Concert report!

We played a concert last weekend, and immediately after it was over I left for the airport and have not had any free time since I returned yesterday. We leave again tomorrow and I'm taking a break from work now...

We played
Magnard Hymn a la Justice (about Dreyfus case)
Verdi Overture to Nabucco
Elgar Enigma Variations

I thought that the orchestra played very well. Even 2 weeks prior to the concert I wasn't sure that we would be ready. There were a few rough spots in the Elgar but we managed to play well.

This was a tough program. The Magnard and Elgar are very challenging pieces. The Magnard had some very high passages in B major where the cellos had the lead. The Elgar has such beautiful writing for the cellos with very challenging rhythms. One variation was all about the cellos and was apparently an inspiration for his cello concerto. It was lovely but not easy to play, one of the themes that repeats all the time is a set of descending seventh intervals, making getting the intonation right challenging. Then there was the finale with the ultra-fast passages, which I played as Note on the Downbeat - mush - Note on the Middle Beat - mush - Note on the Downbeat - all played really fast while accelerating to the final presto section. But all in all I was pretty happy with the way I played.