A night of Russian Music

Saturday was our orchestra concert, our programme was:

Borodin - Steppes of Central Asia
Borodin - Petite Suite
Glinka - Ruslan and Ludmilla
 ~ interval ~
Mussorgsky - Gopak
Mussorgsky - Night on Bare Mountain
Tchaikovsy - excerpts from Sleeping Beauty

It generally went a lot better than I expected it to.  The afternoon rehearsal was really rather ropey in parts and I was a bit worried that it would all fall to pieces a bit.  I should have known that my fear was unfounded.  There were some challenging moments on the night, a few entries in the Glinka were not quite where they should be,  we were not quite together for parts of Bare Mountain.  But, overall, I think it was the best we had ever played the programme as a whole and, from my perspective at least, there were a few spine tingling moments that made me (once again) proud to be part of this orchestra.  The shimmering violins in the Steppes of Central Asia sounded just magical, our 80+ year old Cor player who has been struggling with the solo part really pulled it out of the bag on the night and really did herself, and us, proud.  The sound of the full orchestra really going for it at the beginning of the Glinka made my heart sing. In Bare mountain we all nailed the sudden stop before it begins winding up with the bassoon chromatic scale....you could have heard a pin drop.  The solos at the end of the piece with flute and clarinet were just beautifully played.  I really enjoyed my duet with the flute in the Sleeping Beauty waltz and I managed to get the scale right in the middle of it. 

I hope that the audience enjoyed it as much as we did.  We had a modest but respectable number of people there.  I do wonder sometimes if amateur orchestras at our level are actually more fun to be in than to listen to - certainly our audience could have heard better performances elsewhere.  But I think an amateur concert is about more than just playing music.

I loved  this  article about amateur orchestras - which can be summed up by the following quote:

“A typical effort will be littered with a continuum of faults. The problem is that audiences, weaned on the synthetic perfection of commercial recordings, tend to be unthinkingly intolerant of faults in even live professional performances, let alone amateur ones. I argue (long and hard) that audiences must tailor their expectations, just as do those who tolerate the sound of ancient recordings, to 'listen through' the surface imperfections to the music that lies beneath. The tolerant are richly rewarded. Enthusiastic amateurs, perpetually striving against their limitations, restore to Music what is lost to the prosaic professional: the elements of risk and danger; the familiar becomes new, challenging, exciting!”

On Saturday we certainly stepped out of our comfort zone,  it was risky for us but exhilerating to feel like we succeeded in pulling it off.  Now on to the next one, continuing to strive against our limitiations...

why knowing your scales is a good thing

Regular orchestra practice again last night, our conductor is back from holiday too.  We are doing a selection of Russian music for our next concert.  It has had a mixed reception, some players really don't like it all, some are finding it a bit too difficult - personally I am one of the many who really love it.  I should probably admit that I am actually quite ignorant about classical music.  I didn't do music GCSE or Alevel and I don't really listen to a lot of classical being more of an "Indie Chick."  Generally I know a few standard things and I'm trying to educate myself on oboe repertoire but as far as orchestral music goes - I know the stuff that I've played.   So I've found it quite educational having a program of all Russian music to help give me a feel for the shared characteristics.

 Last night we were initially focussing on Borodin's Petite Suite.  We played one of the Mazurka's (3rd movement) which is fairly straight forward and had our first attempt at the Scherzo of the final movement.  This wasn't quite so straightfoward initially, I am not very good at sightreading large numbers of accidentals - especially when they include double sharps - but it came together in the end once we realised that they were all simple chromantics.  It was a good example of why knowing your scales is very useful. 

After the break we looked at parts of Tchaikowsky's Sleeping Beauty Suite.  It gave me some good articulation practice having to do repeated semi quavers for bars in 6/8.  There is a nice oboe solo bit in the last movement and it is good fun to play. Though I am finding it very difficult not to sing along to the main theme with the words from the Disney version.  So maybe it isn't just stuff I've played that I know - also pieces used in adverts and Disney films.
Lesson tonight.