It’s 12:10 AM and I’m still up. I got home at about 11:20. Most of my colleagues live further away. Some, in fact, probably just arrived home … unless they are still on the road.
Cenerentola turns out to be about 3 hours and 5 minutes long. Longer than I expected. And this is with some cuts!
I don’t recognize the following, for instance, so either I fall asleep during the opera at some point, or we cut this:
Some nights feel longer than others, too. This was a “longer than others” sort of night. I think it’s just because I was tired, and I’m thinking of this week and all that has to be accomplished before Thanksgiving day, when we will have something like fifteen people here for a meal.
Tomorrow our performance is at 3:00. We’ll see if that feels like a “longer than others” kind of performance, or if it speeds by. Time will tell. Possibly literally, even.
What fun to find these videos with Frederica Von Stade:
I really enjoyed the NCCO concert last night (that I blogged about yesterday). The Bolcom rags were great, Laura Griffiths played beautifully, and the final work, Strauss’s Metamorphosen, was so wonderful I immediately went home and found it on emusic.com.
(Side note: I went back to meet and congratulate oboist Laura Griffiths with two of my oboe playing friends. She knew them. She didn’t know me. It was … um … awkward. I felt like an intruder. An unknown, boring, oboe wannabe sort of intruder. And yes, I know I over react! But maybe I shouldn’t have gone with them. I wonder.)
All three works were new to me. It would be nice to have a recording of the Bolcom works, but I couldn’t locate them. Hey, NCCO, how about making a recording of them? Along with the Strauss. Please?! You already have your first sale!
I have opera tonight, tomorrow and Tuesday. Then it’ll be time to prepare for Thanksgiving. We’ll have the big bash here, and that is followed by the final two Cenerentola performances. After that it’s a week of symphony and then the Nutcracker run. Argh! I’m not ready for Nutcrackers yet.
I’ve rarely seen a first oboist undertake a terrorist act while performing- perhaps their ego precludes it, but they will sometimes do it during tuning. My favorite terror tuning technique is the oboist who intentionally gives different A’s to the woodwinds and strings because the wind keep going sharp. In their mind, the solution is to tune the strings sharper than the wind. This is like treating Grandma’s gout by putting her out of her misery. In many ways, the 2nd oboe chair offers untold opportunities for the committed terrorist- from this position you can undermine the tuning of the entire wind section, and probably disrupt the counting of the first oboist, who is often the busiest solo player in the band. All of this without ever being heard, or at least notice by the audience. If you want your 2nd oboe martyrdom to be celebrated, though, there is always the “duck with emphysema” sound that some 2nd oboists have mastered, a tone that can penetrate any texture and ruin any concert. This sound alone can inspire the most profound despair in audiences, players and conductors alike.
This is from a conductor’s blog, found here. I’ve not worked with him. Now I think I’d be rather fearful to, you know?
I just had a phone call from a parent. One of my students will not be continuing. The mother was gracious, extremely complimentary, and had no negative words for me. And yet I always wonder when this happens, “Could I have done something different? Should I have made it more fun?”
I guess that’s not abnormal. I hope not, anyway.
The student just has too much going on, and is an avid basketball player; the coach of the team is inflexible about missing, and the student would have had to skip youth orchestra far too much. It all led to the decision to choose one or the other. I knew basketball would —should!— win out, considering his love for it. One does need to go with one’s passion.
I just hate losing him. And I keep hoping I didn’t send him away, despite his mother’s very kind words.
New Century Chamber Orchestra
8:00 PM First United Methodist Church, Palo Alto
Bolcom: Serenata Notturna for Oboe & Strings, Laura Griffiths, oboe
Bolcom: Three Rags for Strings
R. Strauss: Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings
Dan and I attended San Francisco Opera’sOtello on Tuesday. You can read Opera Tattler’s account, and then there’s another blogger’s thoughts from the same night we attended. Hmm … as is frequently the case, I heard and saw something so different. I dunno. I guess I’m just blind and deaf to some things. I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. (And Janet Archibald’s English horn playing was, as usual, absolutely wonderful!)
The only sort of bizarre and sad thing was that I had taken off my black velvet scarf when we arrived. At the end of the opera when I went to put it on, it was gone. Someone absconded with my scarf! How sad is that? It was a birthday gift from a dear friend some years back, so it was the sentimental value that especially upset me … and the fact that someone would take something like that. Dan is thinking it might just be that a person inadvertently picked it up. I’m hoping he’s right. But in any case, it’s gone.
Oh … and two phones went off during the opera, and there is some sort of rustling sound in the Dress Circle that sounds like someone is unwrapping cough drops throughout the evening. I can’t imagine that’s the case, so I’m thinking it’s the ventilation system or some such thing. (I seem to recall this from another time we sat on the right side of the Dress Circle: we had exchanged our lovely center DC tickets for these since we had to change nights.) And what was some woman doing, talking through the beginning of the opera? Just because it began loud and stormy doesn’t mean you can talk in full voice!
Here’s the beginning of the fourth act, where the English horn is featured (No Janet in this one, obviously; I just found what was available online):
and that leads into this, which includes the Willow Song:
… and I can’t exactly stop before the Ave Maria, can I?
Of course at the end of this last clip dear messed up Otello comes in. Desdemona should have just hit him over the head and told him to grow up. Sigh.
It’s just another day to most of you
I move from one day in November to
the next and, poof!, I now must suddenly
tell everyone my age is fifty three.
Sorry. It’s the best I could do this year. For some reason I’m feeling not even an ounce of poetry in these bones. Go figure.
Okay … let me try another …
Goodbye, familiar age of fifty two
It seems I’ve had enough of being you
Instead I’m moving on to fifty three
I think that it might get the best of me.
… I’ve been putting it off ALL DAY LONG! I’m really so very good at procrastination. Honestly. I never procrastinate about procrastination. Aren’t you proud of me?
She tests the reed, blowing or “crowing” which makes a vibrating sound. She does this a few times.
“This I would call hard and flat,” she says. “Ugly.”
She tosses it on the desk. She’ll never use it.
“It’s a lot of work and the outcome is uncertain,” she says. “Everyone thinks making reeds is cool until they have to do it.”
