Today is the tour's last day in Las Palmas. After this morning's rehearsal a few orchestra members did more exploring, but most were content to prepare for tonight's concert. It's a moderately challenging program for both audience and orchestra, particularly Bartok's potent, even violent, Miraculous MandarinSuite.

Players who were members during the Lorin Maazel era remember some of his tours, with dozens of works in multiple programs. Percussionist Donald Miller told me about the time the maestro turned to him at the stage door and inquired, to Miller's astonishment, what symphony they were playing that night -- and then went onstage and conducted the Tchaikovsky Pathetique from memory.

By comparison, this tour's repertoire is quite narrow. It includes two programs which are repeated. One is the Beethoven Violin Concerto, with Frank Peter Zimmermann as soloist at all stops, and the Stravinsky Rite of Spring. The other consists of Alfred Schnittke's (K)ein Sommernachtstraum, Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin Suite, and the Schubert Ninth, a Cleveland Orchestra specialty. A third concert, to be played in Paris only, consists of the Schubert along with Ives's Central Park in the Dark, and the European premiere of the recently reconstructed Emerson Concerto, also by Charles Ives.

All the works are pieces the orchestra has recently performed, so rehearsals are mostly for brush-up and to adjust for each hall's unique characteristics. This gives the orchestra an even better chance to perform at their peak, even when they're not as well-rested as they might like.

That's really not much of an issue right now, but it will be in a few days. The orchestra's next stop is Tenerife (most Americans I spoke with say it as Ten-uh-REEF, but the locals on the islands pronounce it Ten-uh-REE-feh). After two concerts and a day off, Tuesday begins the more intense leg of the tour. Each day will be a new city, so they'll fly in, rehearse, perform, sleep, and fly again. This is the kind of schedule which, if maintained, can have the players wondering what city they're in when they awake -- and according to some longtime orchestra members, it's the kind of schedule which used to be the norm. Tours were longer then, too, they say.

Fortunately, the stop-and-go section is only three cities, Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia. Though the musicians won't have much time to more than catch their breaths and unpack a little in Paris between arrival and concert, they'll stay two days in that city. On that second day the concert is at 4:30 PM, so they'll get to enjoy an evening in Paris before heading for home on Monday the first of February.

David Roden
WKSU Assistant Program Director