In July 1971 I attended the Glasgow Schools’ 1st Orchestra summer ‘camp’. I guess that ‘camp’ is not really the right word as we spent the time at Castle Toward – certainly not the usual notion of what a camp looks like. This was my second orchestral summer residential course following on from the 2nd Orchestra’s time in Rothesay the previous year and coming at the end of my schooling as it did I certainly envisaged it would be my last. (although things didn’t actually turn out that way)
The programme for the concert was an ambitious one. Our conductor was John Carewe and it was also his first time with the Glasgow Schools’ Orchestra. His predecessor, Lawrence Leonard, was known for his conservatism – the previous year he had programmed Elgar’s 1st Symphony, but soon changed that to the ‘safer’ Dvorak “New World”. When you are trying to mould a group of youngsters into a creditable performing group in just over a week then I guess you need to minimise the risks.
John Carewe, however, was confident that he could manage a much more innovative programme opening with Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, followed by Haydn’s C major Cello Concerto and, after the interval, concluding with Rimsky Korsakov’s Scheherazade. These were a challenge for the whole orchestra and I was really pleased to be principal French Horn for them – lots of good solos.
There are many things that stand out in my memory – including cricket matches on the lawn, where I made up for my lack of skill by being extremely enthusiastic. Unfortunately my face got too close to the ball at one point. The resulting fat lip was hardly ideal for a horn player!! The next day I was taken to Inverkip to see the doctor (one of the teachers dropped me off on the way to Dunoon and picked me up on the way back). I seem to recall that I was given some gentian violet and told to rest it.
So – I had a couple of days ‘excused’ from rehearsals altogether and was allowed to be selective after that as well – I also gave the 1st Horn part for the Bartok to Kenny McLean (a school friend as well) and relegated myself to 3rd Horn to save myself for the rigours of Scheherazade.
Our dormitory room had the advantage of a balcony – on which I spent much of the time when I was away from rehearsals. The only other person not involved (some of the time) was the cello soloist – who was not playing in the Bartok. She was in the dormitory immediately above – so we had these “Romeo and Juliet” like conversations with me below and she looking over the balcony!!
I was a relative newcomer to classical music at that time – but I had already started what would become a very large collection of recordings. One that I found, almost by accident, in my favourite little (cheap) record shop near the Kelvin Hall was Bruckner’s 7th Symphony. It is a piece of music that has remained ever since first hearing as one of my absolute favourites. Turned out that she shared that particular liking.
One evening when we were sitting on the wall above the lawn she started writing some music on the brick (not sure graffiti was a good thing to do – but never mind) – it was the opening couple of bars from Bruckner 7 where the cellos (and horns) sweep up out of the shimmering strings. We were both pleased that the other recognised it.
Our dormitory housed (I think) about six – mainly guys from my school plus a couple of others. One of them was a particular friend – a double bass player (with whom I shared many good times at school) who was also a bit of an amateur magician (and quite a good one). He used to try out his tricks on me to see whether I could spot ‘how it was done’.
A particular memory from the orchestra course was a rather hilarious series of card games. Now these were a bit of a “you had to be there” thing – retelling it now cannot capture the full experience. It relied on a few of us being extremely quick witted (not to mention witty!!) and had a lot in common radio programmes like “Just a Minute”. The game was no fun unless there was an audience watching.
The name of the game was “Chinaman’s Twist” – and that was the only thing that was ‘fixed’. Fundamentally the game did not actually exist at all – play consisted of the deck being dealt to the four (or however many) players and they had to discard their cards according to a set of rules that was – well – fluid – to say the least. There were a few rules that became ‘enshrined’ in tradition, but mainly we made it up as we went along – the skill being in coming up with weird and wonderful ways in which you could (or could not) discard a particular set of cards.
I say “or could not” because part of the fun was managing to quickly think of some reason why the discarded set was “against the rules”. As ‘custodian’ of the game our resident magician and double bass player always had final say – and was probably the best person at the sort of creativity involved. Of course, the more the game went on, the more complicated it became to remember each twist and turn of previous plays – and the more devious you had to be to discard any cards at all!!
The fact that it was never long before we were helpless with laughter about one of the players being unable to discard a particular set “because on the second Tuesday after a full moon you could not pair a heart with a black 3” (and similar). The game was unadulterated silliness – and the sillier it became the more everyone was laughing – often the funniest thing was someone who was watching who believed that we were actually playing to this huge book of (very) complicated rules (that we had, for the most part, memorised) rather than just making it up as we went along.
I think, perhaps the silliest one was when we played it one night after lights out – you have probably heard of people who play chess without a board – well we played Chinaman’s Twist without cards…. As you can imagine, the rules suddenly became even more ridiculous. Still, in our dorm we were kept alert by the light from the Toward Lighthouse shining through the window!!
Getting back to music, on one day we had a conducting competition. I had already had some experience of conducting in the SA, so I was definitely NOT tempted to try my hand in front of the orchestra. The “set piece” was the opening of Brahms’ 1st Symphony (which they had brought as the ‘easy’ back up in case Scheherazade proved beyond us) and there was no shortage of volunteers. John Carewe was the judge.
Most folks gave it a good go – but – there is ALWAYS ONE!! One of our trumpet players stepped up to the podium. As I was still ‘resting’ my lip I wasn’t playing in orchestra, but standing at the back where I could see John Carewe. I will never forget the sight of him – ducked behind a pillar – doubled up with laughter at the ‘antics’ of the trumpet player – whose conducting skills would nowadays be compared to Mr Bean.
The concert at the end of the course was, as always, in Dunoon and (even if I say it myself) I played pretty well given my encounter with the cricket ball (after that incident cricket with a hard ball was banned!!) with the exception of the three short solos near the beginning of Scheherazade. Each is just three notes – each solo slightly lower in pitch than the previous one.
The French Horn is, of course, notoriously difficult to play and susceptible to ‘split’ notes due to the fact that the part of the harmonic series on which you are performing has so many notes close together. I succeeded in in ‘splitting’ the third note of the first solo, the second note of the second solo and the first note of the third solo. I actually think that was quite tidy as a pattern. (in the repeat concert in Glasgow a couple of months later when my lip was healed I am pleased to say that I managed all three correctly – and managed principal horn in both the Bartok and the Rimsky Korsakov)
