Out of the pan, into the fire...

A thousand proverbs are reverberating in my mind: "too much of a good thing", "be careful what you ask for", "in for a penny, in for a pound", "fools rush in where angels fear to tread", "The world is full of willing people: some willing to work and some willing to let them ", etc. etc. etc...

Playing "Carmina Burana" with the Philadelphia Orchestra is turning out to be lots of fun, but i may be biting off more than i can chew: the Orchestra just invited me to play next week's subscription concerts as well, which includes the dreaded "Miraculous Mandarin" by Bartok - "fearsome piano part" doesn't even begin to describe the spiny thorns sticking out of this nasty part!! Throw in the celeste part for Holst's "The Planets" and you can be sure i'm not going to be having any free time this weekend...sigh...

If there's one thing about orchestral playing that i absolutely loathe, it's the counting. I've been marveling at the seasoned orchestra players that can sit through 54 measures of rest and come in perfectly and with nary a bead of miscounted sweat! I'm sorry, i run out of fingers after "10", and am too busy with pedals to start counting toes!

My solution? Don't count.

Thanks to my tablet pc, i simply combined my solo part for "Carmina Burana" with the vocal score, allowing me to follow along without the headache of keeping track of long tacets (silent passages in music-speak).

Bartok's Mandarin is going to require something more extreme, as there is absolutely no way in my newbie mind that i'm going to be able to keep track of all that counting on top of getting through the tricksy passages! Thanks to handless page turns with my page turning foot pedal, i'm planning to use a miniature score to follow all the action.

Hope it works...we're heading to Carnegie Hall next Friday with this! Gulp!

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