Call me Rip van Wrinkle. The orchestra I play for changed its rehearsal cycle just slightly and, I hope, just once for last week's concert. The change put all the rehearsals during the week and the drive up and down to Springfield just about wore me out. For the days since, if I haven't been teaching or eating I have been sleeping. I think I am awake now.

Worth mentioning on the Shakespearean concert was William Walton's Hamlet and Ophelia arranged by Muir Mathieson. I especially liked the string writing which, starting from the low strings, gradually pushed toward a beautiful wailing in the violins that somehow reminded me of Hildegard von Bingen.

Of course, the main feature on the concert was Felix Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream. I enjoyed the singers. Who can go wrong with a woman's chorus? Were I programing for a regional orchestra like ours, however, I might be tempted to avoid Mendelssohn altogether. The lightness of his orchestration and the precision in which he writes gives us so little room for error. I am glad to have played the piece nonetheless.

Now, trip away, make no stay, meet me all after I've done some more teaching, eating, and sleeping and it is again the break of day.  ¶ 7:26 AM