What I can never understand about reeds is that they can be so temperamental. The recital programme was as follows:
Concerto in D, Op. 7 Nr. 6
Allegro
Adagio
Allegro
Tommaso Albinoni
Concerto no. 1 in D minor
1st movement – Allegro
Ludwig August Lebrun
Sonate (1938),
1st Movement – Munter
Paul Hindemith
Sarabande et Allegro
Gabriel Grovlez
There I was, having two reeds (duck-reed and dark-reed) and alternating them for the pieces. I used duck-reed for Albinoni and Hindemith, and dark-reed for Lebrun and Grovlez. After playing Albinoni, when I walked backstage to have water/swab oboe/change reed, the dark reed I was using for Lebrun went exceptionally flat. That happened for all the pieces.
Halfway through Lebrun and my throat was giving way, and the lymph node infection was causing my throat to get tired and not function properly (to all oboists: has this happened to you before?). The rest of the recital was a disaster. After Hindemith, water got into the C key, and all my Cs sounded out as Bs for the whole of Grovlez. Gaaah. Walked off stage as dignified as I could, then broke down in tears backstage. To practice, prepare and wait so long for this recital to come and then put on a terrible concert for all my friends really sucks big time. I’m so not going to do a solo recital ever again.
Excerpts exam after the recital was no better – Elaine first tested the Tchaikovsky 4th, and then the Bizet Scherzo. Just when I thought she was finished, she said, “Could you please play the Le Tombeau de Couperin by Ravel?”. YIKES.
On a lighter note, thanks Colin and Shufeng for cabbing all the way from Bukit Panjang; Rachel and Yibin from rushing down from NUS; Liangyou, Jeremy, Dax and teacher for attending the recital 🙂
Dinner at Shaw Towers with Colin, Cosine (Colin’s wifey-to-be), Reuben and Shufeng was enjoyable. Some thingss just don’t change, and I guess the friendship between us is one of them.
Shufeng, thanks for the lovely flowers, the beautiful hand-made card and freeing up the whole evening to date me. We’re sticking together, no matter what 🙂
Julia, thanks for practicing hours just to learn the difficult accompaniment parts, I’m glad we got through this together.
Sofi, you’re the best page-turner (and Deutsch-class buddy) ever! Vielen Dank! 😀
Reuben, thanks for being there for me and not buying me flowers 😉