Jayne Garrity joined the tour for the Paris leg, hosting some press representatives over to see the Orchestra’s second concert date in the beautiful Theatre des Champs-Elysee.
Jayne writes:
Getting up at “horrible o’clock” to make the early flight from Liverpool to Paris meant we were able to hook up with Sandra at our Paris hotel ahead of the Orchestra arriving around noon from Aix-en-Provence. They’d played a fantastic first concert of the tour there the night before, met with rapturous applause from a packed house at the Grand Theatre de Provence. Apparently, members of the audience applauded the members of the Orchestra again as they were leaving the venue.
Our Chief Executive Michael Eakin also joined the tour for the Paris leg, enduring a “planes, trains and automobiles” experience due to delayed flights and cancelled trains, which added hours of journey time to what is essentially a quick hop over the channel!
The Orchestra, with our Deputy Orchestra Manager Jane Moss and our tour manager colleagues from Harrison Parrott also had early starts, travelling in two parties by TGV from Marseille to Paris, with the truck team on the road.
Everyone arrived safely in Paris with a few hours to spare to take in some of the sites and sounds of this most beautiful city ahead of rehearsal at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees.
The RLPO rehearsing at Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Paris
The rehearsals on this tour, whilst relatively short are very important for our musicians to get used to the acoustic in each venue, as all will be different. At today’s rehearsal, our Chief Conductor Vasily Petrenko spent some time rehearsing sections of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony, including the organ part, at one point, walking off the platform and into the stalls in the auditorium as the Orchestra played on, listening carefully to the sound balance which was sounding quite different in the stalls, to what he and the musicians were hearing on the concert platform. As we all know, Vasily knows precisely what he wants from a performance, and used every last minute of rehearsal to prepare for the concert an hour later.
And what a concert! The Manfred Symphony in particular was absolutely blistering, and will surely get even better as the Orchestra play it each night of the tour, concluding with a final performance on home turf at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall on Sunday 3rd April. The concert hall was packed to the rafters and we were also delighted to see 25 of our supporters over from Liverpool on a trip organised by Maestro Travel. It was also great to see our former Executive Director, Andrew Cornall at the concert. He was in Paris doing some work in his new role as Vice-President A & R, of EMI Classics.
The RLPO enjoy a standing ovation at Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Paris
The beautiful, art-nouveau style Theatre des Champs-Elysees opened in 1913 staging in its first season, the world première of Stravinsky’s ballet, Rite of Spring, (danced by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes) consequently becoming the celebrated location of one of the most famous of all classical music riots! No riots tonight though – at the end of the concert just prolonged applause, whistles and cheers for the Orchestra and Vasily – who rounded off a wonderful concert with an encore of the exhilarating Russian dance from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. Fantastique!
Playing for Liverpool on the World Stage 