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