Phew

The big concert passed off without incident. We spent the day in a mixture of teaching and rehearsing with the usual dwelling on the bits that went wrong in rehearsal. My own being what happens if my little flautist, who tends not to watch, forgets to play one of his solos causing a chain reaction of missed entries to spread through the wind section..... what if the cellos rush and the double basses drag... I did end up saying the, 'if you do that tonight the music will fall apart and there won't be anything I can do about it.' Harsh perhaps, but true. I did say it rather than shout it, but that can be worse. One conductor I played under at the RCM did the 'I won't conduct the concert tonight if you play like that' routine so cooly, I found myself contemplating if the assistant conductor would be stepping in. Fortunately, as usual everyone was on top form. The boys do really want to do it right, but it would be foolish to assume that without maximum preparation and concentration that will be so. Lapses in concentration are no good when conducting.

I was lucky that the percussion teacher kept an eye on the timps and percussion, so the crashes, bongs and tings were well coordinated. Out of time timps are tough to conduct through.

So, having cleared up the debris and sorted out the music, it was straight back to teaching a 7/8 period day with break duty. In fact, having got home at 12.30am, I was in a rehearsal at 8.30am! I pointed this out to a bleary eyed member of my form as he struggled in at 9! Huh.