Tuesday 26 April 2010

on the TGV Basel-Paris
I’m just about awake after a very busy couple of days. Catherine’s poster and tireless promotion paid off which a friendly audience at PianoFort’ino. The piano (by Caspar Schmidt, Prague 1830) was quite amazing, and the Turkish effects are all on the 6^th pedal: drum, bells and snare effect with a pretty much random selection of them sounding when you press it down. When I tried out in Schetky’s variations on the strathspey The Indian Queen, none of the three of us could stop laughing for some time and we decided on the spot that we would try and record something (even if we weren’t sure what) the following day.

BRS again, this time with a huge plate of antipasti between us, and Clare McIntyre joined us for a single dessert with 4 spoons – eating out in Basel is a bit expensive, after all. 

Yesterday, Catherine was producer for the day, cycling off to pick up a hired Schoeps ORTF pair to be placed in a strategic position. Recording old pianos is always problematic as even when they will stay in tune for longer than 15 minutes, they make so many unexpected extraneous noises, especially if as in this case there is a bassoon stop, two moderators, an harp stop, a damper pedal and a Turkish band to accommodate and regulate. I was convinced that one particular buzz was the audio signal breaking up, but it really was acoustic.

So we all worked very hard indeed and earned our dinner. Courtesy of Catherine’s kitchen, we’ve eaten very well indeed for the last few days, possibly also because my only culinary contribution has been the baked bananas with Lindt 70% we had last night.