More from the symphony camp

Today with second clarinet, yay! Our combined clarinet sound is making BIG difference! And everybody knows that the more clarinet the better! She gave me a new trick with folded plaster on the teeth so not to damage the lower lip too much - my usual cigarette paper is ok but too thin when we're playing so much. She's a teacher at ESNCM, like 14 others in the orchestra, and then we're some other Western people "doping" the otherwise Palestinian orchestra. But classical music is Western, and not many Arabs enjoy it (though I know some Danes who also dislike it), and even fewer play it. But we're some (Western) people who really enjoy to play in a big orchestra!

Our conductor is also from outside Palestine, as far as I understand Colombian living and teaching in Switzerland. I think he's great, so tense and alive and seeing everybody in the orchestra, which makes everybody more alert on what he is trying to make us play.

Rehersing the Piano Concerto.

We played (click on the title to hear the music on youtube):
- Mozart's Overture to Don Giovanni. This was the one I looked most forward to playing, but Dvorak's Czech Suite, especially the Finale, ended up as my favorite after the weekend.
- first movement from his Piano Concerto no. 29 k.466. No clarinet part in this one, but with a talented 15-years old Palestinian girl at the piano.
- Sibelius' Valse Triste - also used as conducting exam piece for the Palestinian basoon player for her studies in France. Lots of cameras recording her and the orchestra. And then I realised that one of them was from MBC (tv-station), so we might have been on Arabic television.
- Dvorak's Czech Suite op.39, Pastorale, Sousedska, Romance, Finale (link til hver). I looked most forward to play Mozart, but it's Dvorak's Finale I'm singing now.