No Haydn from Mozart ...

Five students weaved their ways back to Scotland, Northern Ireland, Switzerland, America and France on Sunday night after an intense and tiring yet very satisfying weekend working on music by Haydn and Mozart.  After a long day on Saturday studying the music with the help of pianist Richard Black we were joined by the South London Sinfonietta on Sunday and soloists Sabina Virtosu and Romain Malain (who stepped in for the indisposed Kwesi Edman at the very last minute).  We worked on the relationship between the conductor and the soloist covering issues such as dealing with the end of a cadenza, and who follows who and when.  The pieces were Mozart's violin concerto no.5 in A, and Haydn's cello concerto in C - great examples of the Classical concerto.

As is often the case the range of experience of the conducting students varied quite a lot.  It was therefore possible to work on different levels with different people depending on their staring place.  This mixture is almost a really good thing about these courses - those early on in their conducting study can learn a lot from those more advanced, but the opposite is also true.

One thing that did become clear, however, was that none of the students was (as yet!) quick at understanding horn transposition ... not a difficult thing to rectify however!

A thoroughly positive weekend.

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