...for today felt relatively surreal. It began with Carmine giving me a little gift to remember him. He wanted me to guess what it was, but I had no clue. He said it was perfect for me. The clue was "Christmas." I gave up. He proceeded to pull out a pristine set of LPs of Berlioz' sacred works performed by Sir Colin and the LSO. He bought it at a boot sale the day after we drove up to Coventry, which is when we started to get to know each other. In other words, it IS the perfect gift to remember him by.
Rehearsal began with Haitink saying, "Let's run the first three movements and be done at 5. If we go a few minutes over, don't be mad." They ended up running all 4 movements, which I did not complain about. I was actually hoping they would play it, as it's the most emotional of the 4. The waterworks almost opened up, but I forced them back. Tomorrow, though, they will flow freely.
Many semi-farewell hugs were had. It wasn't quiet as difficult as I thought. I will be seeing them all again for a week in October if everything's on my side. Hopefully I can catch some of them as they leave the hall tomorrow night, as well.
I also caught Maestro Haitink before he escaped. It was a very odd encounter. It was almost as if he couldn't understand me, even though he's entirely fluent at English. He seemed like an entirely different person off the podium.
I met up with a friend from the New London Singers at 8 for drinks/some food. We had a very nice long chat about many things. It turns out he is a friend of John Rutter. I told him to check and see if my drawing of Nick is still there next time he goes to their house. We had some interesting Asian (well, it's Oriental here) cuisine unlike any I had ever had. Tasty!
It is now past 2 AM. I should have been asleep hours ago.
I don't know why the violin drawing is sideways.
1 comment:
Curious myself!
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