A helpful lesson and a Prom concert

My teacher Rohan has a packed week of students. Due to the size of the instrument and difficulties with portability she travels to almost all of her pupils, either in schools or at their own homes. Her school pupils tend to have weekly lessons but those of us with similarly full working weeks tend to book a lesson when we feel like it. Rohan terms us as 'floaters' in that we are hers but are not fixed to any time. Realising the start of term was imminent I booked a lesson for the Wednesday morning as I wanted help with the scale patterns in the Etude. We warmed up, as we usually do, with a cup of tea and catch up of summer activities. I told her about the orchestra in Provence and how it had been a different experience to playing on my own and she said she likes to throw pupils into orchestral situations as soon as they're ready as it requires a different way of thinking. On the clarinet I usually look directly at the conductor but she said she only tend to keep the conductor in her peripheral vision. There is also the business of keeping going without going back to correct any mistakes, something I go on and on about to my own pupils and ensembles but when you are forced to do it, I admit, it is hard!

I started with Barcarolle, the piece I played at the concert last week. Rohan liked that and made a few suggestions with dynamics and shaping of melody. I then started the Etude to show her where the problem was. The first problem was in the first bar so I stopped and she explained that when learning we tend to think about notes first, then secondly we check to see if fingers are on the right strings, and only then if there's room in the brain, do we think about hand position. Really the hand position shoud be there first. Rohan gave me some scale exerciese designed to think about hand position, lengthening the fingers and allowing space for the fingers that move position during the pattern then play the pattern very slowly and only gradually speeding up. I'm sure I've heard all this before but it needs reiterating for the new situation.

We then chatted for a while longer on repertoire and future events. There will be a big harp playday in Cambridge in November 2012 and Rohan is hoping to get over 100 harpists to attend. She was able to tell me that one of the tutors has now been confirmed as Catrin Finch, one of the great names in the harp world and pretty much a household name.

After lunch I headed down to London as I'd got tickets to see the BBC Symphony Orchestra perform The Planets. The programme also featured Isabella, a tone poem by Bridge and a violin concerto by Harrison Birtwistle. I knew The Planets had two harps and another harp inspiration - Sioned Williams - was on harp 1. She also featured in the other two pieces. At some point I do hope to meet Sioned properly and after watching her and the Co-principal harp Louise Martin I found I had lots of questions about how they work. The Planets was excellent, some really exciting moments and lovely gentler contrasts. The Bridge was based on a gruesome story (murder, head chopped off that sort of thing) but was enjoyable. Despite being open-minded and with excellent performances by the BBC SO and violin soloist Christian Tetzlaff I found I couldn't warm to the Birtwistle. There were some interesting sections, including those with contrabass clarinet, but as whole piece it's not what I really enjoy listening to. But then again the Rite of Spring probably wasn't everyone's cup of tea back in 1913.

I met up with one of my students Sue and her husband Ken beforehand then had the great pleasure of bumping into an old college friend Nina who was there with her husband Matthew. London can be very big but if you go to the right places you are bound to see a familiar face at some point. Unfortunately I didn't find the right pub afterwards for a proper chat so will have to go back and catch up properly next time.