Here Comes Treble: A Piccolo Player's Memoirs
...At the age of thirteen I was the youngest member of the SABC Junior Orchestra, the only youth orchestra in South Africa. My position was Third Flute and Piccolo. I was delighted to be with people like me, who played and enjoyed classical music; who didn’t laugh at me or point me out as the only one who didn’t know what was number one on the hit parade. After years of being an outsider, it was marvelous to be accepted...
In this gloriously enthusiastic column Isabel Bradley conveys the immense and intense joy of playing in an orchestra.
Isabel would like to hear from others who were her contemporaries in the SABC Junior Orchestra.
Experience the pleasure of reading more of Isabel's words by clicking on Here Comes Treble in the menu on this page.
The Orchestra ground to a halt, rather like the Titanic trying to avoid an ice-berg.
“Piccolo – what do you think you’re doing?” the conductor bellowed.
“Er – everyone else was playing four in a bar, but my part is in three…” I quavered.
“That’s because you don’t play in this movement! Don’t you know the meaning of the word, tacet? It means, ‘keep quiet’!” the terrifying man thundered. Thankfully, he turned his attention from me. “Right, let’s take that from the top,” he said. His baton lifted and fell.
I hunched in my seat at the end of the row of oboists and flautists, searching my part for instructions such as ‘tacet’, scared to squeak any note, only daring to speak when spoken to.
At the age of thirteen I was the youngest member of the SABC Junior Orchestra, the only youth orchestra in South Africa. My position was Third Flute and Piccolo. I was delighted to be with people like me, who played and enjoyed classical music; who didn’t laugh at me or point me out as the only one who didn’t know what was number one on the hit parade. After years of being an outsider, it was marvelous to be accepted.
We rehearsed in a large recording studio, M1, in Broadcast House in the centre of Johannesburg. Each Saturday morning, I caught a bus into town. With a bag containing my flute and music folder swinging from my shoulder, I strode through the busy city streets gazing at tempting clothing displays in department store windows, planning which book I would buy later, or deciding that my pocket money would be better spent on sheet music or recordings.
Arriving at Studio M1, I opened the heavy sound-proof doors to be met by a glorious cacophony: While string players practiced pieces in ghostly shrieks, an oboist tested a new reed, making noises reminiscent of a hen straining to lay a giant egg. Clarinetists made sputtering sounds like faulty fireworks, and the bassoons delighted in creating increasingly rude noises. Trumpets wheezed asthmatically, while a trombonist skidded his slide up and down, searching for notes. Percussionists clattered and banged, sounding like a kitchen in turmoil. I sat at my music stand, unpacked my instruments, and added piccolo screeches to the increasing pandemonium. My friends arrived, Alistair, the trumpeter and Fiona and Willie, both ’cellists. We chatted at the tops our voices until Walter Mony, the conductor, arrived. He rapped his baton on his music desk and a hush fell.
Although we were young, we were technically very good, many of us of solo standard. We were enthusiastic, in love with music, and often fleetingly in love with each other. In its best days the orchestra had about eighty members. We played all kinds of classical music, from Debussy to Mussorgsky, exciting works that showed off our abilities. We performed symphonies such as Beethoven’s Seventh and Dvorak’s New World. What joy to be seated in the centre of that glorious sweep of sound, to add the piercing notes of the piccolo, shining like the sun peaking around a storm-cloud, or – as I progressed – to play the soaring principal flute parts.
We learnt to dress appropriately and behave with decorum – at least during rehearsals and performances. Concert dress consisted of black evening gowns for the girls, tuxedoes for the boys. It was exciting to dress with elegance and fun to flirt with the boys.
The Orchestra toured South Africa, performing in provincial capitals and country towns. Before each performance, we attended mayoral receptions, where we noticed that the smaller the town, the bigger and flashier the chain on the chest of the mayor, and the longer his speech! We traveled in luxury coaches, singing at the tops of our voices. No-one was spared: “There was Olga, Olga, being very vulgar, in the store, in the store…”
There were also international tours: in July of my final year in high school, the orchestra toured Switzerland, participating in the International Festival of Youth Orchestras in Lausanne. That was my first taste of international travel, though certainly not my last.
During a tour of Namibia from the Etosha Pan to Swakopmund, long after official lights-out, the other girls and I talked of music, men and philosophy. To my surprise, they took my viewpoints seriously and laughed at my jokes. We enjoyed our differences, and I learned the importance of individuality.
During the Orchestra’s tour of Argentina and Uruguay, we gorged ourselves on tender beef steaks at every town and city we visited and spent small fortunes on leather coats and handbags. Walter Mony quipped that we should be renamed the LSO – as in Leather Symphony Orchestra! I played the solo part in a Vivaldi piccolo concerto for the President of Uruguay and his guests in his official residence, high in the mountains. We traveled for three days down seemingly endless grass plains to the ski resort of Bariloche at the southern tip of South America, where we cavorted in the snow that lay on the ground even though it was Christmas, and mid-summer in the southern hemisphere.
Over the years I made many friends among the members of the Orchestra. Our harpist, Felicia, could have modeled for every known Italian portrait of the Madonna with her innocent, heart-shaped face and black hair that rippled below her waist; she was the naughtiest, most delightful girl I’ve ever met. Dear Michael was always shorter than his double bass. Paul eventually emigrated to England to follow a career performing on original instruments. David the clarinetist joined the orchestra at the age of eleven, breaking my record for being the youngest member. Our leader for a time, Gerard Korsten, is now an internationally-renowned conductor based in Europe.
When I was twenty-four, I left the Orchestra, too old to be considered a junior any longer. Since then I have never experienced the thrill of being at the centre of glorious symphonic sound, where music overwhelms the senses.
I now play in an amateur orchestra in which there are five former Junior Orchestra members. We are older, grayer and maybe wiser. This orchestra is smaller, and doesn’t approach the wonderful performance standards reached in those far-off, Junior days.
Youth Orchestras are an important part of the musical life of a country, educating tomorrow’s musicians in performance practice. More important, though, is the role they play in the lives of young musicians, helping them attain self-confidence and individuality and providing an opportunity to form friendships that last a lifetime.
Until next week: “here comes Treble!”
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