Wednesday 24 May 2006

I'm sitting in a corner of the Glasgow's Henry Wood Hall as a recording session goes on around me, steaming gently after getting soaked through on the bike journey here. Watching a large symphony orchestra spread out over such a vast area of stage space is really quite impressive, but seeing all these people desperately following instructions on a page, with some bloke waving a stick around in the middle distance like a regimental sergeant-major does seem, well, a rather quaint old-fashioned historical way to make music. It feels like early music and it's only Shostakovich. It's bloody loud though.

The conductor has cut from the harmonium part the really difficult bit I've been practising for the last couple of days. Does that mean that whoever last tried to play it screwed it up?  So I wasted an hour or two learning it but it does make the session less stressful, and I have the novelty of a two-manual-and-pedal University reed organ to play, complete with electric blower. I once saw a three manual one at the Barras - perhaps it's still there - but I've never got my hands on one in working order. This specimen's owner tells me he spent a day and a half tuning it up from 438 to a'=440.