At this point, Keith Millar, another percussionist, who had been offering me some witty advice on pre- concert nerves, suddenly murmured "Excuse me", strode three paces to the gleaming xylophone and snatched up the sticks. The baton flicked down; Millar began playing fast, furious, perfect music.Nobody made anything of it. Two minutes later, Andy Barclay ran in, cursing a failed railway system, scooped up the sticks, and played the second run-through with such bravura that the harpist, Rachel Masters, whispered, ironically, "Very nice".When you are within the gut of an orchestra, even in rehearsal, it is hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer sound. Except this was first thing in the morning and the percussionist due to play the xylophone, Andy Barclay, had not arrived.The orchestra rustled, the jovial conductor Bramwell Tovey, miles away down there in front, began to raise his baton. By osmosis it seemed (I could never read the conductor's winks and nods) the orchestra suddenly understood that they were to play Falla's Ritual Fire Dance, the opening bars of which feature a xylophone crashing over the top.
In a vast, chilly hall in Blackheath, south London, musicians wandered in from a grey Saturday morning chattering about parking spaces and laughing, They were .. casual Yes, that's the word. Seventy- eight bars in total, or 624 "diggas", which I practised with the triangle suspended from a saucepan on the mantelpiece weighted down with a copy of The Writers and Artists Yearbook.Two days later I attended the first rehearsal. It was from Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio espagnole: play 13 bars, rest for 12, play 14, rest 13, then play 12 very softly indeed And repeat. But finally she said, "You'll do" and the dream was on.In three days' time I was to play at the Festival Hall in one of the LPO's hour-long family concerts My part was not huge, but scary. And try holding the rubber bit" - which sounded funny, so I almost laughed. You have to be facing the complexity of orchestral sheet music and experience the tension created by an audience of one to understand how hard that was Rachel said, "I should use one hand instead of two. So here we were.Rachel watched me go digga-digga on the bright steel in semi-quavers.
After much debate, the LPO agreed to let me play the triangle in one concert if I passed the audition. But that was the point.I had wanted to peer behind the cloak that separates concert-goers from a human understanding of orchestral performance But I've only got a measly grade four piano. But by now my hands were shaking and my shirt was drenched unpersonably in sweat; she might as well have asked me to play the tuba with my nose. It was a tiny space crammed with boxes, except for four square feet near the door where we squeezed in and Rachel, principal percussionist, set up a bright silver triangle on a stand. "Play this," she ordered, handing over some music. Technically it was an equipment room, but that's just semantics. Here I had my audition for the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
