Klarinet Archive - Posting 000012.txt from 2008/09

From: "Rien Stein" <rstein@-----.nl>
Subj: [kl] orchestra pit
Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:57:33 -0400

Tonight I heard a wonderful music story.

The conductor of the wind orchestra I play with in the village where I live,
Maartensdijk, decided this week not to come back again (to the great relieve
of many of us), and we had a remplaçant, an experienced player in an
operette orchestra. He told the following beautiful story:

They should perform "Der Vogelhändler", somewhere nowhere in the local
theatre, and the orchestra had to play in the cellar room underneath the
stage. But this room was very deep. actually, it was too deep: the conductor
either couldn't conduct the orchestra, or he couldn't see the singers.

But the theatre's technical people had a simple solution: they made the
conductor's stand vertically movable. Thus before beginning the operette, he
came to his stand, was lifted up sufficiently to greet the astonished
audience (that gave him a big hand only after he was sinking back into
oblivion again), and began to conduct. Somehow he found that it was possible
in an intermediate stand to both see the singers and give them signals with
his right hand, and in the mean time conduct the orchestra with his left
hand somewhere at the height of his knees.

I think that in itself would be a worthwhile story, but it continues:

Before the final chords one of the main persons has to go off the scene. He
did, but stepped on the conductor's platform and all the audience saw him go
down, and come back again. Then during the final applauses, when people were
clapping hands to the players of the operette, the curtain was raised an
innumerable lot of times, and every time it fell on him ... I am not going
to continue ...

rien

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