Soap operas and faux pas

I write this sitting in my hotel room, which as I have mentioned before is basic but has air conditioning. I am grateful for this as I have promised not to buy shorts on this trip and it is once again hot outside. I did a brief rehearsal of the finale of Sibelius 2 this morning and I will conduct it at the concert this evening, the rehearsal went well and I am relaxed about the concert.

The master course is nearly over and what I would really like to do is to describe the final few days in the most dramatic fashion possible, allowing free reign to English language’s propensity for exaggeration and hyperbole. I could write that one conductor was on the point of refusing to work with the orchestra, that the orchestra were on the point of refusing to work with a conductor, that Maestro had gone missing for an hour an no-one could find him and that a colleague and friend had been taken very ill for a while and we were on the point of calling a doctor. But of course no-one would believe me. This is nerd’s convention, we all sit around discussing our down beats, on occasions we seek some light relief but discussing our up beats. Nothing so exciting could ever happen on such a course. Hmmm....

So instead I shall tell you (remind you might be better) of my continuing ability to open my mouth and put my foot in it, as deeply as possible. One of the conductors told us in the first week that a friend of his would be arriving to take some photos of him at the master class. She was a student at the university in Berlin and was studying film; she designed websites to get by. When she arrived she asked if she could take photos of me and I agreed, I hate having my photo taken but it is necessary to have good photos of oneself conducting and a few more would not go amiss. We got chatting and I mentioned this blog amongst other things. We met a few days later and greatly to my surprise she said that she had read the blog and enjoyed my story about the Turkey Sandwich (see below). I was of course delighted and very flattered and since then we have had a good chat every time we meet.

She showed me some of the photos she had taken of me during a rehearsal; I was very pleased with several which showed me not looking too ridiculous, perhaps even a bit artistic. My favourite was one where I am making some dramatic gesture with my right hand, which is holding my baton, while my left hand is brought up and back and looks as though it is just about to pluck out my eye.

After today’s rehearsal I went once again to the restaurant next door to have lunch, I had had a short discussion with Panula and he seem satisfied with what I was doing, some of the others were discussing matters but I had nothing more to say so left the group. In the restaurant I saw the conductor and his photographer friend and went to join them. I ordered the cat-fish from the river and we got chatting again. She had heard that I have four daughters and was asking after them so I gave my usual laconic description of each (sorry kids!). I was a bit surprised when she said that she had a daughter, I don’t suppose that I should have been, it’s not that unusual for students to have children these days. My standard reply when caught like this is to say “You’re not old enough to have children!” which usually goes down quite well. “Ah, you might be a bit shocked to find out my daughter’s age then” she said. OK, so the child might be five or six I thought. “She is twenty”.

It does take a while to extract one’s foot when it is THAT deep in one’s mouth.