where art collides

This has been a wonderful winter. I can’t remember when we last had such a sustained period of cold weather. The snow is now falling and this time it looks as if we might get a reasonable dump of it rather than the light scattering that normally comes and goes within a few hours. Ironically the kids are off sledging at Xscape which is an indoor ski slope.

The sky feels as if it is closing in on us though it isn’t getting darker. Occasionally I see someone walking along the pavement the other side of the hedge in the front garden. Give it a couple more hours and there will be hardly anyone. Also cars are still going past.

Sat here in front of the fire I’m facing a near perfect Sunday afternoon.  Anne is doing some baking in the kitchen and in a short while I’ll be cooking a Delia Smith’s recipe chille con carne. Pretty much the same as most other chilles I imagine.

This weather provides an absolutely perfect excuse to sit down and write. To some amongst us tapping away at the PC probably constitutes idleness but they have to believe this is not the case. In fact it is absolutely essential to have uninterrupted time at it.

This the weather you always deam about that gets you stranded in a pub or a country hotel.  Unable to make it home for a whole week, running up a huge bar tab and dreading the moment that the snowplough makes it through to announce that the road is now clear!

The snow has stopped now but it will be back. It strikes me that my recent posts, be they prose or poetry, have very much had a wintery theme. If not winter certainly an element of bleakness. It will be interesting to see how this changes as the year progresses. I’m not naturally a person with a negative outlook.

It’s always an interesting moment seeing the CPO programme list for the next year.There will always be some pieces I like balanced by some I’d rather not have to bother with.This year was no different, and scanning the e-mail I took an involuntarily sharp intake of breath when I saw ‘Tchaikovsky Symphony #5’. What a treat – fantastic.I won’t say which pieces prompted a groan!

Tchaikovsky symphonies are packed full of delights and challenges for your average first violinist (and I am a very average first violinist).  Lovely tunes, fast passages, grunty bits for effect, subtleties that need a great deal of skill and refinement, and sections which, quite frankly, it doesn’t matter what you play because you’re being drowned out by the brass anyway.  They like doing that.

Sitting waiting to start playing there won’t be much going through my mind, but the sense of anticipation will be powerful, boosted by doubts about all the personal little tricky corners which, in rehearsals, I haven’t quite managed to get to the bottom of.  At least this time we don’t play at the start – I can sit and compose myself a bit more until we join in with the rest of the strings.

Once we get going the audience fades from my consciousness, and it’s just the music.  It sounds clichéd but it’s true.  There is so much to concentrate on that awareness of anything else would be wasteful.  Am I playing exactly with everyone else ?  Are the notes right ?  Am I counting the rests properly?  Will I get that high note right this time?  Am I playing loudly enough – am I playing too loudly? Is my bow going in the right direction?   And they’re just the basic technical details.  Am I managing to deliver what passes for music, let alone Michael’s interpretation of it?  That’s the key question, and the one that time after time, brings us all back for more.

We move through the music, pumping adrenalin just as much in the really quiet bits as in the loud fast sections.  We get to relax and swing with the tunes.  Some sections are more difficult than others and need more focus and wide-eyed, unblinking concentration.  My favourite part ?  The horn solo in the second movement.  From my vantage point in a large section of violins I always think it must be a high-pressure moment for the horn player, and am silently urging him to relax, do his best, and enjoy it.

After all the false summits of the last movement, and past the bit where the brass drowns out the strings, we reach the end flourish.  The baton stops.  A short pause.  Then, we hope, the applause.  The audience’s appreciation is the icing on the cake.  If you’ve enjoyed it half as much as me, you’ll have had a great evening.

The colours at this time of year are wonderfully dark. All variations of black and brown with only the occasional frosty white for a fringe. There is a wan green but it’s limp lack of chlorophyll offers a pitifully muddy contrast with it’s richness at the height of spring. Moreover this insipid, underexposed carpet is only really seen on the verges of roads and in the occasional  pasture, empty of cows.

Green isn’t thought of as a glorious colour but when it is almost absent it doesn’t seem an unreasonable description, thinking back, or ahead to more productive times. The evergreens are dark enough in shadows cast by the low January sun to be almost black.

Normally this is a depressing time but this year the coldness has provided a surprising boost to the system. We rarely see proper winters. Winters with killing temperatures that punish the unwary, the unprepared, the weak. Winters of tradition. There has been little snow but the flat land of the East rarely attracts it.  As usual there is plenty of wind and this year it feels as if the full force of the Siberian Winter has been blowing our way. 

Interestingly there don’t seem to be many takers for the birdseed in the garden. I suppose hibernation must be in full swing, or the birds have already died. My friend the robin is absent. I hope he makes it through the far side. Even the blackbirds, normally reliable, seem to have disappeared. Time will tell. Spring has a way of fixing things.

The beauty of a long hard winter is the contrast it provides with spring when it finally arrives. This year I am not in a hurry. I am content with having to sit in in front of the fire, or to wrap up well when going out. Sunday afternoons spent in the kitchen, spicy vegetable soup with rustic brown bread and butter, crumpets, ginger cake and tea. Then a roast dinner in the evening before settling in for the night.