To Bulgaria, again!

After a more or less sleepless night the alarm went off at 3:30am and the wife and I set off for Gatwick just gone 4. No mad taxi-drivers skipping roundabouts with cement mixers this time, just me at the wheel of the Prius pootling along gently to the North Terminal. Difficult-Jet must have known that I had paid for Speedy Check in and Boarding as the queues for standard check in were a mere fraction of what they were in June. Even so, I don’t regret paying the extra for a moment, check in taking 5 minutes or so and leaving plenty of time for the cavity checks from Security and a latte and Apricot Danish from a restaurant.

The flight was on time and uneventful, I was met at Sofia by one of the same organizers who ran the competition in Bourgas and greeted as a long lost friend, a bit later by a couple more people in the same fashion. The Bulgarians are very friendly albeit that a degree of curiosity about their country helps to grease the conversation. After a quick coffee and half an hour animatedly discussing how to load the car with €20k of recording kit we set off for the local restaurant for lunch. This not being an establishment in the touristy part of Sofia (which certainly has some fine buildings that I would like to look at more closely) the menu was all in the Cyrillic alphabet and therefore completely unintelligible. I was asked if I liked salad, garlic bread and chicken, I reluctantly admitted a partiality to all these so lunch was ordered. When it arrived I was shocked and stunned to find that I was the only one eating! The others were just having coffee! I overcame my embarrassment and enjoyed my lunch (no surprise there then).

On to the airport to pickup an Argentinian conductor who was arriving on Al Italia from Rome. He expressed no surprise and little frustration that the airline had lost his bag. He entertained us with stories of how the Italian cabin crew behaved on the flight (very badly) and though of Italian descent himself, how amusing he found the stereotypical Italian behaviour. The four of us, two Bulgarians, the Argentinian and myself had a wide ranging discussion in the four hour car journey to Ruse. We covered recent Bulgarian history, how people in general are nostalgic for the Communist era and disillusioned with democracy, the Falklands (sorry Malvinas!) war, and the origin of the English word posh. The Argentinian and I also had some interesting technical discussions on conducting, he is here for Mahler 2 which he has memorized, a substantial achievement! I was pleased to find that he admires Sibelius 7 as a feat of composition as much as I do. He has recently got married, and following the master-class will be going on his honeymoon. He has married a soprano and enjoyed my favourite soprano joke although I did have to explain it. How many sopranos does it take to screw in a light bulb - only one, but there will be twenty others demanding to know why they were not asked. I assure you that if you deal with singers of classical music this is hysterical.

Eventually on to Ruse and the hotel, which is fine. I had the usual battles trying to attach to the hotel Wi-Fi, it worked eventually but I have no idea what I did to finally persuade it to attach. Patience is often the key virtue with computers. I then spent some time watching the DVD of my conducting in Burgas, more on that subject later.

Master Class

With the competition in Bulgaria now fading into long-term memory I am looking forward to my next project which is once again in Bulgaria. I am attending a master-class with the famous conducting guru Jorma Panula, there is a Wikipedia article about him here

Details of the course are here, scroll down a bit once the page has loaded.

The master-class takes place in Ruse, which I am told has a good orchestra. We are covering two Mahler Symphonies, 2 & 3, his Ruckert Lieder and Kindertotenlieder, with Sibelius Symphonies 2 & 7. Of these works the only ones that I have not conducted before are Mahler 3 and the Ruckert Lieder, the former is a massive piece, 90 minutes long! The Ruckert Lieder are delightful miniatures, only one having heavy brass.

I have to admit that Mahler’s Symphonies don’t feel as natural to me as they once did, and I am struggling to get back into these works and to learn them. I have done Kindertotenlieder many times over recent years, in different formats and venues but always with the wonderful Nina Alupii-Morton as soloist. Nina has such a wonderful voice, and such a feeling for a line that she has been a great joy to work with on these songs. It will be a wrench to do them with someone else, though it will be fascinating too.

These days it is the Sibelius Symphonies that command my attention. Over recent months I have been studying them and different recordings of them in some detail. Of all of them the one I feel closest to is No. 4, the darkest and most bleak. I find it very passionate and emotional, the finale’s catastrophic collapse one of the most powerful statements in music. Unfortunately I have never conducted it; one day, when I am ready, I would love to. The Sibelius Symphony I most admire technically is No. 7 which I have conducted before. As a work of composition it embodies everything that Sibelius does, particularly the way themes, motifs and tempi emerge and merge with and from one another. I am looking forward to working on it with Panula, and to hearing what he has to say about it.

Perhaps this course will re-engage me with the Mahler Symphonies, they are certainly great masterpieces, but currently they do not touch me in the say way as Sibelius does. There is plenty to be learnt about conducting from them, I am looking forward to working with Panula!

More final words on the Competition

I promise this will be my last post on the subject! The two conductors that I particularly admired in the competition, and who both got through to the second round, did not win prizes. One got through to the final and the other did not.

What does this mean? Well, the jury were looking for things in Opera conducting that I was not, and I am looking for things that they were not. I have no complaints about this, there are plenty of different styles and techniques around. I'm always open to suggestion and we should all always strive to learn and improve.

Lulu at Covent Garden tonight, I have never seen it before and don't know it well. Something else new to learn!

Final Words on the Competition

I'm back in the UK, and have been for a couple of days. Before I travelled to Bulgaria I was telling the wife, family and friends that I was not expecting to progress to the second round of the competition, and this turned out to be the case.

Am I disappointed? Well, in fact I am. Some entrants to the competition were standing in front of an opera orchestra and singers for the first time, others were very experienced. I watched almost everyone conduct and I thought that I had a reasonable chance of getting through.

Some of the conductors were excellent, and I felt should progress to the final. I have noted their names but I don't think it would be sensible to publish them here. Two I admired very much, they had clear technique, cued the singers, led and responded well.

I will be interested to see the results, if the conductors I admired didn't get through it would suggest that the panel have different ideas on how to conduct opera from mine. I shall then have something interesting to think about!

First Round Result

Sadly I have not been selected to go through to the second round.

Thanks to all for your support and encouragement, it has been much appreciated.

Final thoughts on the first round.

Today is the last day of the first round, and the only day when all 10 of the conducting slots are taken. The competition was open to 60 conductors and for one reason or another only 52 have turned up. You will know if you have read the posts below that there could have been only 51.

I have been able to watch most of my fellow competitors doing their rehearsal of Cav, I intend to treck into Bourgas (the hotel is 18km from the theatre) to watch the last session today. I am not going to make comments on this blog about named individuals, but I will about the general standard. It has been very mixed, with some people who are very inexperienced simply not knowing what to do nor how to do it. The experience will be quite a shock to them and they will go away chastened and realising that they have a lot to learn about conducting opera. It's a very different game from the symphony orchestra. A handful of people have been very good, and one in particular exceptionally good. He had everything, clarity, musicianship, excellent technique for cueing the singers and shaping the phrases of the band, with good accompanying skills and control. He was a joy to watch.

How do I think I have faired in all this? I really do not know, and I am not thinking about it. As I have mentioned before we have no idea of what the judges are looking for and it is entirely possible that they are looking for something that I did not give them. I came out here for the experience and to give myself the chance of getting noticed. I have enjoyed the experience and the challenge, if I am not noticed then so be it.

The Wife!

Followers of this blog will be pleased to hear that the wife and daughters Nos 1 & 2 are now safely home in England.