Lesson with Di Xiao, recording with Tommy and chicken pox strings!

Hello!

It's been another eventful fortnight of not enough practise, not enough sleep and....a puncture for my ill-fated car! Due to computer issues I've not been able to upload my latest practise schedule 'marks out of ten' but I promise to give you a full report at the end of THIS week (not long now!) when I'll be heading off to Holland for some lessons with the wonderful Erika Waardenburg!

The first important thing to report is a brilliant lesson I had with Di Xiao (Didi), a wonderful musician who I met at one of my concerts last year. I am so blessed that Didi came to hear me, with her husband Adrian, and introduced herself to me afterwards. I thought she was lovely (which she is!!) but had no idea of her immense talent and world-class status until I checked out her website, ordered her debut CD and then played it from start to finish, without being able to switch it off for a second. Of course, she's also incredible live in concert, but I was particularly impressed that even on a CD recording her charisma, immaculate phrasing and crystal clear tone shone out with such vibrance, when so often a recording is a poor substitute for the real thing.

To cut a long story short, Didi agreed to give me a lesson and it was a total inspiration. After hearing me play Tommy's 'Shades of Grief' only once, and it being absolutely new to her, Didi got an instant impression of the shape of the work, pointing out structural markers and phrasing that I had missed after two years of studying the piece. Particularly valuable to me was Didi's advice on staying physically still at a very transfixing moment of the piece - very high on the harp an eerie but beautiful version of the lament sounds - a sort of lullaby with slightly sinister harmonies. I had been overcomplicating a simple, melodic line (typical of me, I'm ashamed to say) and Didi showed me I could express it more plainly and clearly to the audience through a simple delivery, with no physical gestures or making it over-emotional when Tommy's music alone was so perfect and beautiful. Didi politely and subtly suggested (she could never be overtly critical!!) that I was doing the musical equivalent of putting make-up on a baby's face; not enhancing, but in fact spoiling the delicate features.

I went away from my lesson with a real skip in my step and hundreds of new ideas for the music and with renewed enthusiasm for the recording session with Tommy that happened a few days ago at Eastcote studios in West London. Here's a photo of Tommy and I next to my harp and studio owner Phil's fabulous vintage ribbon mic!

 Other news fresh in.....

Caught my boyfriend completely of his own accord nailing my woodblocks together for the Crown of Ariadne. Thank you, Alex, amazingly intuitive of you to know that I needed that doing ;)

Poorly harp! Has my harp aquired the cordine strain of chicken pox? Or have I been marking the strings ready for whizzing up and down with the metal bit of a lovely Camac tuning key (having hacked the sensible rubber coating off it with a stanley knife!) to create the 'rocket' effect in Crown of Ariadne?

Like staring down the barrel of a gun. Ironically, how I still feel when I open the score....
Here's the afore-mentioned stripped Camac tuning key!

Sadly, I've spent too long already on the faulty PC and must go and chain myself to the harp for a few more minutes before tonight's steady flow of students begins.

Bye for now!

Ellie

Remembering inspiring concerts :)

I have just done a concert with Rowena Calvert , my cellist duo partner, and it was great to see some young faces in the audience. There were even a couple of harpists, one of whom even sent me a lovely email after the concert, which has prompted me to get on with another post....

There are many reasons for doing things, aren't there? I am often asking myself, at the moment, why I am yet again subjecting myself to the rigours of preparing for an international competition, whilst finding it very hard to make a living being a professional musician! There are so many great reasons but I'd like to share just three with you.

1. Learning about other cultures through music, with the competition as the incentive for doing the learning!
I am fascinated by our different cultures, attitudes towards music and what part it plays in our lives. To what extent does our classical music reflect our own society, our own personalities and our own passions? Within my Gaudeamus programme I am celebrating my own love of dance, theatre and Greek mythology (I used to be obsessed by my Myths and Legends book when I was about 12!), through Schafer's 'Crown of Ariadne'.

I am learning to understand some of the emotions experienced by Israelis throughout the awful uprooting and destroying effects of war, through Yinam Leef's 'Reminiscences of Tranquillity'.

Practising 'Tratti' by Ig Henneman is revealing to me some of the typical characteristics of Dutch classical music, presented in a very stark, obvious manner. I am learning to enjoy the solid-as-a-rock delivery of the striking rhythmic motives, the simple yet organic changes that Henneman masterfully crafts into the music  and the unemotional and sometimes ugly sounding patterns note patterns, or even just the blob-like notes that sound fat, round and heavy!
Somehow this music has its own honesty and the performer has to express that through an accurate, clinical rendering of the notes that are on the page...I suppose that sometimes, in life, the mundane events can amount to something meaningful and even beautiful over time.

2. The second great reason for doing this is that I get to learn more about myself and what music means for me; how it enables me to express things that I cannot express through any other means.
A great example of this is Thomas Hewitt Jones's 'Shades of Grief'. I will never forget the first time that I played it through after Tommy had emailed it to me. Despite stumbling through it stodgily, it was a momentous and really moving experience for me. The intensity of the chromaticism, the thickly woven threads of melody, countermelody and 'accompaniment' - far too intricate to be called accompaniment! - and the occassional sudden breaking through of lightness into the texture and the harmony...it touched me immediately upon playing it and working hard at it is still like therapy for me.
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 3. Inspiring other harpists (or other musicians) to carry on, to achieve great things and to play from the heart.
All I will say on this point is that when I was about 13 and on the Andover Harp Course (which used to be run by my teacher Daphne Boden and another harpist, Miriam Keogh - this course no longer exists, sadly!) Lucy Wakeford came to give a private recital for the harp students. The only piece that I remember specifically from the recital was Benjamin Britten's Suite for Harp, but her excellent and heartfelt interpretation of that piece alone was enough to inspire me for many more years. It is still a vivid memory and was a life-changing experience for me. It affirmed in my mind and my heart that the harp was a wonderful. powerful instrument that I really could fall in love with and use to touch other people in the way that Lucy's playing had touched me.

So, this week I shall be playing from my fingers and my feet....and my heart!

Thanks for reading!

Ellie

 

Malcolm Arnold Harp Fantasy

Last night, I 'discovered' the Malcolm Arnold Harp Fantasy!!!!
Thanks to a suggestion that annoyingly popped up when I ordered another piece of music on musicroom.com the other day (I think it was that site, anyway) I ended up ordering a piece that I didn't think I really wanted, but thought I should try......

And, lo and behold, it is the most wondrous piece and I heartily recommend it!
I am going to perform it for the first time during my recital on Ruth Faber's harp course for 14-18 year olds at Millfield School in Glastonbury. As soon as I got my fingers around the first set of chords (which, incidentally, were written for Osian Ellis and must have sounded fantastic under his fingers!) I was in love with the piece.

Arnold was born in Northampton, which is near where I live! Also, my excellent student Elizabeth Bass happens to live there and I cannot WAIT to hear what she thinks about this piece, too. It is beautifully written for the harp and composed so well, structurally, that it is really satisfying to play and listen to. I also love the 'March' section with the Shostakovichy staccato repeated chords.

I am not going to have Arnold's Fantasy too far from my music stand for a while :)

I also have the Prelude by Herbert Howells which is so beautiful, but really challenging, and what with the Britten Suite too....and my new piece by Tommy Hewitt Jones...

OUR BRITISH COMPOSERS ARE AWESOME!!!!

Ellie