Rehearsing in Full

After a full day of strings-only rehearsals, the orchestra was joined Wednesday evening by its three reed players. Lucky for me, I managed to arrive to listen to the tail-end of the final rehearsal and meet the group as they headed out for a picnic by a picturesque lake not far from town. Though the distance between the Trifolion and our destination was not, as we discovered on the return journey, very far, the gang's team-building exercise in geography (map and compass frequently changing hands) may have extended the trip enough to warrant a leap at the food and drink upon arrival.

As I write the strings are rehearsing a piece by Sammartini before they welcome the winds to the second half of the afternoon rehearsal block. This morning saw us working on an interesting suite by Johann Heinrich Roman, a Swede, called Golovinmusiken. Apparently the work was composed for a concert sponsored by the then-Russian ambassador to Stockholm, a Mr. Golovin. Quite the story.

Already you can hear the group beginning to gel and there is still plenty of rehearsal time ahead of us - eight days, in fact. Still, there's plenty of good work to do, too.