Glinka and Borodin

It seems to have been a very busy week, and although I have found time to practice, I haven't found time to write about practicing.  It has been ticking along in the background though.

I really enjoyed orchestra practice last night.  I usually enjoy it but it did feel like a particularly good rehearsal to me, mainly becuase my reed was working particularly well which always makes everything a little better.  We also worked on some really nice pieces of music:

Glinka - Ruslan and Ludmilla.  This is quite a fun piece to play, we certainly don't play it at the speed that a professional orchestra would it does roll along quite nicely.  It also has a very recognisable tune that sticks in your head for days afterwards.  There are som very woodwind sections with parts interlinking - but overall it isn't really too complicated.

Borodin - Petit Suite. we've been working on bits of this over the last few weeks but this was the first time we had a full play through all of the movements that we will be doing. There are 7 movements but we will only be doing 5 in the concert.  This was originally written as piano duet but was later orchestrated by someone else.  The piano origins show themselves most in the Mazurka, I think, which isn't terribly interesting as an orchestral piece.  The rest of movements are rather nice though.  There are some tricky corners in this that I need to look at in my practice.  The scherzo at the end has some rather fiendish chromatic sections with sharps and double sharps all over the place.  I probably mentioned them last time. I still need to practice them.

Next week Night on Bare mountain.