Today I write about the most important people in a (string) player’s life…the desk partner!
The reason why I write about this this week is that one of my favourite desk partners, of the 40+ years that I’ve had desk partners, came to visit in Cape Town and conducted the Philharmonic for the last 2 weeks. Maestro Conrad van Alphen (yes, he was once a bass player) and myself spend 2 months on the same desk playing the 6hr long Wagner opera Siegfried with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in 1998. We had the best time and a long lasting friendship was cemented right there. No issues with page turning, markings and stand heights and we dig into our strings the same way so playing with him next to me was a breeze! Yes, now he’s the ‘big maestro’… but for me he will remain my desk buddy 😉
To have the right desk partner is vital for our job. Some weeks you spend more time with them than your actual partner at home so being able to get along and communicate is key. Desk partners come in many shapes and sorts and not always pleasant unfortunately. I myself had to deal with poor page turners (always too late or too early 🙈), super grumpy ones or the ones that insist they are right and you are wrong and keep on purposefully not playing with you, or even worse … the ones that don’t even notice 🙄
And then you have the gems that you just gel with, who inspire, are happy to negotiate, buy you coffee in the break when you (as principal) have stuff to organise with other sections (read: have lengthy discussion with the celli about 1 bow change 😆). And I’ve been lucky to have 90% of those! While I was working with the Randstedelijk Begeleidings Orkest (Jules Kirch) during my study years, at the Nederlands Ballet Orkest (all of the colleagues then) and more recently with my current section (Donat Pellei and Zanelle Britz) I’ve had the pleasure of working with beautiful, friendly and inspiring people. And over the years I have learned to set a no-bullshit-policy in my section … no grumpy, negative and moaning vibes. You can either change your attitude or not come back! 🧐 🙂
During my studies already I had the opportunity to play with the Rotterdam Philharmonic regularly and two players were my favourite desk partners and deserve a special mention: Ton Doomernik and Osamu Yamamoto! Two legends who I learned so much from. They had such experience and played so solid. With Ton you would always discuss the soccer on Monday morning and Osamu never said much, but was always smiling like a smiling budda behind his gigantic 5 string bass. When asked why, after being in the orchestra for so long already, he just smiled more and say: ‘it’s the best job, how can I not smile!’.
I decided back then and there that I would be that player too, when I’m close to retirement, still always smiling when I’m behind my bass! At the moment I’m known as the smiling bass player by many conductors so I’m doing well I think 😊
To be continued … 🙂
Roxane Steffen 