What a week it has been. It\u2019s Friday afternoon here at Vftp Headquarters, the first moment of relative peace and quiet I\u2019ve had in what seems like a long time. This little respite is squeezed between the Ensemble Epomeo concert last night and the HSO concert tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Concerts always bring their fair share of drama and uncertainty, especially if you\u2019re involved in the planning side of things enough to know how precariously your fortunes are balanced on the razor blade of life. That said, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve had many more insane concert weeks than this one and the one to come next week. I think I\u2019ll wait for my memoirs to narrate the events in any detail, but I can say that between travel problems and stomach bugs tearing through the group, I\u2019ve rarely played a more edge-of-the-seat concert than the one last night. Miraculously, it went very well. There\u2019s nothing more dangerous than being a little bit comfortable\u00a0for a concert- better to be completely without a safety net, not daring to blink for a split second.<\/p>\n
We had a nice crowd last night, no thanks to the local rag and cultural affairs radio show, which completely blanked us in spite of strong efforts to get some coverage of the concert (and the HSO concert tomorrow). These local papers are often rather lame when it comes to covering culture, which is incredibly stupid on their part. Most educated people in a place like Hereford only take the local paper to keep informed of what\u2019s going on culturally- they don\u2019t consider it a serious source of real news and would rather read one of the national papers for news of the prime minister’s latest proclamations. When the local rag can’t spare a few column inches to support the local orchestra or an effort to bring some first-class chamber music to a wonderful but painfully underutilized venue in the heart of the city, people start cutting their subscriptions and keeping up with things through the internet.<\/p>\n
The Beethoven C minor Trio, op 9 no. 3, was the last of the 5 (three numbered trios and the two Serenades) that I hadn\u2019t previously performed. I\u2019m pretty sure now it is the best of the bunch, much as I\u2019ve always loved the G major. The first movement is vintage C minor Beethoven- much more developed and taut than the first movement of , say, his op 18 no. 4 String Quartet, which is much more square and less contrapuntally compelling. The slow movement is really extraordinary- like the slow movement of the 2nd<\/sup> Piano Trio, op 1 no. 2, it really reaches the spiritual world of his late slow movements. The contrast of the serene, hymn-like opening with the radiant energy of the jaunty second theme already strongly hints at the power of the double variation slow movements like the Heiliger Dankesang of op 132 and the 9th<\/sup> Symphony. Amazing stuff. Schubert must have known and loved this trio- it\u2019s full of his beloved third relationships, my favorite of which is this glorious shift from B-flat to G-flat major in the finale.<\/p>\n I\u2019m a very pro-early Beethoven guy, and seem to have wasted many words on my friends in Portland trying to convince them that Beethoven didn\u2019t get better, he just wrote more stuff. Just this year, to do the trio we did last night and op 18 no. 1, which has the most astounding slow movement, is more than enough to make me feel all the more strongly that the pathos and spirituality of the late music was not a response to his personal suffering, but a manifestation of his natural talent and temperament. Here’s an older post about Shostakovich<\/a>, who I also think mostly wrote what he wrote because of who he was,\u00a0not because\u00a0Stalin was mean to him.\u00a0 Other early Beethoven in the calendar includes Beethoven 1 again next week with the SMP- it went so well in the Menuhin Hall last week that it might have been a little tempting to want to leave it in peace, but there\u2019s always so much more work to be done on his music. After that, there\u2019s Beethoven 2 in a couple of weeks with the OES- the conclusion of our Beethoven Cycle project (one we BEGAN with the 9th<\/sup>!). After that, Ensemble Epomeo are playing op 9 no. 3 again in Ischia<\/a>, and I\u2019m doing Beethoven\u00a0 4 in the summer with the excellent Helix Ensemble.<\/p>\n Alongside that repeat of Beethoven 1 in Guildford we replace the Strauss 1st<\/sup> Horn Concerto with the ferocious, frenetic and fantastic 5th<\/sup> Piano Concerto by Prokofiev. After many challenges and hurdles (almost as many as the EE concert last night, and again, I’ll save them for the book), we finally got our first shot at the piece on Wednesday night. It has a well-deserved reputation for being not only difficult to play, but a bit of a conductor killer, and I did hear a wonderful broadcasting orchestra not far from here struggle a bit with it a couple of years ago. The omens were not promising when I left for rehearsal Wednesday afternoon- two solid days of chamber music rehearsal with a stomach bug had left me completely wiped out and with little or no time to do a final flip-though of the score. Ah well, what was I said about comfort versus concentration?\u00a0We had an hour with just the orchestra, then were joined by Daniel, our soloist. With a bit of slow work, we were able to get things sorted enough in that first hour that the second hour with Daniel could be productive, and with a bit of time in our last rehearsal, I predict it will be rather spectacular. Sometimes it\u2019s good if everyone knows a piece is not to be trifled with- they all put in a bit more prep work, which makes all the difference.<\/p>\n Anyway- it\u2019s on to rehearsal tonight and concert tomorrow with the HSO. Since the local paper isn\u2019t going to do so, I\u2019ll let you all know that the programme is:<\/p>\n Schumann- Overture \u201cThe Bride of Messina\u201d<\/p>\n Mozart- Sinfonia Concertante<\/p>\n Byron Wallis- violin, David Yang- viola<\/p>\n Dvorak- Symphony No. 9 in E minor (\u201cFrom the New World\u201d)<\/p>\n Great programme, and the Schumann is really an extraordinary piece, about as harmonically bold as anything he ever wrote.<\/p>\n