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It’s not really a stupid question & I think you have already worked out the answer ! Yes, if the dolly has inflatable tires, then lower air pressure will indeed rupture them so be sure you deflate them as you would a bicycle tire. Don’t forget !!
Thank you for the book suggestion, yes I started clapping with the student, I also have a diagram of the strings intersecting the staves with each note name .
I heard a marvellous performance of this work, a real dialogue between violin & harp, in the sections and the joins, they’d definately gotten rid of any metronome before they started rehearsing, and I remember not only loving it but vowing not to continue with my own violinist who is a conductor & like to set a strict tempo.
I practised this so much once that I ended up with my RSI and a sore elbow again and I think tryng to play this strictly to tempo put too much prssure on me – as a listener I wouldn’t object to a lttle rubato in what is essentially the harps’ cadenza and it might take the pressure off the performer and result in an easier, more secure passage.
The student’s learning style shows certain difficulties with the spatial aspects, low high, treble bass, left right hands & the string names and the direction & order of the alphabet. Then we have pedal names and the natural sharp settings of the pedals – their musical memory and interest is very good however. As a harpist my middle name is patience…. I am now producing the teaching aids we should all have to hand anyway – somehow these seem lacking in the tutor books.
Very interesting indeed. I might have heard the premier at the RAM in London, when they had a harp/brass evening and Catrin was one of the performers. I’m a harpist and brass band player and incidentally used to dive in Huddersfield, when a teenager, i didn’t know about the Kirklees archive collection. Thank you !
I have an interesting excerpt from my Vaughan William biography to add to this but unfortunately its scanned and just over 1 megabyte.
and I have just seen an email wanting me to play this on November 6th, in a local workshop thankfully, but with the usual short notice, no pay kind of request !! Ha – well maybe it’s good revision and I can have a lovely afternoon seeped in this piece.
Thanks, Erin, I think that was me (Barbara Fackler and I reworked it) and although I’d seen the request a few days ago haven’t had time or been near my own PC to respond. Alison
Well, it takes time to get into it, it didn’t really agree with my ears to begin with very east European without the subtleties of Bartok and I remembering hearing the opening trills in Harp I when I was playing Harp II . It sometimes gets an outing on the radio.
One of my pupils needs an APP like that and her father found some, but how do we make it relevant to the harp and correctly locating and moving hands to the correct location, her reading has improved but she is often out by an octave and I can’t seem to quash that. It means she can’t really develop a piece on her own. What APP in particular ?
Well what’s also frustrating is the number of grade 2-3 pieces, which aren’t very practical on lever harp and one old lever harp with slow plastic levers. BTW I think playing both is important, if the student likes the chromatic repertoire and orchestra, and approaching 5ft in height- I had to go back to lever harp when I left high school, so developed a large clarsach repertoire until I could afford a concert harp in my 30’s. my smallest is a 27 stringer.
Sorry to be a party pooper, but it looks like the decision against restoring it was made earlier and removing the old strings which all get pretty tatty once they are defunct provides an interesting but clean corner piece/ornament. The soundboard is so split it wouldn’t take the strain and why spend thousands of dollars trying to restore and play when newer instruments are available – try not to sink good money after bad.
Gretchen – how is your finger – have you started to play again ?
Emma – your wrist and fingers ? What progress ?Alison
