TASO from fall to spring

As I listened to the recording of my orchestra's performance from last fall, I realized I haven't blogged about the last couple of performances. It seems that I'm always playing catch up with my blog. Either my life is happening much faster than I can write about, which can be a good thing, or that I'm just lazy, which is more probable. (And I have a bad habit of starting a post, leave it in draft, and coming back days later to finish it. But I prefer to keep the original "start" date as the post date. Thus if you see "old" posts suddenly appearing, it's not because you missed them previously :P)

The last time I've heard myself playing was probably the RGS band recording from almost 20 years ago. It's a strange feeling. On the one hand, I'm rather critical and can pick out so many nuances and little mistakes that I'll like myself and the orchestra to improve on; on the other hand, I get a sense of immense pride and satisfaction for the work we have produced, even if it's far from perfect.

Yeah, about the last two concerts in November. They were our main performances for the season. We performed these pieces:
- Mendelssohn: The Hebrides Overture, Op. 26
- Strauss: Horn concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 11
- Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Op. 35

First in Jämsä then in Tampere. I think I did better in the first concert, even with a slight headache throughout. The recording however was from the second.

"epic facepalm" (seen on stall wall in school in Jämsä)

I know the above pic has nothing to do with the performance, but I thought it's amusing.

The day before the Tampere concert, we had a rehearsal, and it went very well (for me). Perhaps too well. You'd think that would have helped me with my confidence, but I still got really nervous and clammy-palmed during the actual performance. The audience was a lot bigger than that in Jämsä, plus there were people I know in the audience!! (Huge thank you to those who came :)) So for the first half I was very jittery and made a couple of minor mistakes. Thankfully I recovered somewhat during intermission and was able to do better for Scheherazade in the second half.

After the concert, my friends and I went for a round of drinks in Praha. Well, I had to send them off for the first round and join them later, because I still had to move the timpani and percussion instruments from the stage to storage. Maybe I should consider the question posed by my co-worker the other day: "Why don't you play the flute?" :) Nah, I love being a percussionist. Big, heavy instruments are part of the charm, even if it's a bit more work sometimes (and the orchestra members do help me out a lot). Besides we get to play a variety of instruments, including some smaller ones. Oh that reminds me of this funny video about orchestral percussionists:



Here are some pics I've taken of the orchestra during rehearsals. Probably not too interesting as it's more fun to hear an orchestra. However I can't share the recordings publicly. I guess you'll just have to make it to one of our concerts sometime :)

Can't wait for next monday when we start rehearsals again for spring. New pieces! Speaking of which I'm going to take a look at them now and prepare a bit!