I’m slowly recovering from a really fun gig last night as part of West End Baroque. I now have even more admiration for Alexander Reinagle, and his introduction of the fortepiano to American opera orchestra pits. Why? Well, it’s quite dark in the Drake, and I was using ForScore on my iPad so that I didn’t need to have lights to read the scores. The piano has black naturals, and in the half-light, in my peripheral vision, the keyboard was just a sea of indistinguishable black. I’m not quite sure how I managed to get my right note average up to an acceptable level, until I started using the stand lights that Alison had brought along – pointing at the keyboard instead of at the parts.

note the Star Trek playing cards propping up the piano legs

I particularly enjoyed playing Niel Gow’s The Flaggon as a piano solo, just going round and round it until I thought the audience’s attention was starting to wane (although some later told me I should have kept going longer). That’s what comes of playing a gig so soon after hearing Philip Glass playing Music in 12 Parts in its entirety last weekend. But after playing quite a lot of notes myself last night, the tune that is stuck in my head is Thomas Calvert of Kelso’s Downshire Camperdown Quick Step. Come along to our fiddle band gigs to hear it again …