Day 36 - Performance Practice

The main aim for February is to get some performance practise in. This is more important than most people realise as the most unexpected things can go wrong if you're not totally prepared. Back in my college days my wind quintet used to give quite a few recitals at music clubs around  London and places as glamorous as Skegness and Bedford. Our coach, Stephen Nagy, was a stickler for presentation and would organise a room in college shortly before a recital for an informal run through to an audience of friends and family. This was useful especially if we had new repertoire to try out. We had to announce the pieces and each took a turn at speaking. I usually went first as I was the most confident at working the crowd. We didn't really prepare in advance who would say what so a minute before we were due to give this performance we decided to just go round in order, so me first, then Lucy the bassoonist, Jo on horn, Alvaro on oboe, Sue on flute (who got a mention on Day 2) and back to me. The first few pieces went fine but when we got to Alvaro, our Spanish oboist, he had been left to announce A Sullivan Suite by Gwyn Parry Jones. The title and composer was just about ok but he came unstuck with the movement titles. Tree Leetle Mayads from school are h-we was amusing. The sun h-whose rays are all ablaze needed two attempts to get right by which time the rest of us were smirking but the five or so attempts to get Never mind the h-why and h-wherefore out gave us a serious fit of the giggles. This seriously affected our ability to play Three Little Maids and Stephen's stern glance only made things worse. We stumbled through and Sue almost managed to hold it together but the killer came when she noticed Alvaro, usually so cool and collected, wipe a tear of laughter from his face mid-performance. The delicate, slow movement was not much better and it took us until the end of the third movement to calm down. Despite Stephen's ferocious looks he took it very well and saw it as a lesson that we should always plan these things in advance.

Fortunately my own performances should not involve any speaking but you never know what might go wrong so it's good to keep the run through as real as possible. My next performance opportunity will be Friday evening as I have invited Sue H (a different Sue to Day 2 Sue) and husband Ken round for dinner. Sue is a clarinet pupil who lives in the next village. She took up the clarinet again after having played it at school (which was a while ago now…) and she passed her grade 5 with a merit last year. The local branch of my professional society organise an adults concert each year and Sue is going to play Romance from the Five Bagatelles by Finzi. She needs an informal performance and I need as much practise as I can get so we will perform in front of Chris and Ken. I'll do dinner, there'll be plenty of drink and Chris and Ken will enjoy themselves whether they like it or not. As well as playing the clarinet Sue also has a 'blog' (although not quite as hi-tech as mine) as she has kept a diary since 1988. Over 30 volumes each containing pages and pages of her beautiful tiny hand writing follow all the exciting and more mundane events from the last 23 years. As well as writing every day she also reads the events from the same time the previous year and often goes back further. She once showed me the diary that covered her first clarinet lesson with me and I was pleased to see I'd made a good impression then! Sue is also my latest sponsor so this evening's 30 minutes was for her. I started with scales, up to 95 now with the metronome. I moved onto the harder stuff and worked on Bluebells of Scotland (Ken is Scottish so may appreciate a melody from his homeland) working out how to do a lever change as I need a G sharp just for one note in the middle. I picked some other tunes near the middle of the book then worked towards the front finding easier pieces then I finished with exam pieces and another scale or two.