What an entrance!
That is going to take some beating - plus a challenge to all young harp duos out there to think of a better way of getting on stage without going to the extreme of Lady GaGa and arriving on stage carried in an egg :-)
Identical twins Camille and Kennerly Diebold, playing All I Ask of You from Phantom of the Opera
Check out the 1927 Wurlitzer pipe organ playing approx 2:50 in.....
I've recently had another go at doing the 16 exercices journaliers pour harpe by Marie-Claire Jamet as a technical warm up each morning instead of my usual round of Salzedo exercises, and have been doing these now for several months.
I had an aborted attempt at these last year but gave up doing them when I started to get a sore wrist and shooting pains up my arm, something which I have never suffered from before and quite frankly it frightened the life out of me.
This time, I've left out doing all of the series 2 exercises in the book, and hurrah, no pains in the arms, but a satisfying warm-up work out for the fingers.
Funnily enough, I had a chat to a harpist friend about this book of exercises and she told me that she had to stop doing them because they gave her terrible RSI....
So it's not just me.
These are great warm up exercises for the advanced player. But I would recommend skipping series 2 when working through the book and coming back to them at the end when you are seriously warmed up.
quick info about Marie Claire Jamet
quick info about Pierre Jamet
Back this morning from a tour with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra playing Tchaikovsky Manfred Symphony - 7 concerts in 7 different European cities in 8 days..... including travelling days to and from the UK!
We had a few spare hours in Paris so managed to fit in a visit to the wonderful harp shop near the Arc de Triomphe, Le Magasin de la Harpe.
Yet again, Alexandre Budin very generously gave up his time to show us the amazing historic harps he has in his workshop, a few doors down from his shop. Erards in the front of the photo below, and Pleyel chromatic harp at the back/middle.
And what a great collection of harp music he has to browse through!
He also showed us a couple of Sylvain Blassel's harps which are kept downstairs. His small Erat harp is absolutely stunning to look at and has the most amazing tone.
Here is a video of Sylvain playing Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Tarrega on the Erat.
Check out his fingering of the repeated notes throughout, also his use of the little finger in the left hand. Very interesting!!!
I'm going to see if I can work out using this fingering and whether I can actually use my left hand pinky on my Salvis. I fear the tension on the Salvi will be too much for my little fingers alas!
It's very easy to just repeat what we have been taught and say that we don't play using our little fingers, but as Alexandre said, "why not?"
why not indeed.
Japanese style Erard harp - only around 7 ever built!
Holy cow - a whole new world of neurosis for harpists!
47 + 47 strings，double-row strings with pedals
Height: 222 cm
Width: 110 cm
Weight: 53 kgs
Joy Yu Hoffman performing her arrangement of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" on the Kong Hou (Chinese Harp).
So, I was playing in a concert with a chamber orchestra tonight and we had just played the Clarinet Concerto by Copland (great piece, loads of harp throughout) and I'm on stage during the interval giving the harp a quick re-tune before the second half starts.
This lady from the audience comes over to the side of the stage and doesn't appear to be visually impaired or drunk.
In all seriousness she calls me over to ask me....
"I've never seen one of those with a projection box on the back before.....
(me - ¿Qué? )
do they all have that?
(me - ¿Qué? )
I had to come over and ask you because I was curious......
do you use your hands to play?
?????
(wait it gets better)
because i can see you were playing with your feet"
?????
Wow - what an amazing harpist and singer!
Not being really up on the early music scene I hadn't come across her before, but stumbled across a video of her on YouTube.
I've recently bought her album Peiwoh from iTunes and it's been played non-stop since in our house.
Arianna is a fascinating musician, being an acclaimed early music opera singer as well as harpist and has an impressive back catalogue of CDs of early music both as a harpist and separately as singer.
However her latest CDs seem to be of her own compositions played with her band, with Arianna playing triple harp, gothic harp and celtic harps as well as singing. The rest of her band are playing various early and folk string instruments (not sure what they are because of the language on the website!) and also hand percussion.
The result is a very tasteful and sublime world music album which gets the thumbs up from everyone in my household - which is quite a feat as we all have very diverse tastes!
Very difficult to pick a favourite track, possibly Aurora as it's a harp only track. Suite Celtic has a more traditional vibe and shows the musical excellence of all the musicians. A "chill out" track with a very wide appeal is El Llenguatge dels ocells. Although every track on this CD is fantastic.
No UK dates in her concert schedule which is a shame, as I would love to see her live.
picks or nails?
Started the rehearsals on nails, Petrenko then wanted picks, and on the final rehearsal on the day of the concert wanted nails.
I completely underestimated the time needed to grow my nails for this gig, and to be honest just didn't think about this piece coming up in the diary and just kept them usual short length.
Arghgh!! They were just too short at the start of the week.
So ended up having to get some false gel nails put on so that the nails were long enough to play with. My nails are very short and are slow to grow!
Only lost 3 false nails during the week which was quite a bizarre sight as they flew off as I was playing during rehearsals.
note to self - don't cut nails before Mahler 6 again.
BTW - In case you are wondering - they are definitely not my nails above. Can you imagine trying to do anything with those nails?
