Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

Zzzzzzzzz...

Sunday, Jul. 15, 2007
10:34 p.m.
I am very sleepy. I hit the snooze button but still got up at 5:10 this morning, dressed, made myself up, had a bowl of cheerios and a cup of tea. We bought gas, picked up Little Princess’ BF, and drove the two and-a-half hours to Joliette (that includes missing one of our exits and having to stop so I could get rid of the cup of tea), arriving at 9:00 for a 9:30 rehearsal. The conductor didn’t start rehearsing Hubby’s piece until almost 11:30, which meant we could have slept for another two hours! We were not pleased.

The weather in the morning was particularly weird. There was a cold wind blowing and it rained a couple of times. It didn’t look like a good day to have an outdoor concert. But by noon the sun came out, the rain dried up, people were arriving with lawnchairs and picnic baskets to set up on the lawn (unlike people who had paid money for a seat) and the area started taking on a rather festive atmosphere.

The concert itself went well. The first half was almost entirely music by members of the Strauss family (Johann Sr., Johann Jr., and the younger, lesser known brother, Joseph) and an arrangement of Happy Birthday in honour of the festival’s 30th anniversary (with two variations: one in the style of the Strauss boys, and one as a tango). After the intermission they played Hubby’s piece, followed by two more Strauss hits, ending with the Blue Danube (of course). I was talking with our friend the Serbian violist at lunch and she said that she was in dire danger of falling asleep during the waltzes as the viola parts were deadening.

Hubby’s piece went extremely well. He calls it The Great Wave and tips his hat to Debusy (La Mer) in the last movement. The first movement is evocative of a tsunami with a gradual buildup of musical sound that eventually washes over the audience. The people in the first three rows were warned that they might get wet. The second movement was inspired by his first foray into scuba diving last March and is extremely impressionistic, portraying underwater sounds and sensations. There’s one point where I felt as if I was looking up at the surface of the water above me and seeing the hull of a huge ship passing over.

The third movement is a scherzo describing dolphins playing in the waves (it doesn’t really, but the audience needed to hear something like that) and the fourth represents the grandeur of the sea. The whole piece is just under a half-hour and is very coherent as a whole. The musicians loved it, the audience reacted very favourably, and the festival big wigs were extremely enthusiastic. Hopefully the conductor will programme it again with the other orchestras he conducts. He himself said that it is a piece that deserves to be played often.

Afterwards we said goodbye to our friends and wandered into the town where we dined at a really nice restaurant called “Belle Excuse”. We had pasta (I could only eat about a third of mine, so I have lunch for tomorrow) and the boys had dessert, which the girls helped them eat (ricotta and mascarpone cheesecake for the BF and key lime pie for Hubby), and then we were on the road back to L’ville, arriving home just after 10:00 p.m.

All in all, a rather successful day. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go collapse.



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