38: Rehearsal (3)
A day in the life…
Final rehearsal this morning. A run through of the entire concert but out of order. First they played through the Dvorak. I am looking forward to the performance this evening as Gautier Capuçon is a very fine player. He has extraordinary projection but with great sensitivity.
Richard Gill (photo: Jeff Busby)
Before the rehearsal I met Andrew Ford who is going to talk to the audience between the pieces. I told him I enjoyed his Symphony which I had recently watched on-line.
Margie Moore, who used to work with the orchestra, came along and gave me a bunch of flowers to sparkle up my day.
After first looking at the end of Part Two once more, they played through Lightfall. It has come together very well although of course Robert was saving himself for tonight. The acoustical changes in the hall seemed to favour the Timpani so I asked Rick Miller to play Part One at a notch softer than marked.
I felt that Part Two was rather slower than it should be, a stroll rather than a run, and said so to everyone. Richard Gill later explained that he had done that on purpose so that the orchestra was locked in together and that he intended to perform it at speed tonight. So I put my foot in it there! But Richard was very good about it.
I stayed for the Handel. It’s very hard to stay still and not dance during the first movement. Great way to open the concert.
Had a quiet fifteen minutes on the Quay with a sandwich and a plump seagull. Remarkably the seagull knew the exact moment that the sandwich was finished and flew off. Hope tonight’s audience doesn’t make such a dismissive exit.
Picked up a longtime friend up at the airport who has come up especially for the concert. Then home to write this post. And Lionsgate have asked for a biography especially for the Daybreakers premiere in Toronto on Friday night so I quickly whipped that up.
While writing, I listened to The Seduction of Claude Debussy by The Art of Noise, something very different to tonight’s music.
Now there is just enough time to get ready and head off to the Opera House for the talk at 5:45pm.
Reader Comments
Hello there Mr Gordon….
I am 19, and the term ’symphony orchestra’ basically sums up my taste in music. I am in particular a major fan of film music, and it has so forth defined my life a great deal. I also compose to amuse myself, and love to experiment with the different tone colours of the full orchestra.
I was gobsmacked to read about your musical background after watching the webcast, as your composition was very akin to ‘film music’, and somehow I had never heard of you before this day. How could this be??? You learn something new everyday I suppose.
I like the concerto more and more every time I listen to it, and having discovered this terrific blog, I was giddy as a school boy to be previewed to the full score. Not many composers give that away for free, so to be able to read it along with my fifth listening was very special. I love what you do with the string section towards the end of the piece. The whole piece sounds to me like a quasi-sci-fi score, which I absolutely love being a huge fan of Holst’s ‘The Planets’, and John Williams.
I am now a big fan of you.
Anyway, I could write on forever, but I’ll spare all of us from that and just say THANK YOU, AND CONGRATULATIONS!!, ON THIS WONDERFUL EFFORT. AND TO ROBERT JOHNSON as well, who pulled it off with shine.
THANK YOU!
And keep up the blog.
Zoltan Jonas.
I absolutely loved ‘lightfall for horn and orchestra’. It was so DIFFERENT! I am a synesthete, so it was particularly interesting watching the layers interweaving. The piece conjured an image of a cavern with a still pool in the middle - the timpany was water droplets making ripples, and so on. I must confess i was prepared to wright it off as another atonal piece of rubbish - despite being 14 i have some very strong opinions, particularly in relation to modern music that doesn’t make sense in terms of colour and texture. But the second movement just blew me away! i would see it as the second movement is the whole cavern, and the first is just the reflection in the water - in fact your music is full of reflections between parts and in the sounds and shapes. Truly amazing. I am now writing a glowing review for an assignment for school =D
Thanks so much!