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05/07/2006
Ode to an Orchestra
Well, tonight we just had another concert with the Ottawa Chamber Orchestra. I think the concert went well, featuring (well, the orchestra, and) four amazingly gifted pianists, and a stuffed sheep. Not sure where the sheep came from, but it just sort of appeared on the conductor's music stand before the concert. :-)
The four pianists were the finalists in our piano concerto competition. They're between 16 and 18, and they are all insanely good at the piano. Wow. Anyway, we played the first movement of the Grieg piano concerto, the whole Prokofiev piano concerto, and the first movement of Beethoven's third piano concerto twice (two of the finalists picked the same piece). They were all amazing, but in my head I had figured out a ranking of first through fourth, which, when compared to what the judges agreed on, turned out to be pretty much backwards. I guess I mustn't be good at detecting what makes for good piano playing. :-)
We also played Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture. I *love* that piece, but I think it needed more rehearsal before performing - it was a tad on the shaky side, but we held together and didn't make any major boo-boos so I consider it a success! Towards the end in the cello part there's a really tough section which is very fast. It's the kind of passage you can easily spot by squinting and looking at the big dark patch on the bottom half of the last page. :-) I'm actually surprised at how much of this I managed to get. I guess after a 2 hour warm-up, my fingers were nice and loose, and I was too tired to enter panic mode!
Anyway, I am about to go to bed and will write again soon. I have a feeling I won't be able to sleep too well though. First of all, I've got Beethoven stuck in my head. From past experience, Beethoven music tends to stick like crazy glue in my head, repeating over and over til I'm at the brink of insanity. I've found that this can be removed with a good dose of Phantom of the Opera music, but then Phantom music gets stuck in my head and I'm not sure which one's worse!
23:15 Posted in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this