Thursday 9 March 2001

Today was pretty much filled with last minute preparations for Rome. Solitary practice isn't something I do very much - usually I have to make do with playing exercises regularly just to keep the finger muscles from seizing up - so it was good fun spending some hours getting Domenico Corri's silly variations on Duncan Gray up to scratch. I'll be recording them in a few weeks as well so I had half a mind on that, but I gave in to the occasional distraction, such as dusting the harpsichord more thoroughly than it's been done in 10 years <cough>. The soundboard paintings came up a treat.

Hopefully in the next few days of hanging around airports (dull), and hanging around Rome (not so dull) I'll get a chance to read through The Gentle Shepherd properly again: last weekend I only got as far as the end of Act 1 in snatched moments. The mail this morning brought me a copy of the 1808 edition from a bookshop in Philadelphia: I found this on Bibliofind, so my credit card details are now probably being used to buy car accessories and pornography by several thousand people across the USA. 

I've decided on the programme for Melrose at long last: Katy Bircher's going to play a flute concerto by Johann Stamitz, who taught the Earl of Kelly, and she and Catherine Bott will take the solo parts in the high version of Bach's cantata Ich habe genug, a heart-breakingly beautiful piece which is really all about how awful life is (sorry, I don't feel like explaining the Pietist theology underpinning this right now).  A bleak message is far more powerful when it's pronounced beautifully: if its sounds are as hideous as its meaning, the effect is not half so convincing.

And after all these years I have officially joined the ranks of the professional musician: a camera caught me speeding through a temporary limit on the way to Aberdeen the other week, and now I've got a ticket. A badge of the profession.