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HI Emma, when I was in Remagen, I saw the shop guys using a Mitsubisi MPC (as Kimberley describes above) with seats removed and they loaded several harps in parallel on their columns because the MPC has internal height of 4ft. So if you hired one with a rear door and took say the RHS seats out from back to front then it might be safe for 2 harps, maybe put mattress etc iin between and more padding against windows. Or ask the UK harp shops for advice.
All RH – I can manage Bulalulow if I don’t force myself to do 1/3 2/4 all the time which was too difficult and I just gave up. Accomplished players do 1/3 2/4 throughout I notice, so perhaps it takes time to achieve this.
Why not identify sections which don’t have any pedal changes and practise and memorise those sections, that will restrict your options but will be the least frustrating. And then take a similar approach to fingering and muscle memory where you might have to endure wrong notes without pedals. After all fingering and quick location changes have to be worked at to become automatic. Expect less but make the most of it. Also if you have a piano handy, you can make sense of what’s going on and this can feed your appreciation of a piece, timing, harmony and aural register.
Thanks, all very helpful. I know the vocal parts well enough to sing against the harp, they are marked into the music and I have the SSA score to refer to but Briggsie’s right, it’s the tricky spots that have stopped me and I need to hack those and find my own solutions. It could be just time, stamina and determination; I was beaten by Balulalow and the awkward LH in Spring Carol and the length of Freezing Winter Night. I’ll keep a copy out on my stand this year and work so I can be ready to accept a booking or dep if asked. I’m a better player now and I have found how to work on pieces previously beyond me. Pleasure it is…. & the music is wonderful at any time of the year !!
Kim – I think we are struggling with the new layout since there are borders on the web page top, left and right. Before it was all in block and easier to read/scan but now the forum indexes, the headings and even the list of the forums do not fit on one page. With the entries set further apart vertically, with labels and links, there’s lost space between them, so one has to keep using the mouse to scroll down. One can’t easily scan the list of entries in the same volume as before, so it’s probably the layout that is hindering the ‘look and feel’ comfort levels.
I could ask two indian friends for advice on where to look etc, but they’ll want to know which city, New Dehli, Bangalore etc. |Couldn’t you take a small lever harp ?
I’d choose the Minstrel’s Adieu (John Thomas), Glinka’s Nocturne, easy Godefroid pieces and Naderman sonatas, maybe Dussek too, that’ll be plenty and probably already under your fingers.
I think I shall perform Tournier’s Les Enfants a la Creche de Noel, from his 2nd Images for a local church, as I have worked on it before but never performed it, so polishing it will be useful. I wonder how it sounds to new listeners, as typically for Tournier it seems to have short 3-6 bar sections, with themes he returns to. Has anyone else played this out ?
I don’t like to start on Christmas until Veterans Day is over, but some things need more time and I often think to look at Ceremony in the fall, in case a request comes in.I try to stop people counting, expecially if they are having to train their eyes on each string… far better to understand that there are 7 individual notes in each ‘octave’ ( and 7 corresponding pedals) , not to assume 8 and to count the complete octaves, so two strings short of 7 octaves is 49 less 2 that’s 47 !!
Niina – if you come to the UKHA afternoon/evening in north London on 9th December you could meet Marisa Robles in person and ask her about the composer during the evening session. Suggest you listen to Gabriella’s recording on her own CD, it’s brilliant. Marisa’s recording is also republished on her World of the Harp recording, an LP reissued on CD, so you can compare interpretations. Hadn’t realised until now that she knew Guridi, that’s obvious I suppose. (ahem is Wiki forbidden… I think the entry is quite comprehensive)
Holywell Music have a really good catalogue which can be downloaded as a pdf file, and there is a section around page 62 listing orchestral parts – it’s a ‘godsend’ for you, a few missing but very good (I’ll tell the compiler tomorrow how much we appreciate it). I can also think of Bartock’s Conc for Orch, Mahler 2,3+6, Elgar I,II, in the South, Don Juan (who’s), Strauss (Rosenkav, Tod, Alpine, Heldenleben, Wiegenlied), Janacek (Taras Bulba, ) Prokofiev +Tchai (ballets), some Shostakovitch 4, 5 or 10, Chabrier’s Espana , Bernstein’s Candide, Respighi’s Pines or Fountains of Rome. Ravel’s Mother Goose,
Certainly prep 2nd harp’s tricky bit in the planets,(prob Venus), Bernstein’s Chichester Psalm bottom of page 3 I think, where there is a tricky bit of pedalling under the soprano.. What about Vaughan William’s Sea Symphony quite a lot in 2nd and 5 Variants/Dives Lazurus (it says doubled).. ?? I also thought of Bax (Tintagel). How best to collaborate on a master list, a tricky question……… without going through the parts to hand, not sure I like the sound of auditioning any of these parts at sight, not very practical nor realistic. Kinda useful though, guess this will be like counting sheep…I much prefer the existing web content manager for the forums, as some of our postings are quite long and with vignette or whatever you have employed in the current format, the block index and chunky style boxes for the text are very easy to read and skim read.
Is this the piece needing wooden spoons, or perhaps it was metal teaspoons, can’t remember but best not to be caught out.
Surely there’s harp in the Manfred Symphony. Is that 4 or 6. Never played it but have heard ita few times. Happy to be corrected. Have injured my foot and limping and still have a sore elbow still from the Guridi. (Luckily have been booked for the clarsach next, a bit easier on the skeletal/muscular system.)
