Last week was a little hectic musically. Friday, Saturday and Sunday all contained concerts. Details:
Friday
A program of Constant Lambert (Rio Grande), Percy Grainger (Tribute to Foster), Stamford and other choral works for the annual school choral concert in the cathedral. This was basically all sight-reading despite a tiring rehearsal the previous night. It went alright I thought, but the distance between instruments (orchestra, choir, piano, organ) was too much and sometimes slipped. I didn’t mind.
Saturday
The Huntingdonshire Philharmonic invited me back yet again to play with the choir. This is rather embarrassing because every time I get asked to play, I think to myself “I really should practise this time”- it never happens, and I feel quite guilty. There was a rehearsal in the afternoon, straight from school, and concert normal time. We played:
I was asked whether I could play in the next concert in May, and I wasn’t sure. I later found out that I was playing in a Ramsey Choral Society concert that exact day in May so couldn’t do the next Hunts Phil one. I didn’t mind too much until I just found out that they’ll be playing Beethoven’s Mass in C, and the Eroica. I am very, very annoyed now.
Sunday
This was the concert for the Chamber Orchestra of St. Ives (COSI). We aren’t a particularly well-known group but this time the program was a cracker. Again, a rehearsal in the afternoon and concert in the evening. We played:
We’ve been rehearsal for this concert for a few months now and meet the second Thursday of every month. It’s nice.
Basically, the end of last week was very busy.
Oh, and I just realised that I’m on the second page of the school newsletter. Fun stuff.
This will be expanded on in time, when I have time.
A few things to ponder over:
That is all, for now.
After a hectic number of days, I have returned.
Pro Corda was fun and seeing everyone was great once again. Musically it was alright. The Dvorak went quite well and we played the second movement in the Cream Tea concert on the penultimate day, and the finale in the concert on the last day. The Bargiel turned out to be a bit of joke and no-one else knew it at all so our coach (Jan Schulmeister, second violin in The Wihan String Quartet) cut almost half of it out- shame. In orchestra we played the Death and the Maiden which was good, but would have been more successful if there were only four players. Enough of Pro Corda.
I also just returned today from Devon where I stayed with my grandparents. There is not much to report from this journey apart from that he is kindly going to start making me a Viola. I am already playing on both violin and viola made by Peter Lamb, but the viola is a very early (number 4- he has just completed number 23) and certainly is not as good as his later instruments. I had a go on number 14, which is a viola that was originally in a pair made for Herbert Downes, and this was a very nice instrument.
School starts tomorrow.
As I write this, I am listening to: Haydn: String Quartet in D «The Lark», Op. 64 No. 5 (Aeolian Quartet)
The title: lol
I have heard reports that my blog is rather one sided and some can’t actually understand what is going on. It is correct though: unless you have a Windows Mobile phone and want to use it on GNU/Linux, then you will not know, or will not want to know, about SynCE and my woes about it! Same goes about using the bcm43xx driver on my wireless card. Although I’ll keep writing blogs like that, I will try to also write more about what’s going on in the old life I’m having at the moment.
PHP-Site has really been taking off in development. I have been using Trac on my home server and can be accessed at:
This site contains a wiki, roadmap, subversion source and ticket system. Please visit this if you’re remotely interested and check it out. I want to move this site to it’s normal home: phpsite.org, or more precisely: trac.phpsite.org. There is also a mailing list for PHP-Site. It will start to be used more as the script really takes off. This can be found on SourceForge at http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/phpsite-news. I would also love more interest and more people involved in development, documentation or the general running of the project. It would be a great help as well as a good way to promote the project.
Results day is in one week today (it is now past twelve so technically 6 days) and I’m not looking forward to it.
However, Pro Corda starts soon and I am looking forward to it! I’m playing first violin in Dvorak’s American quartet, Op. 96, movements II and IV; and first viola in Bargiel’s octet, Op. 15a, movement I. The former is a really great piece and I still have much work to do on it before I leave, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy playing it with my regular quartet- Anna, Immy and Conrad. The latter is a new one to me- I hadn’t heard of Bargiel before receiving the music but I am liking the piece. It isn’t quite like the octet but it is a very nice piece! The theme of the party is the letter G, which I think, and I’m sure you’ll agree, is rubbish. In fact, there’s no doubt about it!
Last week while my parents were in France, I was (dumped) onto my god-father who runs the Cambridge Pianola Company. While he is a very interesting guy, we didn’t get up to much as he spends a lot of the time on the phone and, because he’s blind, can’t get out and about too easily. However, there were some interesting moments to the week. He let me drive his Porsche. This was a more than entertaining experience as my previous driving experience is null. I had great difficulty putting it into gear and had to call on both my brother and my darling Fiona as they both had actually driven a car before! I was also quite lucky, as I managed to just miss hitting his Mercedes, which is fortunate, as I doubt he’d enjoy hearing the crunching of metal! Interestingly, he is also a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists, which I don’t quite understand, but I wouldn’t, would I? However, thanks to this membership he was invited, with guests, to a barbeque in Fulbourn. Although the weather wasn’t the nicest, I had a nice time and spent most of the time discussing cellular networks in the UK with his daughter, and the bids for the 3G licenses some years ago that went astonishingly high.
In July, I had a mixture of interesting excursions. I went to York to check out the university, as well as play in a concert with the York Young Soloists. The concert was good: we played Strauss Romance for Cello, James Freeman (a horn player in the orchestra as well as a music undergraduate at Cambridge) Fantasie, Richard Sheppard (an authority in the minster) Six Shakespeare Songs and Mozart Symphony No. 40. I enjoyed the Mozart the most, but it was a nice concert. The university was also good. I didn’t spend much time there, but I did get a good tour of the Computer Science department which was informative and helpful.
This new graphics card that I ordered came to the door this morning, but 9am is a time that sounds like a boggy marshland when you’ve gone to sleep at 6am. It should be coming again tomorrow morning (again technically later today) and so I’m determined to be up to receive it. I’m bored of using the integrated graphics on this VIA motherboard using the native Linux driver in Debian. Go hardware graphics!
I have noticed (I’m not sure whether it’s a recent thing) that Google now links you to a referrer page, so when you click on a search result, it takes you through Google and then to your site, which is rather annoying when you try and copy the link’s URL. Is there any way to get rid of this?
As I write this, I am listening to: Corelli: Sonata for Violin and Continuo in D minor «La Folia», Op. 5 No. 12 (Manze, Egarr)
I played Dyson’s Canterbury Pilgrims last Saturday, and I can officially say that it was by far one of the worst pieces I have ever played. I don’t want to spend too long dwelling in it now, but to sum it up for anyone out there: if you’re asked to play it- say no.