repeated it.
“Yes, good but please, pi-an-iss-i-mo. Don’t get louder yes?”
We repeated it again, this time with Bernard barely moving.
“Yes as I thought. The less I do, the better it sounds.”
We all laughed. “Its because you must listen more”
And there you have it. You can have one of the greatest conductors in the world in front of you, but if you don’t listen, it means nothing.
There are many times when Gordan, our leader will say something to the orchestra. Now if Bernard comes from the Harold Pinter school of dialogue, then Gordan subscribes to the Eric Cantona school of verbal meandering.
Last week in rehearsal, we stopped and Eric, sorry, Gordan said,
“Sorry Bernard, may I say something?”
Bernard settled back on his stool and watched intently as Gordan started talking. Now I sometimes find it hard to hear exactly what he says as he is a long way away and he often talks and plays at the same time, demonstrating the kind of sound he is after.
“Hey guys, listen to the sound here. Its kind of (demonstrates the sound) waaaaah, you know what I mean? But you know, we need like (demonstrates a different sound) waaaeeeerrr, you know what I mean. I mean like, less hard, more like swiss cheese, you know what I mean?”
I think the first violins know what he means.
Bernard, just sits and looks, raises his eyebrows and starts again. The sound is indeed different. We stop again.
“Well Gordan, I didn’t understand a word of what you said, but they do. That is exactly the sound I am after.”
He then turned to David Alberman.
“ He did say Swiss cheese didn’t he?”
“Er, yes maestro, he did”
“Ok”
You’ll probably think I’m making this up, but I assure you that everything on this blog really does happen!
During the opening concert last night, I made a point of seeing how much I did look up. I wanted to see if I really was too busy to watch. The truth is, I spent most of the time watching his every gesture as he moulds and crafts the performance like no other. A lot of the time, Bernard seems to be enjoying the sound of the band, a look of approval when the remarkable Phil Cobb sails above the texture or a smile at the characteristic playing of Lorenzo; and there is a huge amount of affection for him from us too. I can’t wait for the next two shows.
I’m sure, as in all things, there are over paid conductors. But there is no question about it in my mind, Bernard is priceless.
Lets Go Knicks!
“Awight boys and girls? Welcome to Landon ‘Eafrow. I’m Dave your driver an’ I only bin ear 5 minutes so we we might get lost-I ‘ope you ain’t nervous!”
This was the last straw in a very long trip to New York City. We had been on a very cramped, hot plane for seven hours which is never nice, and for some reason the JFK immigration people had decided that they had gotten too welcoming and so decided to make the queuing process even more hideous. This time, we stepped off the plane and then walked all of 10 meters before we joined a queue in a long corridor with a very low ceiling which remarkably managed to be even hotter than the plane. I tried to remain positive by imagining that this new system meant that once we got round the corner ahead, we would be through much quicker.
It wasn’t, in fact it was an extra queue in advance of the normal queue. We stood for 90 minutes.
Sharon and Shiv were in front of me at the desk and so when I went through, the lady asked me if I was in the symphony. I told her I was.
“And what do you play sir?”
“I play the flute”
“Really, thats nice. You don’t look like a flute player”
“Oh”
Well, maybe, Sharon and Shiv are the only flute players she has ever met, in which case, I guess I don’t look like a flute player.
So anyway, by the time we got through to the luggage rack, the belt had stopped moving and half the cases were stuck somewhere in the bowels of the machine so we had to find someone to start it up again. Of course Miriam and Jemma sorted it out as they always do, which left us to trudge across the road to the bus. This is where we met Dave the driver.
Now one of my favourite moments when arriving in this great city is just before you go down into the tunnel to Manhattan. All of a sudden, there in front of you is the beautiful panorama of NYC in all its twinkling glory. It is at this moment when all of the bad plane food and immigration headaches disappear and an enormous sense of expectation fills my body. This time we had Dave.
I imagine his professional cockerney routine goes down well with Dick Van Dyke fans, however having only left London a few hours earlier, his chirpy, well rehearsed patter was met with a groan and a collective thought of “Please make him stop”
Dave realised this and did stop thank goodness and I was able to enjoy my NY moment in peace. His true ex Londoner status was revealed however when we arrived at the hotel and one of the viola section tried to open the door to the luggage hold. Dave turned round and snarled at him whilst slamming the door shut again
“Leave that door alone, its my job to do that.”
Woah easy fella, I suppose in these uncertain times for jobs, he was just being protective, but I was glad he picked a viola player to shout at as they are used to it.
As normal, we had a day off to acclimatise which is when everyone in the LSO runs around like headless chickens, normally with a shopping list from home. I blew away the cobwebs of the day before by going for a run around central park as it was such a gorgeous morning. Its the only place in the world where it feels normal to whizz around in Lycra, although I was impressed at the number of New Yorkers who were able to run up hills at quite a pace whilst maintaining a conversation on their hands free mobiles! It is slightly weird approaching somebody in the middle of central park who appears to be talking to themselves. In fact, checking my pedometer on my return, I could quite clearly see where my pace had quickened several times in an attempt to outrun these people. But pretty soon I got used to seeing them running along talking and gesticulating in the air all on their own.
Its one of the great things about this city that people, unlike in London do actually talk to you. Sometimes. I bumped into Sharon and Trish after my run and joined them for breakfast. They were talking to a guy on the next table when I arrived who must have been in his seventies. He said he was an author and was arranging to leave them copies of his new book and would they like to join him for dinner later at his club which was by the way the best club in the world? Hmm. He barely acknowledged my existence but seemed most taken with the girls, although he did say he would give me a copy of his book about how to dress properly to impress people in different situations! Great. He told us all that women were the future and they were going to rule the world soon. Sharon and Trish agreed of course. He said he had written a book to tell them how to do it.
He seemed unaware of the irony. He eventually left and we asked the waitress if she knew him. She told us that last time he had been in, he claimed to have been John Wayne’s stunt body double in some films. Brilliant. I’ll let you know later if the girls picked up the books, but don’t hold you breath.
So after some shopping, I met up a few friends and we went off to see the New York Knicks play the Boston Celtics at Madison Square gardens. This was basketball in case you didn’t know. I had never been to a game before and it was great fun. I was surprised at how much entertainment was on offer though, in fact the game itself often seemed secondary to the the time out entertainment of dancing girls (great), shoot a hoop from half way for $1000 competition (tricky), disco dancing (odd), kids dressing up in full size knicks gear and then trying to run and score a basket (hilarious) and some others I have forgotten. We had to have foot long hot dogs with Knish (still not sure what it was) and beer with a straw and we joined in with the shouting of de-fense and everything. It was a great night which I really can’t do justice to in this blog, but if you ever come here and have a free evening I can recommend it as a great American night out.
Its fairly early here and I am awake writing this for you before the real work begins, as we are here to work. We have a rehearsal in an hour with Bernard and I have my pass which says, Gareth Davies – Great Performer, on it. No pressure then!
I’ll let you know how we get on, and if Sharon got the books. I do hope she has, especially the one for me about dressing properly- I need to know how to look like a flute player.
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...
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.
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