A bit of one-upmanship from Mr Haydn

The concert back on Sept 12th went well, though audience numbers were down on last time (in 2006). Had to compete with a Haydn concert at the Town Hall - apparently he's some old dude whose music is still getting played after 300 years. At my concert, one of the singers said after it was over that he couldn't understand why people would go to hear a Haydn concert when my concert was on. I can only agree.

Anyway, to give Mr Haydn his due, I've been playing through some of his sonatas over the last week or so, partly to give myself a break from the music I played in the concert, and partly to keep my fingers moving, and partly to do a bit of sight-reading. I've played these sonatas before, but I think I've probably only ever learnt one with any serious intent. There were times when it seemed as though I was the world's worst sight-reader. Think it was just that I'd been playing the same stuff for so many weeks that my brain hadn't had to use its sight-reading skills to any extent. Went through some of the sonatas again over the last few days and was glad to see that things had improved. Phew!

Meantime, I've been working on getting the CD of the concert off the ground. We recorded it on the night, so it's a warts and all recording - the mistakes I made will live forever, (as it were.) I still have the music tracks from the recording we made of the last concert, and I'm going to have to get that organised as well. I promised copies to people back in 2006 and they're still patiently waiting. Just as well they're not the sort of people who live in mobile homes, otherwise I might never track them down.

However, after my son-the-geek had been here for a while last Friday night I had the tracks for both the new and old CD ready to go and I've now burned a CD copy of both. Things sound pretty good (helped by having a professional recording person on the spot, an old friend who's been willing to do this both times I've put on a concert). Even the warts aren't as bad as they might be.

I've got the programme notes, and the poems on a Word doc, but it's now a matter of sorting all that material out so that it fits into some kind of booklet form. Not a task I'm enthusiastically looking forward to (I'm writing this post to put it off) but I will get it done this time.