Marlowe Music Week got off to its start this morning with a coffee morning which I didn't attend, although I did telephone Malcolm Youngs to let him know that I intended to participate in the evening chamber music session.
This afternoon I went to Margaret Fernandez's to rehearse the Vanhal double concerto. She's playing first and I'm playing second. I was concerned that my lack of preparation would be a problem, but Margaret wants to take the fast movements somewhat under tempo, and I think I can manage to play them to her requirements! She has played the Vanhal before, but I haven't, but neither of us has done much work on it recently. It soon became apparent that my Thursday lunchtime swims have done my lungs good, as I wasn't having trouble with running out of breath before the end of phrases, unlike Margaret, who smokes. Her husband has just been told to give up, so she might, too.
We worked on both the outer movements this afternoon, but abandoned the slow movement until tomorrow as my lip wasn't up to the long slow notes after I'd worked on the first movement.
The evening's activity was chamber music at the Youngs' place, where they had a strings and piano group in the front room downstairs; a string group upstairs in the back bedroom; and a wind group in the front bedroom which is not above the room with the piano:-) We kept the doors shut, and only a few strains of extraneous music permeated through.
After we'd had enough music for the evening, we congregated in the back sitting room for a spot of light supper, and discussed who was likely to attend which sessions later on during the week. It looks like I've been invited to the Wednesday coffee morning session as Malcolm has decided that he'd like bassoons this year. Last year he thought we'd take up too much room and did without us! The coffee morning is the one session during the week to which members of the public are invited: the aim of the session is to provide background music to go with the coffee, and as there has to be room for those partaking of the coffee, the orchestra can't take up too much room:-)
The supper party broke up reasonable early, so as to allow us to pace ourselves for the week of music ahead of us.
Helen
Last Revised: 9th August, 2002.