Tuesday 5 December 2006

A lesson learned from yesterday's concert: practising is over-rated. I didn't practise for yesterday at all, just played 10 minutes of Hanon exercises a few times last week to get my finger musculature working, and played all the music through once slowly on the piano on Sunday.  If you've learnt the music (a big 'if'), you know how it goes, and your musculature is able to play it, then being in good overall shape and a healthy  frame of mind will influence the music far more than whether you've put in enough practice on bar 28.  Of course, this is a lesson that you can only learn when not playing in orchestras. 

I had lunch with Alison today, where in 15 minutes' occasional scribbling on one sheet of paper (begun on Sunday night) we came up with one whole season's worth of new programme ideas, all of which we wanted to play. This would have been unthinkable even two weeks ago. And so we move forward.

There's an excellent Scottish appropriation of a cultural icon here. And I've got a cold.