It is my very great pleasure to share with you the video taken of the entire Canada Day concert.

Bless Martine and Daniel for shooting the HD footage, for editing it and posting it to YouTube; and even more so for burning all those concert DVDs for the orchestra members! It was a real treat to sit back and enjoy the concert the way the audience did, and as the Blu-Ray player and TV are hooked up to the surround stereo and subwoofer, I got to hear the orchestra in all its glory. (Okay, the church is very echoey, and at times our articulation isn’t as clear as it could have been and those two issues = occasional muddy sound, but hey! There’s sound to be heard!) And I appreciate it all the more because my audio recording was such a miserable mess.

Calixa Lavallée’s O Canada

Schubert: Symphony No 3 in D Major

1. Adagio maestoso – Allegro con brio

2. Allegretto

3. Menuetto – Trio

4. Presto vivace

Vaughan Williams: Suite of English Folk Songs

1. March – Seventeen Come Sunday

2. Intermezzo – My Bonny Boy

3. March – Folk Songs from Somerset

Fauré’s Pavane

Grieg: Norwegian Dances

1. Allegro Marcato

2. Allegretto tranquillo e grazioso

3. Allegro moderator alla Marcia

4. Allegro molto

Encores

1. Vaughn Williams suite excerpt

2. sing along O Canada

Overall, I am very pleased with my performance in this video. Two things leap out at me. One, I tend to make small faces while I play, mostly tightening of the mouth during different phrases. It’s not in reaction to mistakes, it’s more like… expression. It probably can’t be seen from the audience, but seeing it on screen when the camera was on the celli was very odd. This summer I’m going to work on relaxing the muscles around my mouth when I play. And two, I’ve been working on lowering my right elbow, and damn it, every once in a while it pops up like a chicken wing. Down, elbow! Down! Something else to work on this summer.

There were a couple of places in the video when I waved my hands at the screen and said, “The celli! The CELLI! They have the theme, the violins are just playing a repeated note — pan RIGHT!” And there was the odd place where the camera would pan to the brass… just in time for them to lower their instruments. But those are understandable in a live recording, and really, I’m just thrilled to have the record of the event. Especially on DVD! Merci encore, Martine et Daniel, vos efforts et votre générosité sont vraiment appréciés!