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It has been suggested to
Old Duffer by some of those those who have accidentally found
themselves on Duffchops.Com that some tales of the 'Days of Old' should
be preserved somewhere on this site before they all become forgotten.
The first featured topic is going to be 'Offstage' with an initial
emphasis on Mahler's Second Symphony. Persons of a bored disposition
are warned to steer clear of these pages. If you have something to
share, then please contact
Old Duffer.
For various legal reasons (including ignorance and fear) we are
avoiding naming names where this might damage reputations and
contributions will be anonymous.
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The first performance of the run was in The Free Trade Hall. They had
decided that we weren't going to have to go on and play at the end,
which was good. They had also decided to give us a CCTV monitor in a
room off the main hall and let us get on with it without a conductor,
the management merely opening some doors at the right moment. As there
were to be two performances in the same venue, we turned our little
abode into a party room, with most of the requisites for one, including
cigars, which you wouldn't get away with nowadays.
We arranged to meet before the concert started and play through the
high call section a few times up a tone, which made the show seem a lot
easier. Then it was thirst quenching time, first in the bar next door,
then in our little offstage home from home. The person whose job it was
to open the doors, himself an erstwhile horn player, was obviously
amused both by our somewhat relaxed attitude and by the fact that,
contrary to expectation, we got it right. I decided, however, to pop
next door again between calls, although one of my colleagues said there
wasn't time, so I ran. As I stood at the bar, he came up behind me,
panting.
"You're mental." he remarked, breathlessly, and joined me in a quickie.
For the show in Sheffield, they decided that we would, this time, walk
on from the back of the stage, through the choir, to join the other
horns and play at the end, so out came the unused tails. Hearing of
this, one of the on stage horns said, I think jokingly, "Bring me a
large port when you come on tonight, chaps. I'll need it by then.".
That evening, my colleague duly obliged, walking through the choir with
the potion concealed (well, almost) in his bell. In the afternoon
rehearsal, the conductor (and I can say with pride that I genuinely can't remember who he
was) asked for a bigger diminuendo on the long D#. In the concert, as
soon as I'd hit the note, I stopped playing, ran a few yards down the
corridor and began again. Seeing me start playing, one of my colleagues
stopped playing, ran past me and started again even further down the
corridor. I can't remember if it was three or four of us who managed to
contribute to this stunning diminuendo before the note finished.
On another completely different occasion, in The Dome, Brighton, the
offstage band was being directed by a staff assistant conductor of Far
Eastern origin. The first run through was absolutely fantastic, but he
started panicking about intonation (which had been fine) and rehearsing
it slowly, as though that would help. He tried to involve the on stage
conductor in his paranoia, but he just said it sounded fine (which it
did). In the evening, it soon became apparrent that the young man was
very nervous indeed and, as we waited for our moment of glory, he
disappeared several times to the Gents'. When we played, he began to
lavishly over-conduct us, to such an extent that, at one point, the
baton flew out of his hand and over the heads of us four horns. This
was in itself quite funny but, instead of just carrying on without the
baton, he ran round behind us, while we were playing, and retrieved it.
He must have thought that the white stick had magical properties. I
don't know how we managed to keep playing, but we did.
I played for Maazel's first Mahler II after the famous one where part
of the call didn't happen. He told us he'd had nightmares about it. It
was decided that we'd walk right on to the front of the stage to join
in at the end but, when one of us knocked a stand over in the rehearsal
(at which point the look on Maazel's face was priceless), this plan was
changed to the more sensible one of playing at the back.
I also have cherished memories of the much missed Nick Hill and Colin
Horton repeatedly reminding me and each other that top C wasn't
actually a high note, but that's all from me for now.
O.D.
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Dear Old Duffer,
Great
stories. May I add this one?..
Just
what is
it about Mahler
2? Let me set the scene.
A
run of offstage Mahler 2's with the Philharmonia Orchestra, (ending, for the time being, in
Salisbury) and the
chance to get away for a couple of days' break between shows, courtesy
of a late night flight and an early morning return in time for a
rehearsal at the Festival hall.
The
hand baggage restriction only dictates availing
myself of the kindness of one of the other offstage horns :
"Don't
worry, I'll take your hooter with me after the show and bring it to the
rehearsal, you go off and have a good time....'"
So far so good.
Several days and lots of nice food and bottles of wine later, I emerge
from the early morning mist and disappear into the artist's entrance of
the RFH, full of confidence in spite of a lurking hangover.
Joining
the offstage boys at the back of the hall, I think the conversation
went something like this:
"Nice time?"
"Yes,
lovely thanks. Where's my hooter?"
"Oh.......
Shit!"
A
cunning plan was hatched. I would stand in playing position, sheltered
by the other horns, and mime.
Mansell Bebb, the bewhiskered fixer,
normally just cruising around, often deep in thought, probably
contemplating
whether his remaining stocks of Havana cigars would hold out until the
next foreign trip. He'd never suspect a thing....
Just
before
the nasty bit - you know the one- Mansell cruised around behind the
horns without stopping.
But, as a small but perfectly formed sigh of
relief escaped from my lips, Mansell suddenly stopped in his tracks and
started moving slowly backwards, as if he had come to the end of a
robust length of elastic which had been attached to the back of his
jacket.
With
eyes fixed firmly to the front, hardly daring to
look over my shoulder, I soon became aware that he was just behind me.
In a
whiskery undertone he breathed:
"I'm not a
complete one, you know."
Still staring fixedly ahead, in desperation I blurted out:
"Mansell, you just can't leave anything lying around backstage these
days..."
Turning round at
last, I did catch the twinkle in his eye as he resumed his
backstage tour, quite possibly whistling his own version of the
offstage
horncall.
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The Great Watford Man-Hunt.
Philharmonia with Guieseppe Sinopoli recording in Watford Town Hall.
Doing it in sections and jumping around. Having done the high call, we
were hanging around waiting to do the bit with on stage flutes. Waited
for ages and ages, then suddenly the Maestro said, "Thank you very
much, ladies and gentlemen. We have everything.".
We heard this via the CCTV link to outside the doors at the back of the
hall so, by the time we were able to tell the management, people
had started leaving, extras, in general, faster than the members, but
Mansell employed his legendary skills and all necessary players were
soon safely
rounded up, some of them in their cars, in the car park.
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Dear O.D.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE DOG
ON THE STAIRS
Edinburgh Festival - I
always thought that sounded rather prestigious - and Mahler 2 offstage
with the
Philharmonia.
Grey buildings steeped in
history, top notch international performers,
and a discerning audience. Lovely.
Now cut to various members of
today's horn section crammed into a
tenement doorway, sheltering from the persistent, soaking, Edinburgh
Festival
rain while eating Bridie and chips from cardboard trays.
For the uninitiated, a Bridie
is a kind of jumbo sausage smothered in as
much claggy batter as the laws of physics will allow, and deep fried to
within
an inch of its life.
The result looks not unlike
the final knockings tipped out of a
plasterer's bucket. For the health conscious it's a nightmare, as Bob
Maskell
demonstrated, gently squeezing a steady stream of heart crippling lard
from his
lunch into the merrily flowing Edinburgh Festival gutter.
Colin Horton, who had been
attempting to eat his rapidly cooling chips
in spite of the steady curtain of drips which fell on to them from the
brim of
his hat, stared blankly into the middle distance and muttered at last
to no-one
in particular: " This must be the big
time then?"
Quick "Malcolm-in-the-middle"
cut to the Usher Hall where the offstage
horns have set up shop at the top of a flight of stone fire escape
stairs.
"Great" said Pete Blake "we
can sneak in and out down the stairs, leave
the hooters up here, and be straight off for tea."
Another "Whoosh"
cut to the offstage
horns in a pub called ( I think) "The
Garage". A plausible name, as it was full of old petrol pumps, signs
and bits
of old cars.
Things had taken a turn for
the better, as the rain had stopped and we were
enjoying a bit of Edinburgh
hospitality. Pete Blake, who was probably that evening's designated
adult,
suggested that we might be getting close to having to play something on
our
horns. Naturally nobody took any notice until it actually was very
late, and we
left the pub hurriedly to the accompaniment of falling bar stools.
I suppose we must have been
fairly fit, as we sprinted up the several
flights of stairs, got the horns out, and were ready to play before the
young,
pale faced excessively nervous offstage conductor succumbed to a
coronary,
probably brought about by a complete
absence of horns five minutes before their cue.
It was only a few seconds
before the first note, that somebody noticed
the dog.
Just to the side of us at the
top of the stairs, a small Scottie dog was
standing, head cocked slightly to one side as though expecting
something
interesting to occur.
As we turned to look in its
direction, it growled slightly, giving rise
to thoughts of savaged ankles. Well, the small ones are the worst
aren't they?
There's not much in the way
of scary movements or noises you can make
with a horn clamped to your face, and the sibilant cries of " thooo "
and " foofff " didn't discourage our visitor at all. In fact it
moved around in
front of us, presumably to get a better look.
Meanwhile "that" passage was
approaching, and we needed all our
concentration. Without taking our eyes of the dog we all somehow managed to find a top"C", but at that precise
moment , our little friend lifted a jaunty little leg and deposited a
vast lake
of Edinburgh Festival wee onto the hallowed stones of the Usher Hall at
the base of one of our stands and waddled
off down the stairs.
"I think" said Jim Handy
after a while, "that was probably the music
critic from 'The Scotsman" ??..
Thanks for that. Just to add that one of the
orchestra's brass section, who was coaching a youth orchestra in
Edinburgh saw fit, without asking us, to invite one of his students to
come and stand behind us. Though this seemed off-putting at first, it
probably generated the right amount of diaphragm-rage necessary for the
top C.
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