Rehearsal

Rehearsal for the Ong Teng Cheong concert, sept 11. Terrible, terrible. When i got into the music studio after Mr Lee finished with TO i sat down and started reading Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Then Leonard (i think that's the YMS guy's name) asked whether i was the pianist for Musicians Wrestle Everywhere (from now on it's called the cursed thing). jawdrop (a lot of people started laughing). mumbled some gibberish.

Well they started with some serenade. Weird piece. Some strings, cor anglais, bassoon and horn. oh yes and harp. Lots of cor anglais solo (but we didn't have a cor anglais today). i wasn't involved, so i was reading canterbury tales (heh i've finished the tale of the Wife of Bath and the Man of Law) while they rehearsed. heh even boring things suddenly become exciting when you listen to some music.

Then the cursed thing. was horrible. duple against triple rhythms. syncopation. doubling flute and cello. chords all over the place. RH 5 octaves apart from LH. Read through once - i didn't catch most of it. Rhythm is disgusting, impossible to keep counting. cursed thing lasted forever.

then more canterbury tales. heh was much more interesting than Open Strings. I am starting to love the canterbury tales. pity i don't have the middle english edition side by side with the modern translation. hmph tango was fine. except the standard bits. the weird rhythm against rhythm section drives me nuts. and the 3/8 is killing. otherwise it was almost there.

hrmph i hate chamber music with piano. now i understand why ike doesn't want to play for trout.