Brahmsed out

You know how it is when you've got a whole, huge cheesecake or other similarly decadent dessert in your fridge? The first piece is amazing. Maybe you have a piece after dinner for the next 3-4 days, and it's still tasting really good. But by day 5 your taste for it starts to wane; your taste buds are saturated with the flavor and it's no longer as orgasmic as that explosively delicious first piece.

That's how the Brahms Festival has been for me. The first week was blissful - in part because we hadn't done Brahms in a while and my musical palate was clean, and also because I was more familiar with the repertoire than I am this week since we'd performed a lot of it since I've been here.

Tonight's concert was less familiar. It was very good and I played well, but it involved a lot of mental acrobatics. I'm sitting here at the computer desk unwinding with a big glass of Chianti and some Wisconsin Havarti cheese slices before I go to bed.

I love Brahms, but man is it hard. You wouldn't think it was this hard to listen to it. Or maybe you would. The horns are in a different key in every movement, and because it's all Brahms and we've been doing nothing but Brahms for the past 2 weeks, it's all starting to sound the same and blur together. This is extremely dangerous because you're always wondering, "am I in the right key?" "What key am I in now?" or if you have a long block of rests, you find yourself forgetting what key you were in before the rests, which is really dangerous.

Here are the keys I have had to transpose into for this festival:

• Bb Basso (down a 5th)
• C (down a 4th)
• D (down a minor 3rd)
• E (down a half step)
• B (down a tri-tone - this key is the biggest pain-in-the-brain and by far sucks the most of all of the transpositions)
• Eb (down a major 2nd)

I think I'm in three different keys for the last movement of Brahms 1, which closes our festival tomorrow afternoon.

The third horn parts have been harder than I ever thought they would be in practice, and I've really studied them. That's the thing that's blowing my mind. They're completely different from the 1st and 2nd parts. A lot of my parts involve sitting around for over 25 bars rest and then coming in confidently with a forte passage. I was sweating bullets in tonight's performance. It's just so easy to second-guess that you know where you are, when to come in, and what key you're actually supposed to be playing in at any given time.

So the next time you listen to anything orchestral by Brahms, think of the horns and appreciate them. They're working their asses off, frying their brains. I actually think that Mahler, Strauss, and Bruckner are somewhat easier than Brahms in some ways, because there's no transposing and the horns have the melody a lot more.

In any case, the performance went well tonight, as did all of my solos. It wasn't that fun for me because I was such a stress puppy but it was still successful. We played for a packed house and we got a standing ovation.

XO Love,
Darcy