It shouldn't happen to an orchestra...
Post categories: Jessica Duchen
| 15:39 UK time, Wednesday, 4 March 2009
If you can go to the tonight, you'll hear the doughty members of the (including my hubby Tom on 3rd violin) playing the . But only just.
It was one of those moments that belongs in that as-yet-unmade TV series 'It shoudn't happen to an orchestra'. The LPO and their principal conductor took off for the States for a 6-day tour, including three sell-out concerts in New York. After the last one, on Sunday afternoon, they set off for and two overnight flights home. Tom, by some amazing chance, had put down his name for the earlier plane. The majority of the orchestra went on the later one.
Snow was beginning to fall as Tom and about 17 colleagues took the sky. But back on the ground, the planned second plane had proved only half full, so the airline in its infinite wisdom apparently elected to cancel it and move the passengers, including some 75 LPO musicians, onto a slightly later one. By the time said later plane was due to depart, the airport was snowed in and it was simply snow go.
The orchestra overnighted in the terminal, with a few pillows and, obviously, nowhere to practise. I'm told that few airline staff, if any, were in evidence and no info was forthcoming about their likely fate.
They finally landed at at 12 noon on Tuesday instead of 11am on Monday, the Tuesday chamber rehearsal had to be cancelled and tempers are riding high. I keep telling Tom it will be all right on the night, that Mendelssohn's wonderful energy will carry them along once they get going. But I suspect that the pub closest to the Wiggy will become very busy at about 9.45pm tonight once it is all over.
Meanwhile, if you can't sleep on Thursday night, tune into R3 where a Mendelssohn marathon for insomniacs is scheduled. Like , which were designed to entertain the commissioning aristocrat when he couldn't sleep as opposed to sending him off to dreamland, Mendelssohn does seem more likely to keep you awake...
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