Day 38 - Have harp, will travel

The harp had its first outing since the lesson day back in January. It was a glorious day, sunny and quite warm if you stood in the right place and I took the harp to the home of clarinet pupil Helen and her husband John to give a little performance for them. Helen loves her clarinet playing and manages to practice every day, occasionally stopping to look after one or more of her grandchildren! She also knows the preparation needed for a performance as she has recently been working on a Lefevre Sonata for a concert in March. After Helen’s clarinet lesson John took a break from painting and they both listened to my recital. I opened with Sound the Trumpets, then did The Ball, had a bash at Bluebells of Scotland as they are both from the very north of Scotland and finished with Azaleas in Houston. I did begin to announce my pieces but John told me in no uncertain terms he didn’t want the talk, just the music! As an artist himself he prefers to let the art speak for itself rather than surround it with words which will mean different things to different people so I was happy to oblige. They loved it and we had a lovely chat afterwards, about the beautiful simplicity of the sound, my dynamics (with were very effective!), well known players, performers speaking, and my future plans with the harp. John likened my aims to a journey. I'm currently at the start and can see the landscape stretched out in front waiting to be travelled. It was a great image and I finished with another rendition of Azaleas in Houston and they kindly gave me a donation so this evening’s practice was dedicated to Helen and John.

In all my performances I have made slips that haven't usually happened before. In The Ball I did one bar the wrong way round, not a major disaster but I noticed it and next time will need to be aware that I start each bar on the higher of the notes I need. I thought about that in my evening practice but of course it was fine again. Future performances will bring out other unexpected slips but hopefully any potential gremlins will have been eliminated by the time the exam comes around. The rest of the evening's practice was fun, working on a mixture of old tunes and looking ahead to new ones. I didn't work too hard but did get scales up to 100 and Rondo up to 92 on the metronome. While writing the blog I listened to my new CD of Harp Concertos, one by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and the other by Gliere. I still have the second half of Harps and Harpists to read. Less than 3 weeks to go until the exam although I can see this is still just the beginning of a very long and enjoyable journey. The landscape is indeed stretching out as far as the eye can see, and the sun is shining!

My mysterious sponsor from yesterday also identified herself, although not from the depths of Russia as I was half hoping, but more from the far reaches of north Essex! Emma, a clarinettist with Walden Winds had been on the justgiving site and was about to leave a message with her donation suggesting that I would now be able to play Paul Reade's Victorian Kitchen Garden Suite on both clarinet and harp. She flicked to another website to check she had the right composer and piece details and when she came back to the justgiving site it had already gone through leaving her as a generous, if a little modest, supporter.