Ashford Sinfonia

On this particular evening in front of a paying audience, I was playing in a youth orchestra in the Birmingham City Hall. The piece was the New World symphony by Dvorak, conducted by a flamboyant chap, tall and thin with floppy arms and hair – quite a sight when in full flow.

Seated next to me and doubling up my part was a student from the local music school. They did that to their students: expose new would-be professionals to challenges. A piece that he may not have played before, under a conductor also not seen before, and without coming to any of the rehearsals. “Learn the standard repertoire, learn to sight read, learn your trade!”. Dropped into the deep end without a life jacket. And no pay.

The New World has a passage that’s reaching towards a climax. The strings have the brunt of it, scrapping away as the tune moves lower in the register towards the cellos and bases, becoming more and more dramatic as the bars go by. Our conductor moved into overdrive. We two third horns raised our instruments as we counted the bars’ rest before our solo fanfare – one of the most well known horn fanfares in the entire repertoire. Perhaps that’s why the lad was parachuted in – a chance to ‘learn something’.

Well he did learn something but not what was expected. At the climax of the crescendo, the last note has a pause mark over the double bar line. The conductor flung his hands aloft and wiggled his fingers and hands to emphasis the dramatic pause. To a man the strings used up ten minutes worth of resin on their bows.

But it also had, in bold letters, the word ‘attaca’. A wonderful word for brass players meaning ‘don’t hang about – HIT IT’. Yup, you guessed it. The lad hit it – very well. He’d have been paid or hired out for another gig on the strength of it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the orchestra held their breath and stared at the conductor who maintained his wafting fingers as his eyes darted about trying to decide what to do next. When the fanfare reached its end, he counted out the bars in double or triple time and we all carried on as though nothing had happened.

I don’t think the audience noticed. He got away with that one.

David Worsley

As a music teacher I often get asked by students, “Sir, what music do you like best?”

This is a surprisingly hard question and it took me a while to come up with an answer I am happy with. You see, for young people musical taste is often about more than the music: it’s about identity, friendship groups, fashion, outlook on life and more. In this context the conclusions that my students might draw from my answer relate to more than just what music I like.

It’s not just young people who pigeon hole music either. I’ve come across many adult musical snobs who dismiss particular styles, instruments or composers. From a listening point of view I have no real problem with this but as a performer you can learn from every musical performance opportunity.

I’ve been privileged to have been involved in performing a wide variety of music and everything I do makes me a better musician. That could be having a go at a Beethoven piano concerto,  playing for a musical or simply accompanying a song I don’t know.

Recreating styles, learning new combinations of chords and melody, rhythmic nuances and different “feels”, playing different roles in a group, creating music through workshops or improvisation or slavishly sticking to the score –  all learning opportunities.  You never stop learning about music. So don’t be a musical snob. Embrace every piece, style and performance opportunity and use it all to make you a better musician.

And what music do I like best? I like good music.  And there are examples of good music in all  styles, genres and contexts.

Wes Carroll

I was 11 and in my first term at grammar school. It must have been very early in the term because I hadn’t yet made any friends. I’d been playing the violin for three years at primary school and was continuing with it at the new school – and I was generally interested in music although I knew very little about it. So when it was announced that the senior choir and orchestra were giving a concert I went. On my own.

A group of pretty talented, much older girls – they were all in the upper sixth – played the first movement of Bach’s Brandenburg concerto. (Bear with me and don’t ask the obvious question for a minute.) I loved it and was haunted by it for years but didn’t, in my youthful ignorance, realise that Bach wrote no fewer than six Brandenburg concerti. So it eluded me for a long time.

Fast forward six years. I was 17 and at the Festival Hall with a boyfriend listening to the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. He was in his first year at university and had got comps via the music club without which I doubt we could have afforded to be there in best stalls seats. The SCO played three of the Brandenburgs that night and one of them, to my great joy, was ‘mine’. It was the 5th Brandenburg which had stayed with me all those years to such an extent that I recognised it instantly. Quite a cathartic moment. And of course as soon I as knew what it was I bought a recording.

So what was it that got me when I first heard it? I think it’s the memorable recurrent central tune coupled with the way Bach weaves in the solos. There’s so much detail and so much tension as the music inches back again and again to the refrain. You can feel it palpably, especially in that wonderful long harpsichord solo, even when you’re only 11 and know nothing at all of music theory and have heard hardly anything. That movement still gets me in the guts every time I hear it. And I’m still finding ‘new’ things in it. If by any chance you don’t know it you can enjoy a rather nice version of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnjqGhAlFzs

And the moral of this story? Poetry, as TS Eliot observed, can communicate long before it is understood. So can music. And don’t underestimate what children can be moved and/or excited by.

Susan