Capricious Cacophony
So I was finally well enough to go for orchestra practice last night, even if I coughed and choked my way through it, and ran out of breath a half-hour before it ended (and, as luck would have it, we did Harry Potter at the very end. Gah!). The orchestra's received quite a bit of money from the ministry, so we'll be doing *four* concerts this year... beginning with one on 12th March. Which means that, once again, I won't be celebrating my birthday, because you can bet that there'll be an intensive final rehearsal on the 11th. Ah well.
Anyway, we had Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol dumped in our collective lap... and, to my horror, as I scanned the piece, I found OMG A SOLO awaiting me right at the beginning of the first variation section (with more solo and soli bits scattered elsewhere in it). Okay, so I managed to avert major disaster while sightreading that, but there was this frantic little voice in the back of my head blabbering, are you kidding me, I have been playing this wretched thing for only how long and you want me to play this in front of everyone at the concert, quite possibly at the end of the programme when I haven't any breath left in me?! [flail]. (And the irony of it is that I'm terrified of playing slow, sweet, soft passages, but I'm perfectly fine with long, loud passages crammed with notes. Go figure). Whatever other elements I may be made of, brimming confidence isn't one of them. LOL.
The practice *had* its hilarious moments... or should I say Moment: The trumpeter and trombonist showed up halfway through Alborada (the third section of the Capriccio); after we'd finished the section, our conductor said, "Now let's go back to the beginning." AND LO THERE WAS HIDEOUS CACOPHONY, WHERE THERE WAS NONE BEFORE. And I almost swallowed my mouthpiece in my attempt to suppress the paroxysm of giggles (no easy task when you're playing at the same time), because I immediately realised what the conductor did not: instead of going way back to the beginning of the *piece*, those two had gone back to the beginning of the third section. And, because the two were virtually identical, except that they were a HALF TONE APART, the resulting mash was a perfectly appalling dissonance. ... And one that went on for half the section before our conductor realised that something was horribly wrong with the music and stopped the orchestra. ROFL ROFL ROFL.
And finally, an updated WIP of that ridiculous thing I started before I went on vacation:
I still think I'm bananas for even starting it.
Anyway, we had Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol dumped in our collective lap... and, to my horror, as I scanned the piece, I found OMG A SOLO awaiting me right at the beginning of the first variation section (with more solo and soli bits scattered elsewhere in it). Okay, so I managed to avert major disaster while sightreading that, but there was this frantic little voice in the back of my head blabbering, are you kidding me, I have been playing this wretched thing for only how long and you want me to play this in front of everyone at the concert, quite possibly at the end of the programme when I haven't any breath left in me?! [flail]. (And the irony of it is that I'm terrified of playing slow, sweet, soft passages, but I'm perfectly fine with long, loud passages crammed with notes. Go figure). Whatever other elements I may be made of, brimming confidence isn't one of them. LOL.
The practice *had* its hilarious moments... or should I say Moment: The trumpeter and trombonist showed up halfway through Alborada (the third section of the Capriccio); after we'd finished the section, our conductor said, "Now let's go back to the beginning." AND LO THERE WAS HIDEOUS CACOPHONY, WHERE THERE WAS NONE BEFORE. And I almost swallowed my mouthpiece in my attempt to suppress the paroxysm of giggles (no easy task when you're playing at the same time), because I immediately realised what the conductor did not: instead of going way back to the beginning of the *piece*, those two had gone back to the beginning of the third section. And, because the two were virtually identical, except that they were a HALF TONE APART, the resulting mash was a perfectly appalling dissonance. ... And one that went on for half the section before our conductor realised that something was horribly wrong with the music and stopped the orchestra. ROFL ROFL ROFL.
And finally, an updated WIP of that ridiculous thing I started before I went on vacation:
I still think I'm bananas for even starting it.