Tuesday 29 November 2005

As well as having an hour to ourselves on Radio 3 on Sunday, we got played on Radio 1 on Saturday! Rob da Banks played Future Pilot AKA's 'Changes' (which features all four of us hiding in the mix somewhere) in the company of the Clash, the Wurzels (!?), and Sigur Ros. 

Playing Bach in the 21st century (no. 3 in an occasional series):

You might think that given Bach's place as a cornerstone of Western culture, it might be easy to obtain copies of his music in printed form to play from. Well, about two and a half months ago, I placed an order for the music we're playing this weekend. Nothing obscure: a popular concerto and a well-known cantata. By last week, after a couple of interim reminders from me, the supplier had admitted defeat with the parts for the cantata (fortunately Alison has an almost-complete set for the concerto). Another supplier expressed confidence in making good this now rather alarming deficit in the paper required for our concert, and the cantata parts finally arrived in Cambridge this afternoon - five days after they were promised, and a day too late for me to be able to send them out to players once they've made it to Glasgow. What's more, the concerto part that did arrive here today was of a different version of the piece to the one we're playing, and so it was useless.

The result of all of this is lots of pointless work for me chasing suppliers, trying to set up alternative arrangements, and keeping the players informed (and whining about it here), added stress for those who would have liked to see the dots before we meet on Friday, and, crucially, less time spent thinking about and preparing the actual music. So this is the last Concerto Caledonia concert of 'classical' repertoire that I will organise. It seemed so simple from a distance ... all four of us playing within a larger group of people we know well, and only two pieces that we haven't played before (even then we've all played them with other ensembles). But the apparently simple practicalities of organising music from another culture, even one as close as Bach's, present many pitfalls which end up militating against musical thought. So from now on, I will delegate all of this elsewhere or we will not play the music.  Ah. That's better.

Email deluge and loads of CD orders after the Early Music Show.