Holiday Concert #3

Our orchestra had its third and final holiday concert yesterday. The venue was new for us and we will be using it for 2 more concerts this season. We should have gotten there earlier and played a little bit before the concert. The sound balance was so different (but much better!) than where we practice but it took us a while to adjust to the difference. The woodwinds and brass sounded so much louder from where we were sitting. My husband said that the balance sounded good and that we sounded better in the church. I thought we didn't play as well as we did on Monday night. Our ensemble playing suffered a bit during the first piece (Warlock's Capriol Suite) and got a little better when we played the Karelia Suite. After intermission we were fine.

There was some confusion with times with our harpist, so she wasn't able to be at the concert. The harp is a crucial part of The Waltz of the Flowers, especially the gorgeous harp solo at the beginning of the piece. So, here we are at a concert where we're playing the Nutcracker Suite and we don't have a harp. We were all wondering what was going to happen. She started coming to rehearsals a few weeks before the first concert, so up until she came, we'd listen to our conductor say, "Harp, harp, harp, harp, harp..." and then cue us in. It got to be a joke; however, quasi-singing "harp, harp, harp" wasn't really going to be the right thing to do in a concert. Well, thank goodness for technology. We already had an electronic celesta, so our conductor programmed the harp part in, and cued in our keyboard player to "play" the harp parts. He did this with no rehearsal, and we didn't even know what he was going to do. Our "harpist" got a nice round of applause at the end.

Now we're on break until the new year.