In my last blog I had my little rant as a full time player in an orchestra about having to deal with being seated on a side where you are normally not seated which then feels like it’s the ‘wrong’ side. But what about when you play chamber music?? 🤷🏼♀️
At the moment of writing this the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra musicians are in full swing rehearsing about 30ish different chamber music pieces with various instrument combinations to be played over 10 concerts at the yearly Franschhoek Chamber Music Festival.
This year I am involved in 3 of the 10 concerts playing Mendelssohn’s Piano Sextet in D, op. 110, Mozart’s Gran Partita for 12 winds and one Double Bass and the final concert where we play Beethoven’s Triple Concerto and Mozart’s Symphony 29. So I go from 6 players to 13 players to 30odd players…
Now, where to sit… the never ending debate on where to put the bass… 🫣
If you look on the many recordings on YouTube with any chamber music with a bass in you will find it at various positions. Middle, right, in between the viola and cello, behind the viola and cello, left, outside… 🤨 no just kidding, but seriously… it’s a thing. No matter what we seem to take up too much space and even though all the musicians always ‘LOVE’ sitting close to the bass(es) we are also always inconveniently big.
When I play with strings I always just push myself in between the cello and viola. They will just have to deal with it (me) and most of my colleagues have not complained over the years. So the sextet was pretty straightforward and its lovely having Peter Martens on my left and Azra Isaacs on my right. 🫶🏻
For the Beethoven Triple Concerto it’s more a chamber orchestra and I’m hanging out with my trumpet and timpani buddies in the back corner on the right. Perfect!
But then there is the Gran Partita … with 12 winds … I would normally just sit in the middle between the bassoons and horns, but the stage in Franschhoek is very tiny so we needed to adjust. First try was horns on second row behind the oboes and bassoons on the left and bass on other side behind basset horns and clarinets…. so my normal right side. So perfect right … not so much. Being ‘stuck’ behind the basset horns I could not connect with the bassoons which proved to be a challenge and not ideal. Now what… 🤔
Ok, I go sit behind the bassoons next to the horns and see how that goes… better, but now the staging is weird with 4 people on the right side and 9 on the left … uhm horns 😌 … would you mind moving to behind the clarinets please???
My horn colleagues are lovely people and they happily moved to the other side and now I am sitting on the left side behind my bassoon colleagues and this time the left side is definitely the ‘right’ side.
Then we get to the final concert, the Beethoven Triple… 🫣 so many players, most are playing standing (so it’s a forest of strings and woodwinds in front of me…), obviously not enough space for the bass to be close to the celli or soloists or anything so I got stuck on a raiser, in the corner, next to the timps, far away, next to audience, having to use visuals (I was so far away that audio was delayed) which was challenging due to the forest in front of me. 😵💫 But I was sitting on the usual right hand side! So ja … 🤦🏼♀️ sometimes you just can’t win and just do ‘boer maak n plan’ (make a plan) and go with whatever … and deal with the frustration by having some amazing Le Lude MCC 🥂🍾 😃 who are the proud sponsors of the festival.
Next up is the yearly RMB Starlight Classics concert at Vergelegen Wine Estate where we get moved around from year to year too. Let’s see where we end up this year …
To be continued … 🙂
Roxane Steffen 