The Show Must Go On
This thread was inspired by the recent posting about "E-string" that was initiated by this piece in The Times:
Royal Northern Sinfonia/Rubikis at Sage, Gateshead
Richard Morrison
Published at 12:01AM, February 2 2015
Rated to 4 stars
Hearing the spirited Royal Northern Sinfonia play in its magnificent home is always a pleasure, but this concert was made doubly fascinating by an extraordinary incident. Shortly into the finale of Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto the young soloist, Hyeyoon Park, snapped the E-string on her fiddle. That helter-skelter movement has barely half a bar of respite for the soloist, but in one of those half-bars Park swivelled to the RNS’s legendary leader, Bradley Creswick, who — as if by telepathy — instantly handed her his instrument and took hers.
Creswick then looked pleadingly round his colleagues while the Prokofiev swirled onwards (I should add that this was being broadcast live on Radio 3), and someone in the second violins passed him a new E-string in plastic packaging. After several unsuccessful attempts to open it with his fingers he ripped the plastic with his teeth, and proceeded to fix and tune the new E-string in about 19 seconds.
By this time, however, the music was hurtling towards the final, terrifying passage in which the soloist must deliver thousands of prestissimo semiquavers. To play this live on radio on someone else’s fiddle could be professional suicide. So in another half-bar’s respite, Park spun round again, reclaimed her own instrument and returned Creswick’s. The manoeuvre was conducted with such choreographic precision by both musicians that you might have thought they had rehearsed it, and Park went on to play the ending with fierce ebullience.
That old showbiz adage — the show must go on — can rarely have been so nervelessly upheld. The trouble was that the Incredible Fiddle Exchange was the only thing anyone talked about afterwards, which was rather sad for the young Latvian conductor Ainars Rubikis. His interpretations of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s rather depressing A Quiet Life weren’t bad — but he had been comprehensively upstaged by an E-string."
I sent a copy to a former boarder, hornspieler and he was inspired to write to me concerning some of his scrapes. These I've chopped into individual anecdotes that I shall feed into the thread to maintain momentum So, the aim here is to tell of occasions when the musical boat has been close to the rocks but... somehow.. has survived to find calm waters. From time to time, I shall add parallel stories from my own amateur life in music. Here goes with HS's first story:
I’m going to start back to my first experience in my second year at the RAM.
Every term, there is a special Chamber Music Concert given for students and public in the Duke’s Hall.
Christmas Term 1950
The leading violinist at that time was Arthur Davison, who led the Academy’s 1st orchestra and who was studying conducting under Clarence Raybould.
The work to be played was, as I recall, a piece called “Madame Noy” but it matters not.
What happened was that Arthur’s E string broke during the final movement. Undeterred, he completed the performance playing on the “A” string – getting perilously close to the wrong side of the bridge at times!
(We grew very close over the next few years – I played for him with his various orchestras, both professional and amateur and we were together at the memorial concert for Dennis Brain, held in the Dukes Hall in 1957, where I played the Ravel “Pavane pour une infante defunte” as the opening work. I was Player-Manager in his Virtuosi of England until I joined the BBC in 1973 and subsequently coached his Croydon Youth Orchestra and the Welsh National Youth Orchestra. Arthur succumbed to diabetes while I was living in Portugal, but Pamela and I flew back to England for his memorial concert in the Fairfield Hall, conducted by his son, Darren.).
Royal Northern Sinfonia/Rubikis at Sage, Gateshead
Richard Morrison
Published at 12:01AM, February 2 2015
Rated to 4 stars
Hearing the spirited Royal Northern Sinfonia play in its magnificent home is always a pleasure, but this concert was made doubly fascinating by an extraordinary incident. Shortly into the finale of Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto the young soloist, Hyeyoon Park, snapped the E-string on her fiddle. That helter-skelter movement has barely half a bar of respite for the soloist, but in one of those half-bars Park swivelled to the RNS’s legendary leader, Bradley Creswick, who — as if by telepathy — instantly handed her his instrument and took hers.
Creswick then looked pleadingly round his colleagues while the Prokofiev swirled onwards (I should add that this was being broadcast live on Radio 3), and someone in the second violins passed him a new E-string in plastic packaging. After several unsuccessful attempts to open it with his fingers he ripped the plastic with his teeth, and proceeded to fix and tune the new E-string in about 19 seconds.
By this time, however, the music was hurtling towards the final, terrifying passage in which the soloist must deliver thousands of prestissimo semiquavers. To play this live on radio on someone else’s fiddle could be professional suicide. So in another half-bar’s respite, Park spun round again, reclaimed her own instrument and returned Creswick’s. The manoeuvre was conducted with such choreographic precision by both musicians that you might have thought they had rehearsed it, and Park went on to play the ending with fierce ebullience.
That old showbiz adage — the show must go on — can rarely have been so nervelessly upheld. The trouble was that the Incredible Fiddle Exchange was the only thing anyone talked about afterwards, which was rather sad for the young Latvian conductor Ainars Rubikis. His interpretations of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s rather depressing A Quiet Life weren’t bad — but he had been comprehensively upstaged by an E-string."
I sent a copy to a former boarder, hornspieler and he was inspired to write to me concerning some of his scrapes. These I've chopped into individual anecdotes that I shall feed into the thread to maintain momentum So, the aim here is to tell of occasions when the musical boat has been close to the rocks but... somehow.. has survived to find calm waters. From time to time, I shall add parallel stories from my own amateur life in music. Here goes with HS's first story:
I’m going to start back to my first experience in my second year at the RAM.
Every term, there is a special Chamber Music Concert given for students and public in the Duke’s Hall.
Christmas Term 1950
The leading violinist at that time was Arthur Davison, who led the Academy’s 1st orchestra and who was studying conducting under Clarence Raybould.
The work to be played was, as I recall, a piece called “Madame Noy” but it matters not.
What happened was that Arthur’s E string broke during the final movement. Undeterred, he completed the performance playing on the “A” string – getting perilously close to the wrong side of the bridge at times!
(We grew very close over the next few years – I played for him with his various orchestras, both professional and amateur and we were together at the memorial concert for Dennis Brain, held in the Dukes Hall in 1957, where I played the Ravel “Pavane pour une infante defunte” as the opening work. I was Player-Manager in his Virtuosi of England until I joined the BBC in 1973 and subsequently coached his Croydon Youth Orchestra and the Welsh National Youth Orchestra. Arthur succumbed to diabetes while I was living in Portugal, but Pamela and I flew back to England for his memorial concert in the Fairfield Hall, conducted by his son, Darren.).
Comment