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To show how vague people really are, I’ve had the experience of playing a gig on my natural 23, and people will come up to me and tell me how they heard Roberto Perara (excellent Paraguayan harpist), and his harp is MUCH BIGGER than that one. It’s so big he has to stand up to play it, and also his harp is made of wood.
There’s nothing to do except remember Ray Pool’s excellent maxim that people don’t want to be educated, they want to be right, so I just smile and nod and go on with what I was doing.
But I get the “This harp is very small, isn’t it?” remark even when I bring a concert grand. People who are not harpists are just vague about this. I had a friend who, when she got this when she was playing, used to carefully set down her 23, look the person straight in the eye, and say, “Well, just how big did you want it to be?”
I don’t think there is ANY prejudice against lever harps/small harps from the general public. Rather the reverse, if anything. I’ve noticed that when I have brides come to my house to pick music, 10 of them look over uneasily at my Style 11 and say, “You’re not going to bring that, are you?” for every one who says, “Ooh, could you bring that one?”
There is a lot of prejudice both ways in the harp world. I find that folk harpists are just as prejudiced against pedal harpists as the other way round.
No, they’re not that light, really. They are very stable. I’ve had mine since 2002 and it’s just great. So is their customer service–last year I managed to cross thread the base on a job and nobody could get it loose. They let me send it back, fixed it and didn’t even charge me shipping.
You can really load up the desk, more so than with the recent Salvi stands, for example.
Nope, I was wrong. It’s Christine Muhlbach on harp on the Orchestral Favorites recording.
My copy of the recording of Taka Kling and Louisville just says “The Louisville Orchestra, First Edition Recordings, Robert Whitney/Jorge Mester conducting”.
The outer sleeve appears to be a generic cover used for all the recordings in the series. There’s not even a mention of the actual album contents on it. The insert has the numbers LOU-701 and LS-701. The other pieces on it are “Ilinx” for Clarinet and orchestra by Antonio Taurello, and Concertino for Clarinet and Strings by Matyas Seiber, both with James Livingston as soloist.
Hmm, now that I think about it, that may actually be an early recording by Willy Postma, but I’ll have to dig it out to be sure of that.
No, that’s a much later recording. I have that one, too, somewhere, and I think it’s the harpist from the Stockholm symphony (can’t remember her name offhand).
When there’s more light tomorrow I’ll dig them both out so I can give you the details. If you want the one in your link, I’d hold off–that recording comes up fairly often in the US if you don’t mind waiting. I often see it in second-hand LP stores.
The closest thing to a recording of Mr. Grandjany would probably be the recording done by Taka Kling and the Louisville symphony, which I believe he oversaw.
You can get it on itunes now, but it’s badly digitized, in my opinion–doesn’t sound much like the original LP, which was part of a series of works by living composers. If you can find the LP (and have a way to play it), it’s a lovely recording.
Clinton Nieweg, who posts here from time to time, maintains an extensive database of harp ensemble parts. I was asking him if he knew of any other available editions. Sorry, I realize that may have been confusing to you.
You can get the parts on rental from lyramusic.com (the edition edited by Dewey Owens). There may be other versions available.
Clinton, do you have anything in your list?
I really wouldn’t stress about this. It’s desirable to have a set of strings, but if you don’t have the money right now, you don’t. Broken strings are a fact of life, but if you just put aside a couple of dollars a week, you should be able to afford to deal with them as they happen.
It’s not ideal, and it will be less ideal next year when the mail slows down (so it will be longer without the string while you wait for the new one), but if that’s how you have to do it, that’s how you have to do it.
It’s really nothing to lose sleep over. Some harps break more strings than others, and people don’t usually come to complain about normal behavior. You only hear about the string eaters here.
Yes, but she specified it had to be a harp arrangement, and specifically a lever harp arrangement. There are many places to download it if that’s not an issue.
The only place I know of where you might be able to download a lever harp version would be from Mary Jean Zarrick’s website, harpmusicnow.com. She has an easy version in her popular Christmas collection
However, it costs $32 to sign up there, so I’m not at all sure it would be worth it.
Of course there are several books with printed versions, but AFAIK none of them are also available as downloads. Check folkharp.com–maybe Mary R could express one of them to you in time.
