First concert: Kirkcaldy Thank you so much to everyone who came to hear us in the Old Kirk in Kirkcaldy last night! It was such a treat to play our first concert in this lovely place. We took a short walk before because we wanted to see the North Sea! It was so beautiful and atmospheric in the very grey day.
We then rehearsed and warmed up with some lovely homemade soup.
We can’t wait for our next concert tonight! Hope to see you at one of our next concerts in this tour – please come say afterwards, we are always so happy to meet you!
After so much planning and worrying about all the things that could have gone wrong on the tour we are incredibly happy, somewhat surprised and definitely relieved that the tour was able to go ahead this time and that everything went smoothly and according to plan! In fact, once I was on the train home after the tour I was so relaxed that I managed to leave my suitcase with all the recordings on the train… Long story short it’s all with me now!
As I mentioned in our previous post we were very excited to perform to a live audience, and from the warm welcome we received at each concert the audience probably felt the same! We had a lot of people come up to us after the concerts to tell us how much they’ve enjoyed our playing and how much they’ve missed the spark of live performances the past few years! Some others messaged us directly, some expressed their gratitude through their music society, and as you can imagine all of this is the reason why we do what we do, it is so rewarding to get this sort of feedback after all the hard work to bring these amazing pieces alive.
That alone however, as great as it is, wouldn’t be enough to make these concerts happen so we owe a huge thank you to the Tunnell Trust and all the music societies for their support, for creating this opportunity, for their help organising the concerts and for going the extra mile providing us with delicious meals, homemade cakes or a wee dram at the hotel!
This being our first tour, we had some new experiences that have been very valuable to the group. For example having the chance to perform the same piece multiple times over a few days gives us a platform to experiment and improvise. However to me perhaps the most valuable part of the tour was that we became even closer friends than before. The long (and beautiful) drives gave us a rare chance to bond over meaningful conversations and we even had time to visit the Glenfinnan Viaduct to slow down and appreciate the view! It was a week we’ll definitely look back to fondly.
Thankfully we don’t have to wait too long until the next part of our tour which will be in November with a slightly different programme! In the meantime if you would like to see where we play next feel free to check out our website at broenensemble.co.uk.
We began our Journey North from London after a performance last Monday evening. After stopping back in Manchester for a few hours sleep we started the 9 hr drive to Thurso on Tuesday Morning. We passed incredible landscapes and the weather, which changed every 30 minutes treated us to a display from snow to blue skies, sleet and rain. After a very smooth drive, we hopped aboard the 19:00 ferry from Scrabster to Stromness on Orkney.
The next morning we visited the Ring of Brodgar which was very inspiring. Afterwards, we headed to Kirkwall to get ready for our afternoon workshop with some of the local music students.
This took place at King Street Hall, where they had been preparing a number of works. Having been through music services and county orchestras ourselves growing up, we felt humbled to be able to offer our support to the students, many of whom will be applying for conservatoires in the coming months.
That evening we were welcomed onto the stage at Orkney by a sold-out audience. Post pandemic, this has been a rare sight for us and it was a heartwarming reminder of how important classical music is to communities. The acoustic in the venue was resonant and perfectly suited for chamber music. Having programmed Britten’s 3rd string quartet, we were curious to see how it would be received. Very quickly it became apparent how involved the audience was, which really added to the atmosphere of the music.
We boarded the 06:00 ferry back from Stromness to Scrabster and began the drive down to Inverness.
Storm Eunice has been at the forefront of the news so far, with weather warnings making it difficult for some of the regular concert-goers to get out to the venue. Our concert in Inverness yesterday night was a much more intimate, but equally welcoming affair.
Beethoven’s Op.132 quartet in A minor is the central work of our tour, and performing the third movement felt particularly special. One audience member commented that the concert ‘felt like it could have been in somebody’s living room’.
This morning after a fabulous breakfast provided by our host, we set off to Newtonmore through a blanket white landscape. Despite the snow, we have arrived safely and are looking forward to performing this evening.
Our tour was originally planned to take place in December 2020 which of course had to be postponed due to the pandemic, although we managed to organise a socially distanced online concert in place of it which was a unique experience that allowed us to see each other after many months of lockdowns.
While we were lucky enough individually to get some work with orchestras around the UK, chamber music has been very rare to come by, and more importantly the 7 of us haven’t played together since that online concert!
We were therefore very impatient (and nervous!) to start rehearsals, and rehearse we did, as the three big pieces we’re offering are all difficult in very different ways!
The famous Schubert Quintet is very intricately written which although makes it a constant challenge to show all the beautiful details, the balance takes care of itself, unlike in Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence where often a lot of things are going on at the same time. In fact the first version of the piece was, in the composer’s own words “astonishingly bad in all aspects“. Schoenberg’s incredible Verklärte Nacht is somehow a mixture of both which is probably one of the reasons why it is seldom performed.
Given all the above we can’t meaningfully describe how satisfying it felt to finally play together, but with the rehearsals behind us we are now on our way from the rainy (snowy? or sunny?) Glasgow to our first concert in Fort William and we couldn’t be more excited!
Thank you so much to everyone who came to hear us in the Old Kirk in Kirkcaldy last night! It was such a treat to play our first concert in this lovely place.
We took a short walk before because we wanted to see the North Sea! It was so beautiful and atmospheric in the very grey day.
Today at 7.30pm will be our first concert in the Old Kirk in Kirkcaldy. We are looking forward to it!
