Hilary Hahn-solo, and Shostakovich Symphony No.1

Like my little joke there?

Okay, not really that funny, but  I did hear Hilary Hahn play and I did go by myself, so it is sort of entertaining … at least to me!

 

These two concerts are probably going to be the last I go to for a few weeks – mostly because the orchestras aren’t playing (several are recording movie sound tracks right now!) and also because there arent any going on that I really want to pay money to go to. This is good news for my pocket book and sleep habits.

Anyway. LPO. Wednesday October 24th – they did a Mozart Violin concerto with Hilary Hahn, which was absolutely stunning except I always find Mozart to be underwhelming. I guess I’m just not a classical girl. The modern concertos (or at least Sibelius) are way more interesting and captivating… not to mention virtuosic. Or at least blatantly so.

Either way, Hilary was incredible. She is a pretty intense player, but I had to laugh because while she is playing she often steps back with her right foot and leans backwards, almost as if she were in the movie 300 and about to launch a spear into the sky:

 

The second half was one thing and one thing only. 64 minutes of Bruckner 7.

 

I’m not even kidding. Bruckner writes great music but I could do with it being about half as long. Needless to say I slept through most of it, which is also true for the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 3 we heard on Friday the 24th.

 

Oh man. Beautiful playing, absolutely stunning, but KILLER long. No concerto should be an hour, but at least when they are I get a good nap out of it. Brahms puts me to sleep every single time. The second half – the conductor’s arrangment of the Adagietto from one of the Bruckner String Quartets and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1 – was equally nauseating. Again, the Bruckner was just SO DAMN LONG.

Like seriously. If you’re going to arrange Bruckner, feel free to chop out some of the unecessary repetitions. By all means!

 

Shosta 1 was fantastic, but it is so unusual and sparse in comparison to all his other symphonies (or at the very least 5 and onward – god bless Stalin for giving us those masterpieces) that I couldnt even believe I was listening to my main man’s music.

So bizarre.

 

Funniest part of the night was watching my teacher continually put his piccolo away in his DJ (thats short for “dinner jacket” which in England means “tuxedo”) pocket. Hilarious. I love playing a small instrument 🙂

 

 

Speaking of Stewart and piccolo… I had a good lesson with him on Friday, and an even better one with Kathleen on Wednesday. I am SO HAPPY that my piccolo teachers are so epic and wonderful. Makes up for any other stress or intensity that is otherwise associated with going to RCM 🙂

 

Cheers

xo

Fantasia Live!

The past week has been one of MUCHOS concert attendance. On Sunday, my friends I.F. and G.M. and I went to Royal Albert Hall (henceforth referred to as RAH) to see the London Philharmonic play Fantasia LIVE!

We paid 15 quid each for our standing room tickets -and boy was the place packed. RAH seats around 5,500 people, so you can imagine what a crowd was there. We had standing room tickets so it took us a little while to make our way all the way up the stairs to the top of the hall. Looking down from there is quite the sight – there are SO many people and the movie screen was incredible.

For those of you who havent heard what Fantasia (or Fantasia 2000) is, its a collection of animations set to major pieces from the orchestral repertoire. On this particular concert, the LPO did a mix of the original and the 2000 versions. All in all  we got to see (if I can remember them all!):

• Beethoven Symphony No. 5
• Beethoven Symphony No. 6 “pastorale”
• The Nutcracker Suite
• Pomp & Circumstance
• The Firebird
• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
• Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue piano concerto
• Pines of Rome

Of course the Pines of Rome is my absolute favorite and the most epic of the bunch – so I was really hoping they were going to do it last and go out on a high note!

They did … except they followed it up with an encore of the orchestral version of Flight of the Bumblebee, with old school animation along with it.

Talk about a buzz kill.

If you dont know the video “Pines of Rome” from Fantasia, let me indulge you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGZeT07rqlU

Seriously the coolest music and animation EVER. I told my friends: if I could have tattoos and my career, I would havea full sleeve of those whales. Maybe one day.

Time for my piccolo lesson with Stewart, more posts coming later! xox

Finally, a new phone!

Now what, pray tell, happened to the old one?

 

Right.

Well about 10 days ago I was doing laundry whilst practising in the basement of halls. I had cleverly managed to get my bookbag and flute slung over my shoulders, my laundry and coffee cup in my hands, keys around my neck, phone in the back pocket of my running pants AND got the various doors opened so that I could get upstairs and into my room in one trip.

Unfortunately when I went to the bathroom 15 minutes later, I forgot that my phone was still in the butt pocket of my running pants.

 

Ker-ploosh.

 

Right in the toilet.

 

I managed to snatch it out of the watery grave pretty quickly, and made a beeline to the kitchen where I promptly stuck it in a bowl of rice. Thank god I even had any kicking around! Either way: the phone stayed buried for about a week. When I took it out last Friday, it worked fine for about 24 hours. The screen was sort of funny – it looked like there were grey tree branches across it – but otherwise everything seemed fine! Hallelujah!

Then it stopped turning on – the screen would flash white and the Nokia logo would show up but nothing else happened.

Finally, sometime over the past few days, the phone has ceased turning on at all. I gave in and went to Vodafone today and bought a replacment… same phone but no contacts. Thank goodness my memory card survived so I still have all my pictures and music. That said, if you’re reading this and you’re a UK friend of mine, can you text me your name so that I can add you to my contacts list again?

 

Cheers!

 

xo

Days 8 & 9 in London, with Momma & Poppa bear!

Day 8 in London was not particularly exciting. The first week of school is all meetings, so I went to a few of those where I learned some new things about RCM, and then I went shopping with Mom & Dad!

We attempted to find me a phone but I’m so bloody indecisive AND cheap that I had a really hard time. In the end I got so frustrated that we had to walk away!

The dilemma was that I didnt want to spend over 50 pounds (which is like, 80, canadian!) on a phone when I have a perfectly great Blackberry to use when I’m in Canada- and I’m only in England for another 7 months so its not like its a long term investment. BUT I didnt want a crap phone, text-and-call-only, so I had to spend at least 45 pounds to get anything decent.

Either way, I couldn’t make up my mind. So we instead decided to go up to the top floor of Westfield mall where we got dinner at Pizza Express.

True to the name, they were fast as heck, but the service and food cant compare to my favorite spot, Bella Italia, in Leicester Square. Oh my.

The waiter wasnt nearly as attractive as Mr. Luca, either. 😉

Day 9 was a bit more successful. I spent the morning at school going to some more meetings and getting used to the facilities (if I havent already mentioned – school is HUGE and confusing, because there are towers with rooms that only one stairwell can access, and the elevator only goes to part of the building, and then theres the south building which is a whole other issue unto itself!) and such.

After lunch I met up with Mom & dad and we headed over to the river where Dad and I were going on the London Eye! Mom didn’t want to go because she was a bit nervous (although she wont admit to it) but it was pretty amazing.

Here are a few shots from the ride:

    

  

 

 

After the London Eye we went back to the Hammersmith & Fulham area, where my Rez is, and twacked around a bit. There is SO MUCH to see and do in Westfield Mall and West 12 mall. I ended up getting a phone – the Nokia Asha 301 – which is a bit strange but functional. I thought it had a blackberry-like track pad but in the end it actually doesnt.

Its not really a smart phone but its a fairly intelligent phone and will do me for the year, so long as I dont kill it between now and July.

 

Talk soon, xoxo

Mom & Dad take the kids to the Symphony!

It has been decided that in our kitchen, my friend I.F. and I are most likely to be the “mom and dad”. Not only are we the oldest, I.F. has a tendancy to give out fatherly advice, fix the clogged sink (and other domestic troubles) and also know the answers to just about EVERYTHING.

This week we decided to take the “kids” (aka our younger kitchenmates) to the symphony.

I have to say, perhaps the best thing about living in London is the sheer number of amazing concerts we can go see.

In the last ten days I have seen 3 Shostakovich symphonies, and by the end of my time here, I will have seen more then HALF of them performed live.

This past week was no exception. On Tuesday we went to see the Royal Philharmonic do Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Shostakovich Symphony Number 5. On Wednesday we went back to the Southbank Center and saw the London Philharmonic (which my piccolo teacher Stewart McIlwham plays in) do Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, the premiere of Carl Vine’s new piano concerto (which I slept through! whoops.) followed by Shostakovich 10.

Holy blown away.

A) my teacher is bloody AMAZING. The Shosta 10 piccolo part is ridiculous (as they all are, really) and he just killed it, and then some. My alexander teacher was right, being a piccoloist really is all about being the cherry on top. All I wanted to do after seeing him play was go practice. Yay motivation!

B) the orchestra sounds amazing. So far I think LPO is my favorite orchestra, although we have yet to hear the LSO or Philharmonia play, so I guess I should save my judgements until then.

This week coming up proves to be another busy one for concert-going.

We are on P&R week (the UK equivalent of Reading Week), and despite my having two piccolo lessons – with Stewart and Kathleen – my friends and I are going to do some serious sight seeing.

I think the plan is to check out the London Zoo, Tate Modern Art Gallery and Kew Gardens, as well as (possibly) go to the National Portrait Gallery. Tomorrow night I am going to see Fantasia Live! with the LPO at Royal Albert Hall, on Wednesday we are seeing LPO with Hilary Hahn playing the Mozart Violin Concerto No. 5 and Bruckner Symphony No. 7! Then on Friday we are going to see the London Phil (again!) do Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1, an arrangement of Bruckner’s Adagio from the String Quartet in F, and Shostakovich 1.

Like I said, by the end of the year, I will have heard more than half of the Shosta symphonies performed live. We’ve literally got it planned and scheduled.

Amazeballs.

Hoping my friend calls soon to go visit the hyde park stables ponies … apparently they are hiring so perhaps I can get myself a poop-shovelling job for the weekends! It would definitely help with the missing of my pony – or maybe make it worse, who knows!

xox

First concert at the RCM!

Well! Last night was my first official performance with an ensemble at the Royal College of Music!

I played piccolo/flute 3 with the Wind Orchestra, under the direction of Tim Reynish (www.timreynish.com). We played an interesting concert of British repertoire, mostly modern day stuff.

The program was as such:

Bridge- Pageant of London

Vaughan Williams – England’s Pleasant Land (? I think- didnt play in it so I’m not sure)

Maconchy – [I have no idea what the name of this piece was]

Tippett-  Triumph

Lambert – Tiresias, Suite from the Ballet

Roxburgh – Elegy for Ur, Concerto for Oboe

Hesketh – Danceries Set II

 

Overall it was a pretty interesting concert, and quite a challenge for all the players involved. We had a very intensive rehearsal schedule, doing six hours a day for 5 days, plus a few hours of sectionals, with Tim. Our faces have been dead every day because it was such a difficult program and the rehearsals were so long!

There wasnt a huge crowd at the concert,but we had an alright crowd, and we played really really well.

 

… So well in fact, that when we went to the baRCM (College bar) after party, Tim Reynish bought a round of drinks for the entire band.

 

Pretty sweet.

 

As it turns out, my sister actually studied conducting with Tim Reynish in Winnipeg, and my band director/friend/professor at home (Memorial University), Jason Caslor, is a good friend of Tim’s as well.

 

Six degrees of seperation, eh?

 

The upcoming week is going to be a somewhat relaxing one in comparison to the past week. I start rehearsals on Tuesday for the Contemporary Project I am playing in. I need to spend the weekend learning the part for that. Its not overly difficult but I have a number oif multiphonic fingerings I need to assimilate into my technical vocabulary, and I need to fix the composer’s suggested fingerings that dont work. This particular concert isnt for a few weeks so I have some time to sort it all out and work with the composer a bit.

Also this week, I.F. and I have gotten tickets to see the Royal Philharmonic play Shostakovich 5, and are working on tickets to see the London Philharmonic play Shostakovich 10, the very next night.

Thats three Shostakovich symphonies in 2 weeks.

 

I am a happy piccolo player 🙂

 

Off to get some lunch and then head to College for my piccolo lesson with Stewart. Have a wonderful weekend!

xo

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Well, given that my rez neighbor (I.F.) and I are both Canadians, we decided to host a pot luck Thanksgiving dinner.

We spent the majority of yesterday lunch hour out shopping for all the necessities, came home and spent the rest of the afternoon cooking up a storm.

On our shopping adventure, we walked  through the Shepherd’s Bush area, to the gigantic Tesco grocery store (its like a real grocery store, with wide aisles and everything!) where we were able to get most of our things. The neatest part about the walk was passing some cool shops: in particular, we saw this amazing antique/restoration store with some phenomenal furniture in the window. I am going to try to walk by again later this week and will see if pictures are a possibility. You just wouldnt believe the hot pink chair I found.

After we left Tesco, we headed down to King Street in Hammersmith (only a few minutes away) where I.F. and I had discovered an amazing bake shop (called the BakeHaus!) that sold full desserts.

We had been drooling over the apricot cheesecake all week and decided to pick one up for our celebration.

Sadly when we arrived, there wasnt any apricot cheesecake left!

Clearly we should have called ahead the day before!

A beautiful apple crumble made an impressive substitute (and tasted AMAZING, when we got around  to eating it) but we were still planning a second dessert: I wanted to make a real pumpkin pie. Thanksgiving just isnt the same without pumpkin!

So. We headed back in the direction of Rez so that the boys could put the groceries away, and I was going to head on to another store where I was positive I had seen pumpkin puree.

As it turns out I must not have known where I saw the pumpking puree, because I tried every grocery and convenience and fruit/veg store on Askew road to no avail. I walked back to rez and hopped on a bus to the Shepherd’s bush station stop where I went to Morrison’s and the Pound Land grocery store (yeah, you got it – like a dollar store).

No luck.

My last stop was the slighlty fancier grocer, Waitrose.

I turned that shop upside down looking for pumpkin. When I finally asked someone, the response was:

“Oh yes, we carry all kinds of pumpkin puree and fillings but we wont have any now until Thursday. You could come Thursday morning for it”.

Sad. Girl.

Thanksgiving was THAT DAY! Thursday wasn’t any good to me 😦

Okay. So moving on, I picked up some oreos and chocolate pudding and decided I would make a chocolate peanut butter pie. Just as delicious, but not as festive.

You can be damn sure that on Thursday morning I will be at Waitrose when the door opens, and the A2Kitchen crowd are going to have pumpkin pie for supper on Friday night!

Anyway. Went on home feeling somewhat defeated, but made the chocolate peanut butter pie anyway and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening cooking with the boys, I.F. and J.S.

… and by cooking I mean sitting on our phones, computers & laptops while the veggies boiled and our turkey legs & chickens roasted in the oven. We worked SO hard.

The end result however, hard work or not, was delicious.

   

We had a wonderful meal, drank the equivalent of five and a half bottles of wine (I’m not a wine drinker but I polished off the half bottle of Pinot Grigio – and a 25p can of Tesco brand lager, 2% alchola -no problem! Oh London, what are you doing to me?) and laughed until it was nearly 1 in the morning.

Thankfully everyone helped clean up, so it wasnt long and we were in bed. I think for the most part, everyone is having a somewhat chilled day today, to recover!

C.M. and I have wind orchestra rehearsal from 3-6 and 7-10pm (although I think I’m done at 9 because I’m not in the last piece. Yay!) so I’ll be heading in to school some what shortly. Need to leave a little bit earlier than I would normally, because I want to pop into a couple of shops in Notting Hill Gate on my way.

.. and probably grab a tea at Starbucks.

Cheers mates, have a good day!

50 Shades of Forte

I have yet to write about my rehearsals with the RCM Wind Orchestra, conducted by Tim Reynish…

Here goes nothing.

We are playing a concert this Thursday night, October 11th in the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall. So far we’ve had an interesting 2 rehearsals, and one sectional.

The sectional last week was particularly useless, due to the fact that the poor coach wasnt even given a score until 25 minutes INTO the rehearsal! Basically it was just a group run through with someone waving their hand to keep us somewhat together.

Our rep for the concert is as follows (not that I need to tell you, you wont know any of it, but it will be good for context and reading flow):
Triumph by Tippett

Danceries II by Hesketh

Tiresias (the ballet suite) by Lambert

Pageant of London by Bridge

England’s Green and Pleasant Land by Vaughan-Williams

Elegy For Ur (oboe concerto) by Roxburgh

and Maconchy’s Music for Winds and Brass

See? Did you know ANY of those pieces? Maybe the Vaughan Williams, maybe.

Anyway, the Tippett is the only real ball buster on the program. Its not particularly dazzling – just a lot of thickly scored textures for band, where the director hollers at us for playing too loud. The other pieces are a little more interesting. Danceries II has some cool rhythms but I find you’ll get to the end of the movement and be confused because it just stopped all of a sudden! Like you fell off a cliff you didnt see coming! The oboe concerto is quite interesting and the soloist is brilliant. Apparently Tiresias is the suite from a ballet about snakes having sex. Dont ask, I can’t explain it.

 

I suspect the Vaughan Williams is probably the best piece on the program, but I wouldnt know, I dont play in it. Or the Maconchy.

 

 

Now: let me tell you something about Dr. Tim Reynish.

He is a sweet old man and has nice stick technique, but unfortunately only has two pieces of advice for wind band players:

“Forte is …. A LIGHT DYNAMIC”

and

“Accompianato! We all need to be Accompianato!”

All. The. Time.

At last night’s rehearsal he was even wearing a t-shirt with the former on it. For real!

Part of me wants to make a recording of my own contemporary composition (for spoken voice, of course) using ONLY the phrases he says in Wind Orchestra rehearsal. It would be hilarious.

And for the record, “50 Shades of Forte” is his line, not mine.

BBC Symphony Orchestra plays Shostakovich Four!

Well, this past Wednesday my friends I.F. and A.D. took advantage of having a dozen major orchestras in the city and headed to the Barbican Center to hear the BBC Symphony Orchestra play a concert. I don’t remember what was on the first half (some new commission with 7 movements) because I didnt go.

I was in a sports psychology/performance anxiety lecture – given by an awesome man named Gary Leboff!- until nearly 7:40, at which time I hopped on the tube and ventured off into the world (the long way round, might I add) to find the Barbican.

Despite taking the circle line the wrong way round (luckily its name is literal so it just took a little longer, I didnt have to make too many changes to the travel plan), I made it to street level on Moorgate street JUST as the intermission at the concert began.

I thought, having never been to the Barbican before, and certainly not in the night time by myself, that I might get lost tryin to find the place, but the streets are painted with directions, and there are signs everywhere, so it was relatively uncomplicated getting there.

Made it in before the bell even rang to return to our seats! That was excellent because I was really thirsty and needed a bottle of water. Let me tell you. Concert halls in London are no different than North America. Their food and beverages cost an arm and a leg.

Oh well.

The second half of the concert was made up entirely of Shostakovich’s fourth symphony. I know pretty much all of the Shostakovich symphonies but this is probably the one I know least. Turns out its a freaking fantastic symphony.

So many epic moments in ALL movements (including when someone started yelling at the end of the … 2nd movement, I think? And when some moron dropped something making a big clatter during the final moments of the very quiet ending) – the orchestra deserved the four rounds of applause!

 

The only thing I didnt understand was why the super attractive, but broody and serious looking, cellist that was sitting right in front of me RAN off stage after the first bout of applause.

I suppose he was going to be sick or something.

 

After we found our way out of the building (that place is a maze!) we followed the yellow lines on the side walk through a gorgeous area of condos and flats on the terrace of the Barbican, across an overhead walk way and down into the tube station. Pretty convenient and easy to manage, for newbies like myself!

Our next concert stop will be October 12th, 2012 – we are going to hear the London Symphony Orchestra play (all in one concert): Prokofiev’s First Symphony, “Classical” – amaze balls; the Elgar Cello Concerto and Sibelius’ 2nd Symphony.

Should be phenomenal.

Now I just have to go buy the tickets…

 

Cheers!

Day 7: Hard Rock!

Oh man.

 

I would be lying if I said Day 7 was not a grumpy day for me. Had my orchestral audition in the early morning. It was okay, I guess.

Things started off well with the Mozart concerto, until the stand

started

sinking

and sinking

and sinking

Until I was forced to back up just to see the music by my knees.

 

This WOULD have been fine – I’m an old hand at dealing with the unexpected in performance situations, the music was visible, not ideal, but visible – except one of the lovely flutists on the audition panel decided to jump up and pull the stand up. Not one but about 3 times.

Regardless of where it is, at my ankles or in the sky, stationary music is ALWAYS easier to read than music that looks like its on the elevator of the busiest hotel in London.

Anyway. Survived that with little damage, they gave me a new stand. Beethoven did not have much luck either because down the stand went.

I took my excertps out of the binder; still, the stand fell down.

Finally we found a stand that would stay up and I was able to continue on with the audition with little interruption. I had to play Beethoven 5 and Stravinsky Pulcinella (which I took too slow – d’oh!), Dvorak Number 8 and Shostakovich 9 on Piccolo.

If I had to critique my own audition, without taking into consideration any of the comments or happenings during it, I woul have said I played well.

Definitely took Pulcinella too slow and played a wrong note in Beethoven, but everything else was clean and tidy and tempi should have been fine.

Unfortunately they (apparently) play everything faster here in the UK, so instead of 126, they wanted to hear my Dvorak at 142.

I know – I went out to my metronome right after the audition and tapped it to find out. So much for listening to recordings and following the instructions in the score!

 

C’est la vie. Thats the thing about music. Its all subjective and you are constantly putting yourself out there for someone else to judge you.

 

Over the course of the afternoon I practiced for a little bit and puttered around the Gloucester Road station area. Mom & Dad did the Big Bus tour that day and saw many of the sights of London. When they got back to the hotel, we chilled for a little before hopping on the Tube and going to the Hard Rock Cafe for Dad’s birthday.

Despite Mom and Dad having scoped it out earlier in the day, we still got mega lost coming out of the Tube station. Took us every bit of 45 minutes to find the restaurant, and then we had to wait a half hour or more to get a table!

What do you do when waiting to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe? Go to the Hard Rock Store of course!

The HRC in London is the original one, so they also have a “Vault” with cool paraphernalia in it that no other HRC location has. Here are some of the things we found:

 

So there you go.

No need to visit the Vault at the Hard Rock Cafe London now because you’ve seen JUST about everything in it. Do I even need to mention that it was my father who took all the pictures? Probably not. He comandeered my camera. Happens every time he forgets his own, and that man takes a LOT of pictures.

 

In the end, our meal at HRC was delicious, if a bit loud. We got home late-ish and went straight to bed: Day 8 was going to bring a new bank account and, if I was lucky, a UK mobile phone!

 

Cheers!