The Beethoven Project – Lessons Learned

This past Thursday was the first time I performed chamber music in front of a live audience in over 10 years. Back in February, I had come up with this idea to have a small Classical concert to highlight some of the local (or semi-local) talent in Gibraltar. At the moment there are two types of Classical Music venues you can attend in Gibraltar. You either have the professional musicians who travel to Gibraltar and are paid for their services or you have recitals of young musicians in the community who are forced to play in concerts set up by their teachers for all parents to come and watch. You don´t see a lot of the teachers themselves perform so I wanted to do something that involved some of the teachers including myself.

The concert had a few hiccups that we dealt with as they came. I think the biggest one was having two pianos as the first one was not playable for the Beethoven. When you´re accompanying 5 year olds I´m sure it´s okay, but when you are trying pull a complicated melody line out of a Beethoven Piano trio, you need something that responds. This led to our pianist insisting on bringing her own electronic piano from home at the dress rehearsal. Understandable.

There are a few things I learned from arranging a concert. I´ve only ever played in them, never arranged and then played. Here are a couple of things to remember for the future and I hope anyone reading this can learn from my experience if they are planning on putting together a concert they are playing:

1. Never arrange a concert that you are playing in! It is too hard. They are two separate jobs and if you are busy doing one (arranging) you are going to be too tired to do the other (play).

2. Never arrange a concert for the same day as the Queen´s birthday in a British Offshore district. Oops! I tried really hard to find the best date and venue for this concert however there were a few things I forgot to look for. Such as, major events and special holidays taking place in Gibraltar.

3. Never arrange a concert on any special religious holidays that may stop potential concert-goers from coming to the concert. In this case a very big Jewish Holiday. Given the appreciation for Classical music by many of the Jewish community in Gibraltar this was a huge oversight on my behalf.

4. Factor in the cost of rehearsals. Have a good idea of the ability of your musicians and how many rehearsals you are going to need. Then calculate how much that is going to cost in travel and the rental of rehearsal space.

All in all it was a good concert. I would have liked for a higher turnout, but we played well despite being completely exhausted from arranging the whole thing as well as moving a bunch of pianos. I think it might be a while before I arrange anything else, and if so I´ll be sure to learn from the major and costly mistakes stated above. For now, I think I´ll stick to relearning a few of the Bach Suites and getting to know my family again. My dad always said “A day without Bach is a day without sunshine”. The same goes for family.

Thank you to all who came to the concert and a special thank you to the Gibraltar Ministry of Culture who financially supported the project.