The concert’s promoters had been guilty of perpetrating a basic marketing error. What they should have promised was “Last Performance” – which is what it almost certainly was – or even “Farewell Gala Performance”. But it was not to be.What had put people off were those two dreaded words “First Performance”. Not only do they generally imply an assault on the ear-drums, but the word “First” necessarily suggests that yet more performances may be lurking round the corner.
We might have been playing it brilliantly, for all they (and we) knew. Indeed, my desk partner and I were going great guns, sawing away with the utmost confidence – until, half-way down a page, I realised that I’d turned over two pages at once, and we were some 50 bars ahead of everyone else Such an achievement alone deserved a full house. But I don’t suppose that the real reason for the lack of audience was news from Mystic Meg that our rendition might be anything less than perfectly rehearsed. Just after we’d started rehearsing it, a man with a road drill obligingly drilled through electric cables across the road, and paralysed the whole town. Then, on the way to the concert the next day, the orchestra coaches got stuck in the mother of all traffic jams, curtailing our final rehearsal. (They’re closing down Kwik-Save up the road, but sadly we can’t get our kettle drums past the check-outs.)I was thinking about all this last week when we were playing a load of modern garbage at one of our music festivals There weren’t many in the audience I don’t know if we did the piece justice. And just in case Brendan doesn’t want to go through his Frank Sinatra bit, we’re already scouring the land for people to say farewell to.
“The programme will include the New World Symphony, starring Celia Craig playing the famous Hovis segment.” It wasn’t the prospect of our cor anglais player trying to coax a tune out of a chunk of medium-sliced brown bread that had them flocking in, but the sight of Brendan leading the orchestra for the very last time.Even though we couldn’t rustle up Domingo, Haitink or Solti, or relay the concert on a giant screen above the crazy-golf course outside, or receive sealed bids for Brendan’s socks, braces etc, the event was such a success that there is talk of running a whole series of “Brendan’s Last Concerts” next summer We’re on to a winner. It was more modest in its aspirations, but no less worthy for all that. It was Brendan O’Brien’s last concert after 29 years as the orchestra’s leader “Brendan’s Last Stand” shouted the local rag. The Farewell Gala Concert played to a 2,000-plus audience glittering with royalty and VIPs inside the house, and to thousands more watching the live relay on the giant screen outside, while another few millions watched it all on TV at home.Our Bournemouth do may not quite have emulated Covent Garden’s glitzy affair. It seems that managements have at last found the key to pulling in the punters. Not because it’s the New World Symphony or the 1812; not because of a starry pas de deux or a multi-million-pound tenor aria They’ve discovered the Farewell Concert.
