Recital day

"You ought to play this again next year."
Two people said this to me after the noontime recital today: the Symphonie Romane of Widor (see here).
My reply: "Talk to me about it this winter."

Were I to respond today, it would be "No. Absolutely not." I do not know if I will return to that church to play, ever. Getting bumped from a scheduled rehearsal time last Thursday was hard (the resident church organist decided that he wanted the practice time for Easter Sunday, which is his perogative). Getting bumped from my warmup this morning, scheduled with the secretary a month ago, was harder still -- a university student took precedence, preparing for her recital in about three weeks. I suspect that the secretary had scheduled her as well as me, and she got there first this morning. After walking across town to the church and learning this from the secretary, I almost slammed the office door in her face. The organ became available at 10:00, but the organ tuner was in at 10:30 to touch things up (I knew of this; he called me at home last night, awakening me from a sound sleep). All told, I had about an hour, not enough to work quite all the way through the piece, and leaving me well short of comfortable about it.

It is a busy instrument. I am not at all sure I want to deal with the hassle again.

But these events were the real Test of the day for me, not the playing itself. How would I respond on the day of a recital when things do not go my way? Add "sleep-deprived" (from last week) and "over-stressed" (ditto) to the mix. I suppose my response of Walking Away is better than it could have been -- better than shouting at the secretary or throwing things in the church office, for example.

It is a Reminder of my ministry in this parish to visiting musicians: I try to smooth the way for them on Concert Day. I must remember this day the next time one of them seems overly demanding. Or when something comes up for which there is no remedy. The worst example of this for me as a concert host was a couple of years ago during the summer Chamber Music Festival. The pianist and violinist had a group of short pieces by Anton Webern, delicate atmospheric pieces, lots of little evanescent pianissimo gestures -- and the city had scheduled one of their summer outdoor concerts in the parking ramp in the next block, a heavy metal group. I walked over and asked the musicians between songs if they could tone it down a little, knowing full well that ear-splitting volume is a crucial ingredient for their genre. They were sympathetic to fellow musicians and did indeed turn it down a bit, but it was still horrible. Those poor musicians (the pianist and violinist)! They had worked hard on these intense little pieces, and their performance could barely be heard over the racket.

But so it goes. One can only make the best music possible given the circumstances. I did the best I could today with the Widor, and commit it to the Lord. Most of it did go well; additional warmup today probably would not have helped much, after all. Several people whose musical judgement I trust said it was good.

I am so tired.
Not perhaps quite as much as I was Sunday evening; I have had two good nights of sleep since then. But it is going to take more than that. Tomorrow is for me a Sabbath, the first proper Day of Rest (Lord willing!) in a fortnight. I will hopefully sleep late, then go to bed about 5 pm (and hope the phone doesn't ring; after being castigated by my wife, who in turn was castigated by her mother, I am no longer permitted to unplug the phone at bedtime). Some exercise would help too; I have hardly done any of that in the last fortnight. Pilates, weightlifting, a good long walk.

I have not described the preparation of this recital, because I did so a couple of years ago (Here is the final essay of that series). On that recital day, I wrote that "the Satanic temptation is: You must be perfect. The Gospel grace is: You shall be perfect. But not yet."