Ian Crisp wrote:

>The cellist began with a broken hair dangling off his bow.  When he broke
>the string and had to go off to change it, he came back with the broken
>hair still there - strange that he didn't find a moment to tweak it off.
>At the end of the first movement there must have been twenty or thirty
>broken hairs dangling off each end of the bow - more than I think I've
>ever seen.  Cellists among us - is a new string harder on the bow than
>a well-used one? What - if anything - does all this tell us about the
>player's preparation or the state of his equipment or the way he plays?

That's more than I've ever seen too.  Though that concerto is tough on
bows.  Dare I say it sounds a bit like an afectation? Sort of like a
defiant lock of hair always dangling over the brow.  Silly not to break
it off whilst offstage fixing the string.

As for breaking a string that can happen to anyone anytime and actually
last summer playing the Shostakovich trio I anihillated (did I spell that
right?) an a-string in a particularly vicious pizzicato in the fourth
movement.  The thing comes slamming to a halt, people sort of chuckle, I
like breaking a string in a concert.  A new string is not hard on the bow,
the opposite, actually.

All those broken strings do indicate that he plays very strongly, perhaps
too strongly, perhaps also he has a technical hitch where the angle of his
bow changes slightly on big hard chords and makes the hairs go at a funny
angle, which would result in more broken hairs.  Must have looked like a
mop.

Sometimes when I break a hair during a rehearsal, if it breaks down near
the frog (where you hold it) it dangles off the tip like so much fishing
line and I cast out to the empty hall and pretend to reel in a big one.
Anything for a laugh in rehearsal.  Bows are also useful as portable
grenade launchers, you know, ka-thump and you've taken out an entire
out-of-tune-playing second-violin section.  I also like trying to balance
the bow on my fingertip while the fiddles do that passage one more time.

>The vox pop interviews afterwards suggested strongly that the cellist will
>win it.  The result isn't announced for another half hour or so.

The suspense is killing us here.

>Curiously, the BBC broadcast the performances on TV and on Radio 3 - but
>not simultaneously.  The TV was running approximately one concerto behind
>the radio.  As I was cooking dinner during the percussion concerto (fillet
>steaks, oven-roasted Mediterranean vegetables, stir-fried cardamon and
>lemon flavoured curly kale, baked potatoes and a madiera sauce)

YUM.

>...and moving between the kitchen (TV) and dining room (radio), I found
>this rather confusing (and suggestive of Charles Ives).

I heard the Ives piano trio in a concert last night.  Oddly, I kept
thinking of madiera sauce.

>I can't imagine why the BBC couldn't manage a simultaneous broadcast.

That is wierd.  It must have been a concious decision, which begs the
question,?porque?

>As predicted, the cellist won.

Yesssss!

>Watch out for the name: Guy Johnstone.

Just don't lend him your bow.

David Runnion
http://www.serafinotrio.com