Good morning friends, thank you for an excellent rehearsal last night, a lot of good things covered, and I’m now very excited about the weekend rehearsal.
What we did on Monday 6th February:
We opened with Movement I from Karelia Suite, working on the ensemble, tuning and character of the music, until it was really sparkly and shimmery in the strings, and very accurate in the woodwind and brass. After this we played through Movement III, with a little bit of work done on ensemble.
We then moved on to The Wild Bears from the Wand of Youth, Suite 2, and immediately broke it down into accompaniment and melody, ensuring the accompaniment wasn’t ‘lopsided’ with the off-beats. We did a little bit on the style of the music, and also worked on the ‘handing over’ of the music between parts – very Elgarian. We’ll cover the rest of it on Saturday.
After the break, woodwind and strings did some excellent rehearsing of Movement II from Karelia Suite, really refining the blend and style of the piece. Beautiful chamber playing in this – we’ll just tidy up the odd moment here and there.
What we’ll do on Saturday 11th February:
I’d like to work on the tutti movements of the Wand of Youth (1.1, 2.1, 2.7), then do some serious work on the Beethoven, especially movements 3 & 4. If we have time, we’ll cover the last movement of the Karelia Suite.
What we’ll do on Monday 13th February:
More work on the Beethoven in the first half, then the ‘smaller movements’ of the Elgar in the second, so trumpets and trombones can leave at the break on Monday.
Extra Rehearsal
Looking forward to seeing most of you on Saturday 11th February at Adrian’s. The rehearsal will run from 14:00-17:30 with plenty of breaks. If people could start arriving from 13:30 to help move furniture, that would be great!
Spotify Playlist
The Spotify Playlist for the term is HERE. Do please give it a listen, or find the pieces on YouTube – listening to them regularly will help ingrain the tricky bits.
See you all on Saturday 11th or Monday 13th.
– Ben
