Saturday 25 May 2002

The train home from Aberdeen offers some dramatic watery sights as it travels down the east coast: waves crashing against seawalls, rivers in spate, a lifeboat heading out to sea. My attention inside the carriage moves between the newspapers and the TV thriller script I've been sent, which I keep having to put down to catch my breath.

Adventures in the Music Profession vol. 361: last night's gig was a 'classical spectacular', you know the sort of thing, 'Nessun Dorma', Suppé's Light Cavalry Overture, the 1812. I was only playing in two pieces (and wasn't doing much in those), so effectively I had a day out in Aberdeen with occasional forays on stage for rehearsal or part of a concert, and rounded off by a nice hour in the pub with some personable colleagues. It was quite good fun, and reminded me of all the hanging around when I used to take walk-on work in TV shows while writing up my PhD.  Playing in an orchestra pays about the same too! In fact I've just agreed to another couple of days' work with the RSNO next weekend, with a live broadcast on Radio 2 from Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens. I feel a new career beckoning as an orchestral pianist. 

No I don't. For one thing I can't count bars' rest without moving my lips.  And I'd get really fat: with all the hanging around there's not much to do other than eat, as I said to the bass clarinettist over tea and biscuits backstage while the rest of the orchestra were playing Elgar's Nimrod.

This morning was the first of the kids/schools concerts, with another selection of barnstorming tunes along with the more challenging Petrushka which has been occupying so much of my practice time. There wasn't room on the stage for the Music Hall's big Bösendorfer, so I was playing on a little baby grand with the feel and resonance of a wet cardboard box, but the joy of being a tiny musical cog in a big machine is that you can just get on with it and not be too precious. It would be nice to get the audience closer in these sorts of concerts, but the traditional shoe-box concert hall doesn't really lend itself to informality, for all its acoustic perfection. A few enterprising parents took their kids along to the front to lean over the balcony rail, which was great.

[later] Well, this year's Eurovision Song Contest was a bit of a disappointment: not nearly enough wilful eccentricity or cheerful displays of lack of talent.  My favourites were the Greek Gary Numan clones, the German fat bloke (why does Germany always field a middle-aged rocker who should know better?), and the transvestite air hostesses from Slovenia, but special mention goes to the lyrics of the Maltese song, which were hilariously atrocious: you have to watch the show with subtitles to catch the full horror.