06/02/2024
First thing to say is that our deputy conductor, Simon McVeigh, who would have taken the string section last week was diagnosed as having had a mild heart attack and having had a stent, SD card slot and a USB port fitted, is well on the mend. Debate amongst the violas as to whether viola playing constitutes strenuous right-arm activity is ongoing.
Back to the full band tonight after last week’s dissection and before a week off for half term. However, in order not lose a rehearsal in the programme we rehearse on both the Monday and Tuesday of the following week. Funnily enough, the intensity of consecutive days’ rehearsals is very valuable and that is, of course, what the pros do.
Anyway tonight we had our first run at three movements of Bizet’s L’Arlisiene Suite which, as with all Bizet, is not short on whistleable hooks. It is in fact incidental music for a melodrama of the same name, written by Alphonse Daudet. It was poorly received in 1872 when the drama premiered in Paris and there is an undeniable theme emerging of 19th Century Parisiens being a tough crowd!
If however you examine the story on which the drama is based, it’s a bit gritty, to say the least. In it, a young peasant called Fréderi is besotted with l’Arlisiene, a girl. Peasants had a tendency to get besotted back then - the countryside was awash with lovestruck peasants. They plan to get married but he discovers she’s been unfaithful with Mitifio (long story) and this betrayal steadily drives Fréderi to madness. In fact she’s so busy being unfaithful that she doesn’t have enough time on her hands to actually appear in the play at all; most of us would have smelt a rat earlier, one feels. Fréderi’s family try all sorts of ways of stopping the suicidal Fréderi from doing himself in but he’s not deterred and finally lobs himself off a balcony. The first five minutes of the drama are uplifting and then it descends steadily into utter misery, which might go some way towards explaining its lukewarm reception…
Bizet’s original music is in the form of twenty seven pieces but it’s rarely performed in its entirety and we’re not going to either; we’re playing music from the two hugely popular orchestral suites, the first compiled and orchestrated by Bizet himself and the second by his friend Ernest Grimaud after Bizet’s death. As mentioned last week, this is the finale of the concert and if you don’t think you know the tunes, you probably will. Bizet’s music is surprisingly uplifting considering that it pops up between scenes of what is essentially a French version of EastEnders…
Tonight, during the Bizet, we were treated to some utterly magical saxophone from our First Clarinet, Hale Hambleton - very special, as always - worth your ticket price alone!
Following the Bizet, we had an excellent session negotiating our way around the most difficult section of the Debussy, which Adrian accurately described as being like a Seurat painting. Huge amounts of spiky detail which close-up is hard to understand, but stand back a bit and it’s an amazing sound. You might struggle to see which bit of it is depicting a tennis match but there is one note that could be Hawk-Eye correcting a line call, at a push. BSO likes to push itself and this is another example this policy - we’ll get there and it’ll be marvellous on the night.
At the end of the evening we rehearsed the first movement of the Franck which is really sounding great. The tuning needs to be so accurate because the harmonies are dense and any approximation makes it sound like wet paint running down a wall, but get it right and the twists and turns are delicious.
A week off now where we have to eschew eating, sleeping and every other activity to look at and learn the Debussy…
