My Musical Career | Part Thirty-One B

1987 – A Pivotal Year – Part Two

In my last post, I related many of the events of the year 1987 which was indeed a pivotal year for both myself and the orchestra. The orchestra changed recording labels and increased their recording activity three-fold and made the first of many visits to the BBC Proms in London. We gained some new faces in the orchestra administration and lost a valued member of our orchestra and percussion section. We made several tours that year, namely a visit to Spain and Italy in the early spring of 1987, and a three week tout to the United States in November and December. In addition, we also made our second visit to the Festival D’Ete in Rouen, France in June. I left out talking about these tours as I realized that the last post was getting a bit long and it seemed that they deserved a separate post all to themselves.
So here goes.

Italy and Spain – March 1987

Our first venture to Italy and Spain belongs as part of the 1986-87 season, and was planned as early as 1985. Per Melsæter was still with us and all of us in the orchestra were looking forward to this particular tour, as it was taking us to Italy and Spain, otherwise known as Italia and Espãna! In Italy, we were booked to play at the Verdi Academy in Milan (not far from La Scala); Reggio Emilia and Perugia. In Spain, we were concentrating on Madrid and Barcelona. Twenty-nine years is a long time, and one’s memory gets more than a little scratchy on some details, but I’ll do my best to remember as accurately as I can.
As for the concert program, I don’t recall too much of it, but I believe we played the Sibelius 1st Symphony, and as we were to record the Shostakovich 5th Symphony in May, I feel very certain that this was the other major work of the tour, which lasted about nine or ten days including travel.
There was enough work to keep all of us in the timpani/percussion sections quite busy. Mariss would always include several encores on each tour, and even at this early stage, he would throw in such encores as “The Death of Tybalt” from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” and the final dance from the Suite from “The Miraculous Mandarin” ballet of Bela Bartok. This tour was the first time I had ever visited either Spain or Italy, and I believe it was the first official tour of the orchestra to these two countries. We were all looking forward to the tour, as it was a chance to temporarily escape the colder northern climes and exchange them for the somewhat warmer southern climate.

The orchestra flew down to Milan, which I believe was our starting point, and we were bused to our hotel and spend the rest of the day unpacking and checking out the city. Milan is one of the largest cities in Italy, and has an incredibly beautiful cathedral. Many of its stores are located in an covered old-style shopping arcade called the Galleria. The cathedral was an interesting place to visit. There is even a walking area on it’s roof. The Milanese call it Il Duomo.
The concert was held as I said at the auditorium of the Conservatory Giuseppe Verdi, and it was packed. The concert was a success, and the audience was vociferous in its applause. There were many shouts of “Bis!” There were so vociferous in this, that I thought for a moment that they were booing! But only for a moment. The day after the concert, we were on the busses and headed towards our next engagements in Perugia and Reggio Emilia. Perugia is in central Italy and sits atop a hill overlooking the province of Umbria. We had a day off, so we were able to wander the city, with its old buildings and the area around the large church. To look out over the city walls at the tile covered roofs of the houses in the city and surrounding areas was neat. The weather cooperated, and I got some good pictures of the city and surrounding areas. Reggio Emilia was up in Northern Italy, in the Romagna area, and was equally picturesque. Concerts in both areas were successful and well received. What I had forgotten was how mountainous Italy is. Our bus travels brought that clearly into focus, but the journeys were uneventful, and we enjoyed our time there.
We flew to Spain and gave concerts in Madrid and Barcelona. Both were beautiful cities, with Madrid being the more modern (as befits the capital city) and Barcelona seemingly the older, but no less interesting city.
The Teatro Royale was and is a lovely venue, and the acoustic were very good. The interesting thing about our concert in Madrid was that it was scheduled to begin at 10:00 pm. This was my first exposure to the way the Spaniards do things. Their day is broken into two parts. From morning until about noon, they go about their business as most of us two. The time period between noon and three o’clock is when all businesses shut down for “siesta.” They go home for lunch and a nap, and return at three and stay open late; hence the lateness of our concert’s starting time. There was even an event booked at the theater at 12:30 am! Our concert was a great success, the Sibelius First Symphony having made a great hit. Barcelona was our next stop and to me was a more interesting city, mainly because of the older cathedrals and the unfinished Basilica of the Holy Family, otherwise known as La Sagrada Familias. This church, under construction since 1883, is still not finished, and while not designed to supplant the cathedral in Barcelona, is nevertheless a cathedral sized building. A combination of Gothic and Noveau Art, it has several spires that reach high into the sky and are its most distinctive features. When I visited in 1987, it was less about half finished, though not in use as a church. Most impressive!

Rouen 1987

Our 1986 visit to Rouen and the Festival D’Ete Maritime was the first in a series of three appearances. Number two visit took place in June 1987, and was expanded to two concerts. This was a memorable tour for me for several reasons. One was the chance to play Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique in France, which is kind of like bringing coals to Newcastle, but it was fun nonetheless. I used the Light drums, and Trygve used the Hingers. The other timpani parts I n the third movement were played by Per Erik and Per Melsæter. They just walked over to our various sets (we pre-tuned the drums to save them time). That concert was special as it featured Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony as the opener, and thje Berlioz was the closing work. Not an easy program, especially in the resonant acoustics of the Cornielle College Chapel. The second concert featured soloist Marilyn Horne in Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder and closed with another Tchaikovsky symphony, the 5th. In the event, I didn’t play the Mahler. The previous evening, I went out and dined with a few of my colleagues and we went to a very fashionable restaurant and had a delicious fish dinner. Normally, I frequented whatever McDonalds or other fast food joints that might be in the area, but I thought I’d break my routine. The food was indeed tasty, but I paid for it with a slight case of food poisoning. I woke up in the night with fever and feeling listless. I wasn’t the only one. Several others came down with the same thing, and before going to work that evening, we drank a lot of herb tea to soothe our stomachs. Trygve had earlier agreed to play the Mahler, and I managed to play the Tchaikovsky with the required concentration and verve that the work deserves. Since the opening work only involved strings, I was able to visit with the great Marilyn Horne. She is also a native New Yorker and we shared stories of our experiences growing up in the city that never sleeps. She also told me of her experience as a member of the chorus for the premiere of Rogers and Hammerstein’s “The King and I”. She was a thoroughly delightful person!
Since we had expanded the program to include another concert, all of us had a free day and used it to more thoroughly check out Rouen. I visited La Place du Vieux Marche, which is the place where Joan of Arc was executed. I visited all of the churches, as the gothic architecture fascinated me, and had a chance to listen to an organ recital in one of the smaller churches. The organ was quite possibly a Cavaille-Coll, as its reeds were very strong and pungent. It was a neat experience.
The other thing that keeps this tour fresh in memory is that it was the last tour, in fact one of the last things that my friend Per played with us before the fateful summer of 1987. None of us knew it at the time, and we were all looking forward to the new season when we returned to Oslo and split up for the summer holiday.