Monday 16 May 2005

Travelled down to London on Friday night for the unexpected Geminiani gig in Tudeley. As Alison drove us to Kent on Saturday afternoon, Joe and I compared versions of the 'duck goes into a bar/rabbit goes into the butchers' joke: 'got any breadcrumbs/lettuce?', punctuated by the appropriate animal noises. All Saints Church in Tudeley has a perfect acoustic for small scale chamber music, but the stained glass windows by Chagall can make it difficult to rehearse, as on a Saturday afternoon there is a constant stream of tourists coming in to admire and photograph them. An impromptu and increasingly busked re-arrangement of a Handel trio sonata for two cellos and harpsichord drew this remark from Timothy Kraemer (who was taking photos of us rather than playing the cello): 'that's a nice piece - who wrote it?' 'Well, Handel started it, we're just finishing it off for him.'

By halfway through the concert, total mental exhaustion had set in on my part and although I could listen and hear very well, my fingers just wouldn't do what I wanted them to, and the result was a bumper crop of wrong notes. Fortunately everyone else made up for it, and Alison charmed the audience by being brilliant anyway. Lots of generous musicianship on stage. 

And some generous musicians in the audience to talk to in the break: Annette Isserlis (looking for a copy of SADN, I didn't have any) and Malachy Robinson, who might just join us for our Perth gig in December.

Yesterday morning I made the trip from Walthamstow in East London to my front door in the West End of Glasgow in three hours exactly. A record: sometimes it can take six. But early Sunday morning motorway traffic is light, and not flying from Heathrow is almost always a good decision. 

Later in the day, Jamie MacDougall told me how he'd been in a museum in Vienna and seen Prince Nikolaus's octet table from Esterhazy: it has music stands built into the centre of it so that two people can sit on each of the four sides to play. The accompanying leaflet in the museum states that Nikolaus was a keen musician and played the euphonium. This mistranslation of 'baryton' conjures up a wonderful picture of Prince Esterhazy emerging from the pithead to go and play in the colliery band. And a whole lost repertoire of euphonium duos by Haydn.

After a short nap I drove north to Dalguise in Perthshire to join Chris and the lads for their concert in the amazing hall that looks just like a house from the outside. Three numbers in and Chris was getting worried by the apparently frosty reception: 'Hmm. Folded arms, furrowed brows. Well, we'll cheer you up with a lament.' But the audience soon warmed to us and by the second half they were erupting into cheers every time I picked up the melodica, and heckling with good spirit. The harmonium was pretty flat though: I'd better investigate that before tomorrow's gig in Leith.

Today I was in 'professional musician' mode sitting in the BBC SSO for some Handel arias with Christine Rice. For some reason the orchestral management wasn't expecting me to play in 'Doppo Notte' from Ariodante, but the conductor was, so lacking a score, I read the bass part over Iain Crawford's shoulder, which was much more fun and woke my brain up quite effectively.

I'm gradually getting my study computer back into working order after having it dragged into the 21st century with a hard drive format and the introduction of Windows XP, to match the other machines in the house. So every job takes a lot longer than usual as software is re-installed and backups are recovered. Tedious but necessary - by last week it wouldn't do anything without crashing after 15 minutes or so ...