Thursday morning's orchestra session was "classical orchestra". The works played were the Haydn Oxford Symphony, the Mozart Wind Sinfonia Concertante and the Beethoven Second Symphony.
The organisation of the players was masterly: the Haydn uses no clarinets, so Malcolm's son Nick conducted instead of playing, while Malcolm gave his viola some exercise. The other clarinettist, Terry, turns out to be able to play the double bass.
The Mozart requires four soloists: oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn. Malcolm Youngs' son Nick was the clarinet soloist; John Cowdy played the oboe solo; Peter Ramage was the horn soloist; and I took the bassoon part. Now you see why I've been practising this week! Considering that at least two of the four of us had never seen the work until we picked our music up a few weeks ago, and we had never played it with an orchestra, we turned in a surprisingly good performance. Two people came to me independently afterwards and said how much they had enjoyed the slow movement.
The Beethoven does require clarinettists, so Terry got released from double bass duty and the rest of the Mozart soloists rejoined the orchestra. The second (slow) movement took longer than anticipated, so we skipped the third movement and went straight to the final movement.
Bearing the state of the weather in mind, the barbecue which many people went on to after "classical orchestra" may have been a somewhat soggy affair. Margaret and I came back to my place and had lunch with Stephen. We finished with icecream "because we needed enough dirty dishes to make it worthwhile running the dishwasher".
After lunch, we did a bit of private practice, and played through a couple of Marcello sonatas originally meant for flute and basso continue, and then we went to the Chislehurst Caves, which were a major air raid shelter during WWII.
We could have gone to "Party Pieces" in the evening, but we stayed home and consumed at least a bottle of white wine and a number of hot cross buns. Margaret pinched some of Stephen's chocolate, while I got into the carob and the Rustic biscuits.
Helen
Last Revised: 10th August, 2001.