Music Festivals

One of the highlights of the year as a teenager was taking part in the local music festival. Northampton holds a large week long festival of music and drama during April or May and there were classes for beginner piano to concert bands and everything in between. Most categories were divided into age groups up to an open class for any amatuer. While it was competitive it was useful for practising pieces that were to be performed in exams or school concerts. I did every available clarinet and woodwind class and played with numerous county chamber groups and I teamed up with friends to play duets. I had a very good friend called Naomi who also played the clarinet and lived close by. We were both highly competitive but this was a bonus when it came to the clarinet duet class as we won it three years in a row and had our photo taken for the local paper one year. We had many rehearsals together usually working on duets by Crusell and this must have helped develop our listening and ensemble skills no end as well as our relationship in youth orchestra as we knew each others playing well. We had a little bit of coaching from our teacher but most of the work was done ourselves. We also busked in Northampton town centre so had plenty of performance practise that way too.

Taken during the 1992 Northampton Festival

Sister Viki and I also had success in the recorder duo classes. Again we had plenty of opportunities to practise and as I was the older one could boss Viki around so she did what I requested. One year I did a piano duet with a fine pianist called Elizabeth. I was not particularly good technically but we worked hard on Faure's Kitty Valse, at Elizabeth's suggestion we did it from memory and we beat other pairs where both players were much more competent than I was. This was a good lesson for me as I realised it was how much effort you put in rather than how good you were to start with that counted. As well as the victories the defeats also taught us all something. One year the woodwind open class was very strong with around 10 decent players, any one of us grade 7 or 8 standard players could have won, but the first prize went to a grade 5 or 6 flautist. She also played an easier piece so was out of the running as far as we were concerned but she played with such poise and musicianship that while we were disappointed when she won it was no surprise based on her performance. It was another lesson that preparation for the actual event is more important than how good you are on paper.

I haven't done a competition since college (a mixture of results) and don't think of myself as particularly competitivie but I was suprised recently to learn that a few of my colleagues think I am highly competitive using examples such as the grade-1-a-thon, learning the oboe and even the fun quiz in a youth theatre company's show (although I only came second in that)! If I am going to do something I do think carefully about what I want the outcome to be but I thought it was just a battle against myself rather than others so it was interesting to learn that others see it differently.

Cambridge has it's own music festival and the harp classes are taking place on Sunday 11th March. Rohan has entered a few of us and I am in the grade 3-4 category so no age limit here. I am going to play Barcarolle by Grandjany as this was my favourite of the grade 3 pieces and I adjusted my fingerings after the exam so it will be good to try it in a different way. I will want to do my best for myself but will also use the opportunity to hear many other harpists in my own class as well as the  higher and lower grade categories. It should be a fun morning but this is a new situation for me on the harp so wonder how I will get on with nerves. I have a lesson on Wednesday and will use this for last minute preparation for the 11th as well as getting grade 4 pieces checked. I have started learning two of these but they do seem to be quite a jump up from the grade 3 pieces. This time last year I was putting the finishing touches onto my grade 1 pieces. This year I have done nowhere near the same amount of practise so priorities have definitiely changed. Hopefully I can turn that around over the next two weeks!