After a lovely breakfast we said goodbye to our hosts and headed into Melrose town centre to have a look around. We discovered the very impressive Melrose Abbey and enjoyed walking around Harmony House and Gardens before setting off to Ayr.
Upon arrival in Ayr we were met by the president of Ayr Music Club, Isobel McIlwraith, who opened the church for us to set up. After a short rehearsal we were taken for a lovely meal at a local hotel, The Chestnuts, where it was great to get to know Isobel and learn more about Ayr Music Club.
A healthy audience of 70+ were in attendance at our concert including a few of Chris’ friends from Dalmellington Band which was great to see! At the interval and post-concert we received very positive feedback from the audience who thoroughly enjoyed our varied programme, especially the 2nd half ‘Alone at the Opera’ set! Time to rest now before travelling to Gatehouse or Fleet tomorrow for concert no. 3!
Day 1: Melrose The tour started with the long drive from Manchester to Melrose on Friday 22nd March. This is only the second time we have been north of the border as a group and we were looking forward to performing five consecutive concerts around the Borders and South West of Scotland.
Melrose was the first stop and after arriving at 5.30pm we found the church hall in which we were to perform. Jonny Bates, our tenor horn player, has come up with a brand new concept for our concert’s second half, breaking away from our more traditional format. The “set” is a through composed quasi-operetta titled “Alone at the Opera”. It features music from classic opera as well as popular music and a touch of Argentina for good measure.
Upon arrival to the hall we found minor logistical challenges relating to the set! We had trialled the concept in our two previous concerts in Helensburgh and Abergavenny and whilst both venues were quite different, they had plenty of space and good access on and off stage, which we have incorporated into the half. In a church hall there is very little room to manoeuvre! Fortunately the hall had some big pinboards we could use as “wings” alongside our A4 banners to create an offstage section on each side of the performance area. After rehearsal, quiche and sandwiches, the hall was opened for the audience to take their seats.
With chamber music you never know how many you might get attending your concerts, especially in a brass group! This was the final concert in the Melrose Music Society’s series, and after extra chairs being found, the 82-strong audience packed into the Parish Church Hall.
We began with our signature opener Toccata and followed with the Scottish-inspired South Uist Variations by Oliver Waespi, both of which feature on our debut album that is available on our merchandise stand. The audience was very close to us throughout the concert and this created a really strong and positive link between performer and listener. This was also one of our most receptive and welcoming audiences, which bodes well for the rest of the tour! Jonny was our first half soloist, playing Concert Étude and we also featured choral music from Kentaro Sato, traditional Scottish music, and the Finale from Mendelssohn’s 4th Symphony.
The second half went down a treat despite the initial problems! Having the audience so near gave us lots of energy to feed off, and was encouraging that our comedy was well received! This concert was extra special for me as it was the first time my mum and two brothers had heard the quartet live, whereas the parents of the others have been present at many of our concerts. It was also fantastic to go to a local pub with the three of them and the rest of the quartet to relax after a day of travelling and playing. We were staying in host’s houses and were treated to a wide variety of local beers, lamb casserole and great company, before a breakfast of smoked salmon and scrambled egg in the morning! We could get used to this!!
I write to you from the Costa Coffee at Southampton Airport, where Savitri and I are on our way to Guernsey for masterclasses this afternoon and a recital tomorrow. Did you think you’d heard the last of #BEETHOVENESCU? You haven’t!
Tomorrow’s concert is a repeat of our programme from a few days ago, and somehow this feels remarkably easy in prospect after the intensity of five different programmes over five consecutive days.
We had a wonderful time finishing off our Beethoven sonatas cycle with Pollok House Arts Society last night. We didn’t play in Pollok House as we’d thought we would, but, rather, in the so-called ‘House for an Art Lover’ nearby. This turned out to be an unexpected treat. The house was designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh for a competition run by a German magazine in 1901. Their entry was disqualified for being late and unfinished, but much later – in 1989 – work began on realising the plans, and the house was completed by 1996. It’s full of the detail and style that are hallmarks of the Mackintoshs’ work, making each room exciting to discover. It would be hard to top the recital room, which had an ornately decorated piano built into one of the walls (see below, at the back), but the room we were given as a green room had a bathroom hidden behind the wall-panelling, and as such was also seriously cool.
There was a big dinner afterwards which, so far as I could tell, all of the audience stayed for, and I really enjoyed being able to chat at length to some of the people who’d listened to us.
So what next for #BEETHOVENESCU? Well, we have a number of concerts coming up soon, including Guernsey tomorrow, Weston Music Society later this month and Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge in May. In 2020 we’re presenting two ‘immersive’ days at Stapleford Granary (in February and October), with talks, demonstrations and workshops, focussing on five of the Beethoven sonatas each time. We have various other plans for 2020 and beyond too, so watch this space.
Huge thanks to the Tunnell Trust for arranging the tour for us, which has worked so well and given us a fantastic opportunity to realise a project we’ve loved doing. Thanks too to the promoters connected to each venue, who’ve each helped us out in kind ways and given us a really entertaining and memorable time in Scotland.
The final day of our tour has arrived, and it’s 8 down, 2 to go, on the Beethoven countdown. I’m sorry I couldn’t write about our ‘Day 4: Edinburgh’ experience yesterday, but there wasn’t a minute to spare during the day, and by the time we got back to our guesthouse after the concert, the only thought I had in my head was sleep!
The programme for the fourth instalment of #BeethovEnescu was the sonatas no. 2 (A major) and no. 7 (C minor) by Beethoven, and of course, ‘Scenes’. It was great to contrast these two vastly different sonatas – the A major has to be one of the funniest and silliest pieces Beethoven wrote, whilst in the C minor you feel that Beethoven is really taking on the world, and is (especially in the first and last movements) in a seriously bad mood. We were very chuffed that the audience actually laughed at the end of the A major, a reaction that, as the performer, you often want, but rarely get!
The venue of Edinburgh Society of Musicians is a charming 1st floor recital room, equipped with not one, but two excellent Steinway grand pianos, and an intimate atmosphere. We actually had about an hour to contemplate the warmth and cosiness of the venue from when we arrived at 6pm, as, due to a miscommunication, we were locked out of the building! The house is situated on a beautiful, and very quiet side street, and as we didn’t meet a soul as we waited, (gently freezing in the Edinburgh chill), we did wonder whether we’d actually be playing to anyone at all, if we ever got in… This must have been our comeuppance for complaining only the other day about the lack of dramatic concert experiences we’ve had. Anyway, thankfully we did eventually manage to make it inside the building, we had a lovely audience, and we managed to thaw our fingers in time for the scales at the beginning of Beethoven op 12/2.
It was also great to have Tom Chadwick of the Tunnell Trust at the concert last night; as we progress through our tour we continue to be extremely grateful to the Tunnell Trust for all their support and in enabling us to make our crazy #BeethovEnescu a reality.
I write to you from Dressing Room 2 of Falkirk Town Hall, whilst I await the curtain call for tonight’s recital. Unfortunately I won’t be able to post this until after the concert, as I have no internet access here. I noticed on the way into the hall that Psychic Sally will appear soon at this very venue (our poster is the much smaller one on the left): it’s a pity she isn’t here tonight as perhaps she could have provided me with the WiFi code, which would have meant I could have reached you sooner.
Yesterday we had a lovely time in Glasgow, as Savitri detailed. In fact the Erard she mentioned was allegedly played by Chopin himself when he visited Glasgow! I treated myself to playing the opening of the Polonaise-Fantasy on it during our rehearsal. On the concert organiser’s recommendation we went to the Ubiquitous Chip afterwards, where we had a fabulous lunch (I had the vegetarian haggis), before travelling to Falkirk. Today we’re feeling very relaxed, having had a perfect morning eating, drinking coffee and practising at our hosts’ house before a driving tour of Falkirk that took in The Kelpies (below) on the way to the venue.
Tonight we play Beethoven op 12/1 and op 47 (the “Kreutzer”) alongside the Enescu. Both of the Beethovens happen to be sonatas we worked on with Anthony Marwood. I made notes after our sessions with him, so I could tell you bar by bar what he said in some places, but I’ll save that for some other time. One focus of our work that I will share now, and that will certainly remain front of my mind during this performance, is the old idea of making aspects of the music sound spontaneous. There are unique challenges to this in Beethoven because of how logically worked out his music can appear. There’s a huge difference, however, between a performance that seems as if it’s evolving in real time (where Beethoven’s ‘logic’ comes across as continuous organic development), rather than one where everything sounds inevitable (and therefore, perhaps, predictable). It’s the former we’ll be aiming for tonight. Even Psychic Sally won’t be able to predict what’s coming next.
