Tag Archives: Folies d’Espagne

Day 16 – October 16th – That was better!

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Hopefully today marks a mini-turning point in my time here at the flute studio. I know it’s only been two weeks so far, but I haven’t felt like I’ve fitted in as easily as I would have liked – mostly because Trevor and I don’t see eye-to-eye on a few things.

Anyway, in today’s class I tried to go all out and play in what I would consider a rather over-the-top fashion, and it worked! Apart from the odd comment or two (and that’s really nothing as far as Trevor goes) the whole day of classes went by really positively. My Sicilienne, which was as dynamically contrasting as I felt I could play, with every note beautifully finished, was pronounced “much better than last week”, and despite a “funny Australian G natural” in my rendition of the Brahms 4 flute solo, it was also passed with far fewer painful comments than normal. The most important thing in that solo, according to Trevor, are not the note endings, but playing the high D natural at the beginning (3/4 section) in tune, and then just keeping the whole thing in time.

After having a collective stress-out about the Marais Folies d’Espagne, the whole class breathed a sigh of relief when Trevor pronounced that we just needed to perform the theme and three or four variations. Rather than preaching a set method of interpreting the variations, he wanted instead to hear that we’d worked on them, thought about them, and come to our own musical decisions. Though I was one again projecting my dynamics rather more than felt natural, it seemed that my musical decisions were at least sound ones.

There was a collective feeling among us that we needed a bit of a break this evening, and so we had a bit of a cooking party with wine, pasta and salad. I made crepes and stewed pears for dessert, and was rather happy with the result!

Day 14 – October 14th – Variations

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After yesterday’s rather dismal outlook, I had a much more positive day today. A couple of the reasons were non-flute-related: I Skyped with some lovely friends in Australia this morning, the studio group had our weekly outing to Tesco, and I made a hot and yummy broccoli soup for dinner! All these things gave me the energy to do a fair slog of practice, and now my lips are a bit dead again.

Of particular note was that our repertoire for the week is Marin Marais’s Les Folies d’Espagne. I have a funny relationship with this piece. Despite being a bit of a new music fan in recent years, this is one of my all-time favourite flute pieces, or at least the E minor solo one is! I was a bit shocked to pick up the score for class and find that it was in G minor instead, but have actually found that my fingers got round the new key relatively easily (there are just a few mordants and trills that come a bit more easily in E min0r). There are also a couple of different variations between the E and G minor versions, which I’ve needed to have a think about.

In re-visiting the work, I’ve realised that I love it for precisely the reason that it’s so hard; a really wonderful performance holds my attention through all 31 variations, despite the fact that the harmony doesn’t change. I’ve got a wonderful recording of Jordi Savall and Baroque ensemble playing the whole set (exactly the one I’m now doing, interestingly enough), and the energy that they inject into the music is fantastic. Every variation makes me feel like dancing, yet in a different way each time. While they can achieve a lot more variety of timbre through the different instruments, my challenge is to play with the same energy and vitality across all the variations.

With Roya and Chin Ting also practising the same piece today, there has been an awful lot of G minor!

Tomorrow we’re heading up to London again, this time to hear Wibb give a masterclass. It’ll be a long day, but I’m looking forward to it.

Day 10 – October 10th – Whist

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A short one tonight, as I’ve just got back from a night out at the monthly village whist drive. I did’t expect it to go quite so long, but it’s a full evening’s worth. For two pounds entry, one gets to play 24 hands of whist, against some seriously seasoned village players, as well as supper after the 12th hand. I’m not a total newcomer to the game – my grandad taught me how to play when I was about five – and somehow managed to get enough good hands to come equal fourth. My prize: a massive rhubarb crumble scented candle! My room is going to smell wonderful.

Between whist in the evening and my run (compete with surprise downpour) in the morning, I got in a good solid five hours of practice. Four of them were spent on exercises and scales, they’re endless! I can feel all the muscles in my fingers afterwards though, so hopefully the practice is working. The final hour was mostly spent playing some of the Moyse 24 as expressively as I possibly could in preparation for Monday.

Oh, and I thought I was going to have it easy with repertoire this week, as I’ve played the Marais Folies d’Espagne before. Alas, I’ve played the unaccompanied version, which is in E minor, and we’re doing the other one in G minor. Most of the variations are the same, but my ease of playing the trills has gone out the window. Probably a good job it’s due to rain on the weekend!