The week of 3 concerts
I’m not sure that I’ve ever spoken much about the Choeurs et Orchestres des Grandes Ecoles, home of the orchestra that meets every week at Telecom. Back in October I took a leap of faith and enrolled in the symphony orchestra (which, thankfully, you don’t need to audition for).
After the first few surreal rehearsals I thought I ought to do something about my complete lack of understanding of what the conductor said. This is a rather amiable Russian guy called Vsevolod Polonsky, who delights in entertaining us with his witty anecdotes - and I’m not entirely sure that the French people present understand him some of the time.
Anyway, I won’t bore you with French music theory, suffice to say that I now know the difference between my soupir and my double-croche. I also have completely failed to get to grips with using the solfege - which, apparently, most Romance countries delight in using. For those of you more au fait with The Sound of Music, you’ll be somewhat surprised to hear that Si is allegedly a drink with jam and bread.
Anyway, after a term of rehearsals, and a few final weeks of stress, last week was concert week. I was rather alarmed to learn that ticket prices would range from 9€ (student) to 25€ (top seats), but this didn’t seem to deter what appears to be a dedicated following of audience. In fact, all the venues were packed - well, I’ve never witnessed people at standing at the back for want of pews in a church before.
The venues ranged from a small concert hall at CNR Versailles (the appropriately shortened form of Conservatoire National de Région de Musique de Danse et d’Art Dramatique), to the Eglise de la Trinité, an enourmous church in the 9th arrondissement, above-pictured by Sam.
The music was Dvorak’s New World Symphony, and Brahms’ German Requiem. My next starring role will be in the summer, where we’ll be doing Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. See you there?
January 28th, 2006 at 1:39 am
If you’d said Capriccio espagnol, i’d have been interested, but i find Scheherazade a bit derivative.
(its amazing how smart u can look with google behind u)
February 22nd, 2006 at 5:27 pm
I have say that I rather disagree with alex, as Capriccio espagnol is a little trite. Scherazade is slightly waffly, but also has some cool violin solos, a few more than capriccio so it wins in my mind!
Glad to hear u still playing
See you sometime in England
March 16th, 2006 at 1:31 am
Hmmm… well I have to say:
(a) that it’s been too long since I’ve visited Dan’s blog (”Shaaaaame!”, as they’d say in English-language debates)
(b) this was a bloody good concert (I can say that without any pride, since I was in the audience), and you should all come and watch us “interpret” (as the French rather quaintly say) Scheherezade in June.
(c) be careful what you write on the Internet, since even Russian conductors can read English (it has been known).