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Orchestre des Concerts Gais, direction Marc Korovitch
Concerto pour violon, Beethoven, Pierre Hamel
Symphonie #4, Schubert
17 et 18 avril 2010 – Temple des Batignolles, Paris 17e

It’s now Wednesday and I haven’t yet written about the weekend of concerts that marked the first “outing” (hoho) of Les Concerts Gais (et Beaux). If you can read French, I highly recommend diverting your attention towards the accounts of klari and zvezdo, which are far more detailed and wonderfully written than I could manage.

In the meantime, here’s a taste of what we played – although this version is performed by some random fiddler called Itzhak Perlman and an obscure German string-band conducted by Mister du Pré, (who is himself a part-time Argentinian pianist).

From my perspective, it’s been a most interesting and exciting few months being back in a classical orchestra – I’m of the firm opinion that your relationship to a piece of music changes utterly when you are allowed “inside” it.

Winter and spring in Paris for me has been punctuated by Saturdays crawling around within the frameworks nailed together by Schubert and Beethoven.  It’s been fascinating work, and we’ve eaten some good lunches too.

Playing in an orchestra in Paris is also very good for my French. I’m learning all sorts of great new words.

From a trumpet player’s standpoint, the music is not necessarily challenging – essentially we double with the tympani for most of the time, and because the parts were written for valveless natural trumpets, we play no melody at all – just declarative rythmic statements. In theory this gives you time and space to work on your dynamics (although as everyone knows, trumpet players only have two dynamics – LOUD and NOT PLAYING).

The trumpets’ three most important roles in the orchestra involve, counting bars rest; tweeting during the Larghetto ; and helping the timpanist not to get lost.  Great pleasure can be derived from doing such simple jobs well.

However, it was always a beautiful moment when, in the dying moments of the concert, Marc finally smiles at us in the 4th movement of the Schubert, and points his baton at us with a gesture that says ALLEZ LES TROMPETTES!

We know what we have to do.

FORTISSIMO!