our london adventure: part two: Open Rehearsal

28 September 2008

Open Rehearsal

Although we dropped in on one Open Rehearsal performance yesterday, today we were booked into another event being put on as part of this great festival, and headed back down to Southbank for some browsing through the bookstalls under Waterloo Bridge

before walking over to one of the London Sinfonietta's rehearsal spaces for today's performance. Entitled Brunch with the London Sinfonietta, when I booked us into the event, I assumed the title had more to do with the late Sunday morning timing of the rehearsal rather than the presence of actual food, but I turned out to be pleasantly wrong. Not only did we get to sit in on a free, fascinating rehearsal of an interesting piece, we were also treated to some pre-rehearsal treats of coffee, juice, fruit, and pastries--definitely a winning combo! As an extra treat, the Austrian composer of today's piece, Thomas Larcher, was also the pianist, so we got to hear the piano concerto Bose Zellen ("Free Radicals") with commentary from the composer, conductor, and various performers. While many of the comments were over our amateur-musician and non-musician heads, we still enjoying sitting in on the process of rehearsing such a fascinating contemporary piece.

Before rehearsal, Larcher "prepared" the piano by taping up much of its insides, and during various parts of the piece, he also inserted the large ball (visible in the above photo) into the piano, changing the sound with wonderful effect.

Toward the end of the rehearsal, he stripped the numerous pieces of tape out of the piano, and we realized how much we had gotten used to the altered sounds the piano made while it had been taped up. We watched the rehearsal from above the players, and when a sound I couldn't identify cropped up, I had to stand and peer under where we were sitting to see that the source of the sound was a sheet of aluminum foil coming between the player and his instrument!

At one point, there was some confusion as to which violinist should play a certain part. After much discussion, Larcher informed the audience that "no one wants to play it!"

The sound-proofing of the room made for some interesting textures:

We soon noticed that the players had different ways to deal with those down times in rehearsal when they weren't playing or weren't involved in the discussion that was taking place. For example, some people did crosswords,

while others caught up on what Britney Spears's mum had to say:

One participant in today's rehearsal who wasn't playing or conducting was this artist, who sat behind the performers creating watercolours at a rapid pace. I wish he had been sitting closer so we could have had a better look at what he was doing!

After the rehearsal was finished, we walked through the neighbourhood for a bit. The front window of this community centre was filled with smiling faces,

and this nearby building struck me as incredibly strange:

A plaque near the entrance to these self-proclaimed "luxury flats" explains the disparity in styles: "This portico was the entrance to the former Unitarian Chapel erected on this site in 1821. The main body of the chapel (then in disuse) was demolished in 1964 and subsequently the portico was restored by the Greater London Council." What do you think of the postmodern combo? After a bit of lunch, we headed to a pub that is said to be the thinnest in London:

The Black Friar is incredible inside, with lovely stained glass,

numerous cozy spots flanked by charming decor,

and even an aphorism or two to soak up with your food and drink.

In spite of these visual treats, we weren't actually here to see the pub--it was the meeting place for the free guided walk we were joining today as part of Walk London's Autumn Ambles. Forty walks took place as part of this weekend's event, and since it was the second sunny and warm day this weekend, a lot of people showed up for our walk through parts of the City and Westminster. Our guide began by justifying her accent (after all, why should we trust a Canadian to guide us through London? Ha!)--she came to London sixteen years ago, planned to stay for a year, never ended up leaving, and has loved learning enough about London to be able to give tours. While we enjoyed today's walk (as Bob always says, it's nice to have people tell stories about places), we decided that it might be more fun to choose future walks in areas in which we haven't already spent so much time! In the end, I don't think we walked down a single street that we haven't walked down before, and many of the buildings were quite familiar to us, but we still learned things about those familiar sights and were glad to spend a few hours in the sun, wandering around. We've looked at St Bride's church many times, and it's even featured on some of our previous walking tours through the City,

but today was the first time a guide has pointed out that one of the gravestones outside the church belongs to William Rich, the baker who first modelled a wedding cake on the tiered steeple of the church, setting the wedding trend that remains to this day.

Fleet Street's Peterborough Court used to be the headquarters of the Daily Telegraph newspaper:

Our tour continued on a short-cut through Temple (due to construction noise in and around Fleet Street), where this sundial had plenty of sun to help it tell time today:

The Seven Stars pub has been around since 1602, and is one of the few pubs to have survived the Great Fire of 1666. It's appropriately old-timey and tucked away on a quiet street near the law courts:

We paused in Lincoln's Inn Fields and while our guide talked about the Sir John Soane Museum (actually one of our favourite London spots, and one we haven't visited in a very long time), my attention was doubly diverted, first by a woman playing music for a group of picnickers,