Robert McFall

Today's composer is Marc Estibeiro. His score, entitled Orbital Resonances No. 3, has references to the movement of heavenly bodies, and sounds that way - very ethereal - and I feel quite pure and clean at the end of a day of playing it. It maybe has the atmosphere of Webern - spare but highly expressive in an understated way. We spent the whole of yesterday playing without vibrato (though there was some discussion about maybe using vibrato on just one note - a suggestion which was, ultimately, thrown out); today we've been in the harmonic world of second Viennese school - highly romantic playing. At the same time the music requires a very high degree of rhythmic precision. This aspect brought about the week's first ever-so-slightly raised hackles - between bass guitar and viola (viola thought bass guitar was early; bass guitar thought viola was late; everyone else thought it sounded perfectly together).

I decided to wear summer clothes this morning - one of my more garish short-sleeved shirts and cotton trousers - but, in the event, I've kept my jumper on all day - the weather didn't live up to its early promise, though it was nice enough - certainly nice enough for Rick to have a good long sleep stretched out on the boards of the veranda at lunchtime (while Marc worked on his electronics on headphones - using one of the recorded tracks we'd done during the morning).

Su-a is telling us about her baby theatre show right now - but she wants to head off - so I'll stop…

A fiennes.org site

Mr McFall’s Chamber is a registered charity: SC028348

Design by fogbank.co.uk