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