A Clarsach Society gathering

Shortly after her recital in Long Melford Danielle sent me details of a playing afternoon to be held in Suffolk. I emailed someone called Anne, who appeared to have organised it all and she sent me some directions and asked if I would be able to bring something to play to the others. I practised a few pieces yesterday to decide what to offer and loaded the car nice and early this morning. I had wanted to drag Robyn along as she is keen to do lots of playing and meet new people but she had a choral concert this evening so couldn't make it. I had to go to Cambridge first for a rehearsal with Cambridge Symphonic Winds who are giving a concert next Saturday. After spending the morning rehearsing some particularly demanding and heavy music on the bass clarinet heading off to Suffolk was a refreshing change. The sun was shining and the little villages all looked their prettiest, especially Lavenham which is always a pleasure to see. I had some directions but used the sat-nav first of all which took me along some very narrow roads through the middle of nowhere. After stopping and looking at the printed directions I turned around and found the right entrance. I went past the main house to the barn where I was told we would meet. The door was open and I peered in, cautiously calling 'hello' a bit worried in case I was in the wrong place with an angry owner about to let some dogs loose but I spotted a Pilgrims harp case just inside the door so guessed this was the right venue. Anne soon appeared and after our introductions Helen arrived along with Jane, who owns the house and converted barn. The rooms in the barn were amazing. Jane and husband David have converted it into a seperate home and the living room makes for a wonderful rehearsal space while the kitchen area was spacious and modern. The acoustics were perfect for the harps and the view across the garden was lovely.

Setting up and tuning

The event was a meeting for anyone within the Clarsach Society with the aim of playing and sharing the interest of the Clarsach, another name for my style of lever harp. The London and South-east branch has around 95 members and covers Hampshire to Kent in the south and Hertfordshire and Anglia to the north. We had a cup of tea and discussed harps first of all. Anne's is like mine, made by Pilgrims although slightly older and Helen's was made by her husband who started making harps as a hobby. It has a wonderful two wood design just about visible in the photo above. We eventually got around to some playing and started with a trio. The other two are good sight-readers and the music was straight forward enough for me to keep up and get most of the notes in. The arrangements were good and are published so I will order one or two of those this week. The three harps all made slightly different sounds, mine is slightly more mellow while Helen's is much brighter partly due to the strings she has. Jane, who doesn't play, sat entranced throughout! She does play the Cora, an African instrument with 21 strings. I didn't see it this time but there were suggestions that she should play it at our next meeting! We then played a solo piece each. I did Barcarolle, and Anne and Helen each did a piece by Isabel Mieras who had also arranged the ensemble pieces. We played a few more ensembles and performed two more solo pieces each and chatted about styles, teachers, repertoire and forthcoming events.  Afterwards I gave Anne a lift to a station and on the way she told me about plans to hold a harp festival in July next year, probably in Reading. She said she would send me details and she also recommended the Edinburgh Internation Harp Festival which takes place just before Easter each year. I said I would join the Clarsach Society and Anne gave me the latest newsletter which will be my bedtime reading later! It was a lovely afternoon and great to meet some others with similar interests.

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.

A concert and a street party

Summer is almost over and the week in Provence seems a while ago now. Before term starts again on Monday there was the chance to squeeze in an informal concert performance. Friend and Grade-1-a-thon groupie Margaret lives in a small cul-de-sac in Oakington, a village near Cambridge. The neighbours of the Close have mentioned the music drifting from her house and Margaret, a pianist, was given the idea to put on a summer performance. Margaret invited myself on clarinet and fellow teacher Karen, a singer, and we performed at the Methodist Church where I did my first public performance on the harp back in February.

We did a mixture of solo, duo and trio pieces and I was also allowed to do a couple of pieces on the harp. As my recital programme (that is - all the pieces I can play so far) is still under 20 minutes adding a piece or two here and there in a longer performance is a lovely way for me to gradually build up confidence and get my pieces very well known. It also gives the audience a break from the main programme. I chose to do Barcoralle by Grandjany, one of the grade 3 pieces, so have spent the past few weeks gradually getting this one up to standard. Having the performance aim meant that I focussed just a little harder during those practises on getting the notes learnt and working out where it might go wrong. The performance went fairly well although there are still two places where my fingers want to go in a slightly different direction but having performed it in front of an audience means I will be in a better position when I next play it probably to an examiner. I also did Mountain Stream, my favourite grade 2 piece and this one now feels really comfortable. The more you play, the better it gets and you can experiment with different dynamics, speeds and take a few risks!

Karen has a wonderful operatic voice and as an ensemble we did Voi, che sapete by Mozart and Gershwin's Summertime. I have played with Margaret many times before so we know each other's playing well and having Karen too was a lot of fun. We hope to do some more performances in the future. Just talking about the harp with other musicians can lead to new repertoire ideas and round at Karen's earlier in the week she produced two pieces arranged by Edmund Rubbra for voice and harp. It looked possible on lever harp and we are hoping to do that in the future. I love the ways in which discoveries are made.

The neighbours were very complimentary of the performance and after the concert we headed back to the Close where they all demonstrated their own skills at producing and consuming alcohol of all different varieties. Although it was getting dark it was dry and quite mild so we sat outside under a gazebo with some nibbles, Jenga and a lively atmosphere. Chris had come along to the concert and after show gathering, lured by the promise of some quiet drinking afterwards with Mark, Margaret's husband, bringing some of his own cider to share. However he was encouraged to try much of the range on offer and join in with the raucous behaviour. It was great to see such a lively and friendly bunch and while I finish this blog and start preparing for the new term Chris is currently sleeping off the effects of mixing toffee vodka and Barbados rum and will be reminiscing for a few more hours yet I feel, probably like much of the rest of the Close. Cheers!