Its snowing once again. The roads are gritted and clear and life continues as normal in Munich. The pavements have so much salt on them I can feel my blood pressure rising just by walking on them. To be honest there is so much grit that despite the fact that I am walking on snow, it looks like ice cream full of chocolate chunks and has a unnerving grippy surface. Walking back from the restaurant, Chi, Tom and I try to skid along the main platz but are unsuccessful. These clever Germans have managed to take all the fun out of the snow. I think they may have used all of our grit supplies as well. In the main Rathausplatz, there is more of the stuff in a small area than Boris managed to find for the whole of Greater London. Where I live, on a hill in Surrey, the council never salted our roads, so to get to work we had to borrow some Maldon from the neighbours darling.

Anyway, it does look very pretty here; the beautiful buildings in the centre of town look like the icing sugar dusted cakes in the bakery and the warm and inviting cellars with their vaulted ceilings, roaring fires and local food and beer look especially tempting today. However, on this whistlestop tour of Germany, there isn’t enough time today-maybe after the concert…

The hall in Munich is interesting. Although it is quite reverberant, it isn’t always easy to hear what everyone else is doing on the stage-a bit of a problem. They have these plastic discs hanging above our heads which I think can change the acoustic a bit, although to be honest, I can’t hear any difference. JEG really uses these seating calls to try out different seating arrangements. Quite often, he will move the trombones from one side of the hall to the other because it sounds better. Last night he moved the horns closer to my section, and in Beethoven 4, Dave Pyatt was sat right next to me! I enjoy this aspect of working with JEG. He’ll often start the rehearsal with the overture and then jump down off the stage to walk around the hall to listen. Then he’ll jump back up and ask Andrew Haveron to jump down and have a listen. He hasn’t asked me to jump down yet though. When he is happy with the arrangement, we will often just play through a few bits that didn’t go as well as we would have liked and then we go off to get changed.

On this occasion I trot off down the road to the nearest Irish pub with Alan, our Irish stage manager to watch Wales (hopefully) beat the English. Being half Welsh and half English, I can’t really lose, but in all honesty, my shirt is always red. Its incredible how many rugby matches we end up watching abroad, I remember a very memorable match we watched at 2am in Beijing a few years ago. Alan and I have already planned to watch the final match of the 6 nations at midnight in a bar in Chicago-but today we are both singing from the same hymn sheet. Frustratingly, I have to leave 10 minutes into the second half when the outcome is far from decided, but I do really need to be on stage for the overture. I am promised the final score by text message as soon as it happens.

The hall is full, and I spot Anne Sophie Mutter in the audience and also Madge from neighbours, although it could just be her doppelganger. But its definitely Anne Sophie-better play well. After a quick chat with JEG about appogiaturas and stuff we take to the stage and launch into the overture and then No.4. This is one of my favourites although it has a terrifying opening where the woodwind and horns have to hold a unison B flat very quietly for what seems like hours. All goes very well and the audience really enjoy the energy produced in the performance. I really enjoy the text message that confirms the Welsh victory. JEG remarks that I now have a smile on my face and he now doesn’t! I guess the other half of his family doesn’t come from Wales then.

The second half of the show is our last performance of No.5 and the orchestra really goes for it. Next stop Leipzig.

Leipzig, when we arrive on the train still shows a lot of its East German past. The hotel looks like its in the middle of a building site, but the welcome is very warm. Just as well as its snowing again. The Gewandhaus is a modern concert hall with a long tradition and I really like the sound we can make. The concert is sold out and when i walk onto the stage it seems that everyone is wearing a grey suit. It is quite an intimidating hall as the audience is seated all around the orchestra. There are about 10 rows of seats to the side and behind, I feel a little like we are about to be fed to the lions. There is a little light relief however when Alan and Dan have a little trouble with the conductors rostrum. There followed a brief Laural and Hardy homage as they both struggled to get the safety bar from JEG’s box-he’s such a risk taker- and eventually they give up and Alan slams it back down onto the stage. The audience laugh and applaud them both and the tension is broken. There is a slightly tense atmosphere before we start the piano concerto as earlier in th rehearsal we discovered that it had been tuned to 444 which is much higher in pitch than we play. So much hand wringing and handbag bashing ensues and finally the tuner is made to bring it down to pitch! Its not until the end of the long first tutti when she comes in that we discover if he has done it or not. I feel like Han solo waiting to see if Obi Wan has managed to disable the tractor beam in Star Wars.

He did.

Anyway, for us the tour is over. We are now sitting in a very snowy Berlin airport for our plane which is already 2 hours delayed. I don’t know what time I’ll get home and tomorrow I have to be at the US embassy at 8am for my visa appointment and then the concert at the barbican. Maybe I’ll see you there, I hope you enjoy the Beethoven as much as I have.

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