Concert

 

November 12, 2023

Cold late autumn drizzle-dawn. 

Five hours of rehearsal two days before a concert is not a good idea, crossing over at some point from the unhelpful to the destructive. My voice was gone when I rose this morning. I was weighing ways to say “I can’t make it to the concert; you’ve rehearsed me to death,” but as the hours go the voice clears, and with more tea it may be well enough. J, the big Argentine bass who sat mute beside me during King David (still accepting, I bet, his $200) does possess a beautiful voice, and a vast one. He missed most rehearsals and for various reasons (he doesn’t read music, listens to others until he gets it) didn’t sing much during the other ones. Yesterday he was present in might. He sang maybe every fourth phrase, but when he did it was not the piano or pianissimo indicated by the score but a blast of trumpets, carried out considerably past the cut-off so the full glory of it could resonate in the space. Our director, who never met a mistake he didn’t grind into a pulp, obsessively triaged those places as though we’d never sung them before.None of this will bother me tomorrow.