Wednesday 20 October 2004

on the train home from Edinburgh

On Monday night Katherine and I drew up our first fixing list of the players we're going to ask to do the 2005/06 orchestral work. If even half of them can do it, it should be a really good band. One really encouraging thing is that almost all of the violinists are based in Scotland - it wasn't that long ago that finding even a halfway competent baroque violinist north of the border was a bit of a struggle.

I'm playing in the SCO this week for Charles Mackerras which is always entertaining. My favourite moment in today's rehearsals was when he asked the cellos to play a certain phrase legato: 'I used to slur it, but I've repented of that now'. Yes, it's true, early music orthodoxy does impose moral imperatives.

My brain is a bit addled as neither the organ part nor the vocal score the SCO provided me with includes the figures that Mozart wrote for the organist to play from. As a result I'm reading two parts at once, and trying to guess what the composer might have meant. I've arranged to borrow the BBC copy of the score in the morning, and I'll copy the figures in on tomorrow's train.

Last night I installed my recent eBay purchase of a nice and ludicrously under-priced Yamaha CD player, and was gratified by the improved soundstage it produced (bored yet?). Then this morning I found myself in not-quite-convincing stereotypical jobbing male visitor mode, stripping speaker cable for Ursula Leveaux. I only drew blood once.

Greg is playing in rehearsals with a bright blue carbon fibre bow - 'it's not a great bow but it works'. The thing is, it costs £25, which is less than a rehair for a real wooden one. So, a bit like the green plastic melodica, you're a lot more forgiving of its limitations. If you were playing something that cost a year's salary or more you'd want it to be pretty damn good in pretty much all respects. For £25, you'll settle for something that just does the job. Cheap instruments are definitely the way forward.

I don't think I make a very good audient. Helen and I went to see Standing Wave at the tron theatre last night. Now I thought I was the perfect audient for a three-hander play about Delia Derbyshire: I know who she was, I'm interested in her work, I have some knowledge of the internal workings of the BBC, I worked in small-scale theatre for years, and I love electro-acoustic music. Perfect. But 30 seconds in, I wanted to leave. We lasted 25 minutes, just. The set design was great, but let's not talk about the rest of it as I've already used the phrase 'pretentious toss' here in the last week. So we headed prematurely for Tchai-Ovna to find avant-garde free jazz being played at point blank range (again, my idea of fun if it's good). We went home for an early night. Is there no escape from 'art'? Note the inverted commas.