Cometh the Day

We here it is at last, the day of the Salomon Orchestra concert at St. James's Church, Piccadilly. We had an excellent rehearsal on Tuesday and I look forward to the concert immensely. The listing in Time Out magazine looks good, and is at the head of the events for today, so here's hoping that we get an audience. We have had some advanced ticket sales, but I'm still worried about numbers; I don't want another concert where the orchestra out numbers the audience, no matter how enthusiastic the audience might be. Here's hoping.

David, the baritone soloist, rang yesterday to say that he thought I'd missed out a line of the poem. Looks as if I'll have to re-visit the setting. I've already been thinking of doing so - after the rehearsal on Sunday, when I heard the piece with orchestra for the first time, I was aware that there were places which could be improved. D. joked that I didn't have time to change them before the concert.

What is curious is the presence of small, Mahlerian touches in the orchestration; something of which I was not consciously aware, but I have always loved Mahler's orchestral songs. The 2 pieces at tonight's concert have in common that they were both explicitly orchestrated. I usually write in full score or at least short score, but both Barbarians and Elegy were written for unspecified forces and then orchestrated late.