Clavichord concert

Hi Judy,

Just wondered how the concert went on Sunday.

Robert

Hi Robert, Thanks for asking.

There was an audience of about 35, which is a very full house in
this particular venue. A nice mix opf people from various sorts of
backgrounds, including both a member of this list with a doctorate
in composition and an 80-year-old lady who worked in textile mills
her whole working life, who is now making bobbin lace for a hobby
and was ecstatic at sight of the portrait of Holy Roman Emperor
Ferdinand III, with his lace collar. "You know how much that stuff
costs per inch?" she asked. It was a rhetorical question, I still
don't. But it was a good mix of people, who seemed quite attentive
and interested. There was even a photographer from teh Fall River
Herald News, who is middle aged and black and goes by the name
'Omar Bradley', who showed up on his day off (having photographed
on orders of his boss a number of my concerts before and found
them interesting) and smapped roll after roll of film, with a clicking
noise which in the sonic world of the clavichord sounds rather like a
gunshot and did not always happen on the downbeat -- but he
meant it as a compliment. Nothing was in the paper today, but if it
appears later I shall send the URL.

The tuning? Well, bad news here. Yesterday, in the course of the 4
hours before the concert the temperature rose 30 degrees and the
humidity rose 40 percentage points or more. So things were not
perfectly stable (and alas a number of keys on the instrument got
quite sluggish). Life is like that, and you just have to live wtih it. I
tuned a half hour before the concert started, and then I did the best
I could. If I had spent the last 10 minutes before I started to play
touching up the tuning and easing a few keys, while making the
audience sit perfectly still, perhaps the absolute sound would have
been better; but at what cost in creation of discuomfort?

It went well. Rollicking good party afterwards too, with Bach violin
sonatas and some atonal works too!

On 29 Jul 2002, at 22:39, Robert Walker wrote:

> Hi Judy,
>
> Just wondered how the concert went on Sunday.

Judith Conrad clavichordist
http://home.mindspring.com/~judithconrad/index.html