Don’t kiss the cow!

April was a very busy month - as well as the usual services, funerals and of course, Easter, I ended up having 6 concerts but before that, there is the sad tale of Finrod. Worry not, he’s absolutely fine now but he did have a very bad month, which meant I also had a bad time. Conversely, it was very good business for the local vet. So Finrod, bless him, did his bit for the local economy.

He came back after one of his nocturnal adventures and as always, I am too polite to ask him for any details about what he has got up to. Ask no questions, hear no lies is the mutual understanding we have come to. But he came back one night with one of his legs obviously bothering him a lot. I had hoped it was just a temporary thing but alas it soon became clear that it was a bit more serious so an appointment was duly made with the vet. Solveig very kindly came along as morale support for me which was much appreciated. Suffice to say that Finrod did not enjoy it at all. Dreadful noise in the car and lots of fluff falling off at the vets. Fortunately it wasn’t as serious as it might have been - a strained muscle rather than anything broken so a period of rest and painkillers was prescribed. It’s funny the different perceptions of price of these things - Solveig came back for a coffee afterwards and one of the first things she said was how shocked she at how much it cost. While at exactly the same moment I was sitting on the other sofa delighted in how little it had cost. Of course “little” is doing a lot of lifting there! But it wasn’t as bad as I feared.

An embarrassing short time later, I noticed that he was going to the litter tray very frequently and sometimes not even going that far (for example using the dust pan). My heart was aching for him :-( Another appointment was booked and because I would be on Løkta all day for a funeral and concert, Solveig again stepped up to look after him. A UTI was diagnosed so well as various pills he had to take it was also recommended that he eat wet food for a while. Solveig kindly brought a selection of food for him straight away but made the rookie error of giving him the expensive gourmet food first. Obviously by the time I tried to feed him the cheap stuff he had developed a sophisticated palette so turned his nose up at it (obviously didn’t inherit his sophistication from me). A battle of wills then ensued which I inevitably lost so no more cheap wet food in this house.

He does seem to be a lot better now and long may that continue.

As mentioned above, I had 6 concerts - 2 of course were part of the ongoing complete keyboard music of JL Krebs series. At the concert in Nordvik, the main work was Krebs Partita in a. One of the skills a baroque performer learned was that of improvising and the opening movement featured a number of places where the performer is told - here’s the chord sequence, do something interesting. Alas, that’s not a skill I would claim to have so that, coupled with a terrible memory, meant that to be on the safe side I worked out the improvisation and then printed it out. I don’t think it went too badly - the down side was that when I removed the pieces of paper upon which I had written my ‘improvisation’, the music stand became slightly reflective and therefore I could see a couple of people quietly get up and leave. Not necessarily great for morale!

The second concert was on the island of Vandve. The total population is around 30 so when 6 turned up, I was quite pleased. 20% of the available audience is not too shabby - the equivalent for Dundee would be about 30,000. Not too bad for a concert of Krebs music. Mind you, after a while I started to reflect that maybe 6 isn’t that great - what could possibly be more appealing than an evening of Krebs’ music on the harpsichord? It’s not like Vandve is a hot bed of activity.

As part of the preparation of each of these concerts, I like to listen to recordings of the pieces I’m going to play - it’s always nice to hear how the professionals do it. I put on a recording of the Partita in Eb that was the main piece in Vandve and was shocked to not recognise it in the slightest. My first thought was surely I can’t be playing it that badly! Further research ensued and it was revealed that the Partita was in 2 versions - long and short (which I knew) but I had assumed that Krebs had just added extra movements but in fact some were completely different. I realise of course that no one who came to any of these concerts would care that they were missing a Bouree, a Polonoise and a Gigue but being bit of an anorak it really bothered me so I found the Krebs’ handwritten copy on-line and typeset the missing movements. You can imagine the joy on the audience faces when I told them at the end of the Partita “but wait, there’s more!”

The ferries aren’t very frequent to Vandve, and if they don’t have to, they won’t run. At the last moment, I found out that if you want the last ferry back to Dønna, you need to tell the crew because if nobody is coming from Dønna, they won’t come out unless they have been specifically requested to. That could have been a nasty shock waiting for a non existent ferry!

Katya asked if I’d be interested in doing a couple of concerts - one in Nordvik and one on Løkta. Her original plan had been to do a Bach cantata but goodness me it was horrifically difficult to play. It was in 2 parts and each part started with an organ concerto movement (I’d be playing both the orchestra and solo part obviously) which really was beyond my technical abilities. Eventually I conceded defeat and came up with some suggestions as possible alternatives. We ended up doing a rather attractive Handel cantata for Alto and Continuo ie only 1 instrumentalist. Soooo much easier to play. This was the main work and we performed some other opera arias and finished with a Grieg song. To give a Katya a break I did do a couple of organ solos at each concert - some Krebs may have slipped in as well!

The other concert was with Michael Villmow, a saxophonist now living in Norway but for many years had been in the Køln Big Band. We did a mixture of his own compositions and organ/vocal pieces that he’d found on my YouTube channel. We would work out where the important melodic lines were, he’d play these and I’d play the other parts. I thought it was quite effective and we played pieces by Whitlock, Bach and Saint-Saens to a quite and large appreciative audience.

As always, I have all my music on my iPad but for whatever reason, one of the pages was very slow in turning when I gave the signal so I spent a bit of time working out where the best place was to wink at (which is how I turn the pages) and marked it up during the last rehearsal. However, when it came to the concert I saw this mark as I started to play and for the life of me I could not think why on earth I would write PT on my music. Fortunately by the time I did get to the last line it did dawn on me that it stood for Page Turn so catastrophe was avoided.

On a similar “age and memory going” note …… One of my great achievements in April was finishing Felix Holt by George Eliot. When my beloved Aunt Elaine died a number of years ago we shared out her lovely collection of Folio Society books. Since then, these books have followed me from house to house and now country to country and I decided that it might be time to read them. At the start of year I randomly chose Felix Holt - goodness me it was hard going. For most of the book I did not have a scooby what was going on. I eventually realised that part of the problem (the one not related to me not being the sharpest tool in the box) was the length of the sentences. One of the sentences was 153 words long. I have to remind myself of accidentals in the same bar of music so there is absolutely no chance that I’m going to cope with sentences of that length!

I was very excited and flattered to be invited to Mosjøen to give a concert at Dolstad kirke as part of their “Relæxt kirkekonsert” series. The “relaxing” part of the concert series caused me a little stress - when you think of an instrument to bring calm and peace into your life, I would suggest that the organ would not rank high on the list. Nonetheless I eventually came up with what I thought was a reasonably charming programme - a concerto by Rinck (a pupil of a pupil of Bach), a Bach piece arranged by Widor, a chorale partita by Walther (cousin of Bach) and, inevitably a trio by Krebs (pupil of Bach). Fixated? Moi? I’d actually put off learning that particular trio for many years because it looked quite difficult but I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to learn it. Turns out it WAS difficult and I was getting quite stressed by the time of the concert. One of the things about playing the organ is that the pedal boards can be different shapes which means the notes at the extremities aren’t necessarily in the place you expect them to be (well that’s the excuse I use at least). This actually worked to my advantage for a change because it made me really focus / concentrate and I actually ended up being quite pleased with how I played. But I always aware that this is only my perception, the audience may have thought it was terrible.

Øivind, the organist at Dolstad Kirke, and his wife Martha, very kindly took me out for a meal beforehand. There was a huge menu and in order to keep it simple , I just had the same as Øivind, a steak. When it came to ordering, I remembered that there are various ways of asking for it to be done and one in particular can be frowned upon. In the stress of the moment, I forgot which way round it was but suffice to say, the look of shock and horror on the waiter’s face immediately informed me that I had got it wrong, so quickly corrected that order!

After the concert and as I was leaving I spoke to one of the audience members. It turned out that he had lived in Edinburgh years ago and used to go to St Giles Cathedral every week to hear the organist there. And that organist was one of my father’s teachers - it is indeed a small world.

I went to see “The Drama” at the cinema during April, and not unusually, I was the only person in the cinema. It actually turned into bit of my own drama - first the assistant couldnt get the door open for the cinema, his code and card couldn’t work so eventually he had to get a colleague to open it. This did lead to me having visions of being locked in the cinema over night so I was slightly apprehensive. The film was due to start at 7.15. 7.15 came and went, 7.20 came and went and when it got to 7.25 I thought I probably should do something. Nervously I approached the door, praying to the Norsk Gods that I wasn’t locked in. Fortunately it was still open so I went and hunted down someone to ask if there was any chance they could start the film. Due to living on an island I’ve always got to take into account the ferry times so I’ve got to take in account start times and running times. Eventually someone was found and they kindly fast forwarded through the adverts so I was still in time for my ferry.

All the Krebs concerts can be seen under the “Live” button on my YouTube channel so if you’re struggling to sleep…

https://youtube.com/@10gstevenson?si=m9y_3XfISJaDndrP