TwTwTw thinks, having rendered Swan Lake "wunderbar" on the first play-through, she could be let off the second day of rehearsals outside and up a mountain only accessible after jeep pick-up from the carpark somewhere nearer sea level. They have muddy field dates here too.
I performed a small rain dance behind the concrete toilet in the break.
Perhaps I was getting above my station, playing opera all the time and reading books called things like Musik im Abendland: Prozesse und Stationen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart and Who Needs Classical Music: Cultural Choice and Musical Value.
Last week I went to London to perform a new work in a harp festival. I was practicing when in came a colleague and said "Helen, I know you aren't working tonight, because you don't live in England any more, and anyway you said already that you were going down the pub. There's a really desparate choral society in Blackheath. You can go to my house and take my harp and my black clothes and go and do it."
So off I went to the gig. It was raining. It was a terrible nineteenth-century Oratorio. And I'd had a sordid romantic encounter with the first horn when I was 16, and he'd obviously remembered.
But I were grateful for it; £150 fufilled my basic human needs all week (3 bottles of chardonnay, 65 skinny almond cupuccinos and what felt like 5000 years on the limping, juddering nightmare otherwise known as "Transport for London").
I haven't blogged for so long, I've started getting emails from patient readers telling me to get on with it. Because I no longer spend 75% of my life being ignored in expensive hotels, I don't have so many amusing anecdotes - like the time I had to conceal my womanly impurity and play behind a screen for the King of [a Muslim country]. (After an hour the screen grumpily announced: "I'm going on a break, it says in my contract break + sandwiches with posh crisps every hour, King or - [flunky produces crackling envelope with $1000 tip] - I mean to say, it would be an honour to play for His Majesty for as long as the evening affords").
Today we all had to do a turn at the harp backgrounding a party. TwTwTw had to do two because, suprise suprise, I have played a lot of background music. I haven't actually done any for a while, but it's like riding a bike, you never forget how to play La Source, doing a few dodgy repeats so it lasts longer. It did strike me though how some students have got to the age of 23 or 24 and still hardly ever have to play background music. I played it for at least 12 hours a week throughout my studies in London.
The work's all right, considering you get paid about £100 an hour to wear a nice dress, drink champagne and play an instrument covered in gold, when below stairs people from ethnic minorities on 14 hour shifts are scrubbing toilets for under a fiver an hour. I didn't mind it. I still don't mind it. Quite often the people are very nice, and I'm sociable, I like nice people. It's extra- jolly doing background music in Munich because you can park, the traffic's OK and the Germans like music so you get made quite a big fuss of.
I don't feel superior because I can play "Are you ready for love?" (actually, I can't play AYRFL very well, it's a bit awkward on the harp. I never risked it without Hunky G as flutin' cover). I don't feel inferior either; I don't really feel anything about it at all. I'm just wondering. What do my co-students do on those three or four days each week when I was schlepping harps into Piccadilly, playing shit music and going home?
Do they play good music? Are they at concerts? Watching an interesting film? Are they a little less tired?
I'm listening to This Is Hardcore.
I'm only trying to give you what you've come to expect
Just another song...
But it's a living, can't you see / I'm a professional...
What's the point in making it over-emotional? / You can do it the hard way Or you can be a professional / Oh, oh / La na na na
Oh, oh / I'm a professional / Oh, oh / La na na na
Oh, oh / Sleep on my darling / Sleep on my love / Sleep on my darling
Sleep on my love / Sleep on my darling / Sleep on my love
Sleep on my darling / Sleep on my love
Aus unendlichen Sehnsüchten steigen
endliche Taten wie schwache Fontänen,
die sich zeitig und zitternd neigen.
Aber, die sich uns sonst verschweigen,
unsere fröhlichen kräfte—zeigen
sich in diesen tanzenden Tränen.
Rainer Maria Rilke
|
|||||||
Good quote, stolen from Terry:
"I love Italian opera--it's so reckless. Damn Wagner, and his bellowings at Fate and death. Damn Debussy, and his averted face. I like the Italians who run all on impulse, and don't care about their immortal souls, and don't worry about the ultimate."
D.H. Lawrence, letter, April 1, 1911
Running on impulse is fun: drinking wine, reading Vogue, parties and all that, or sitting in the pit oblivious of everything outside la Boheme. But then I leave the theatre and, in my quiet room at dusk, listen always at the moment to rather austere music. I love the seriousness, this structure, that dignity.
Well, the impulsive types are always the romantic heroes, and if I had to choose either head or heart, I'd take the heart. Nonetheless, here's also to serious hours.
I think I'm so keen on others' seriousness because, as regular readers of TwTwTw will agree, it's impossible to take myself seriously - a colleague recently taught me the German for "kiss my arse", but as a "friendly Bavarian greeting". I believed him for at least two long minutes.
Every glass in my flat is being used to hold flowers after the Bolshoi's hunky Russian conductor gave me his first night bouquet. He's such an incredibly inspired artist with commanding stage presence and a fabulous stick technique. So was my Turn of the Screw conductor. He also gave me his first night flowers - but I only ever judge conductors on merit.
Wandering to work through Passau`s peaceful Sunday streets, I passed by an American woman bedecked in Tracht (the dirndl, lacy bits etc that make up Bavarian national dress) and explaining to a rapt cruise ship audience "well, not many people leave the church, because then nobody will bury you."
Musing on this, I rounded the corner to find it`s "take it bigger" day at my usual coffee shop (grande for the price of tall sizes, were you wondering).
A friend of mine can raise one eyebrow without moving the other - if I could, I would.
It is a source of some amusement among my friends here that, despite having lived in Munich for over six months, my flat still has a somewhat - ah - minimalist flavour. This is because I ran out of money to buy furniture with. Am cheered to read in the Times today I am not the only one.
Furniture is bourgeois anyway. I have:
- 2 lamps in rose and gold wild silk
- an orange sofa I think is really cool and nobody else likes
- a birdfeeder
- an IKEA sleeping mat
- a shower curtain with pictures of hunky men on it
- 1 pan
It's all going to be OK, though - my professor kindly donated a chair, a computer desk and a harp carpet; my neighbour equally kindly a windowbox; and Tom splashed out on a folding plastic chair and a second pan.
What on earth does he want to cook that needs more than one pan?
TwTwTw dropped a harp once - it made a terrible sound as it hit the ground, and then had to have a new neck costing over £5000. That, however, is small change compared to what happened to John and Penny Adie last week.
I have spent many happy days in that very garden pictured and I can hear the crunch from here. Echoing musicians everywhere, dear Lord, may the piano (and the insurance pay-out) be OK.
