NEW YORK, Feb 2 (BUS): After enduring repeated COVID-19 tests and a 5,400-mile (8,690-kilometre) flight from London to become the first international symphony to tour the US in 23 months, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra has arrived in California to discover some unrepentant brass. They do it.
“Cargo passengers spoiled one of the platforms, so no shipment of instruments arrived,” said Matthew Knight, co-director, Trombone. “Our trumpet division had to borrow horns from Yamaha and throw the first concert on them — and then rent or buy tails, because all the tails were in the trunk.”
With their own instruments and clothing in hand, the Royal Orchestra completed a US tour of 14 concerts in nine cities Monday night, the first international orchestra to play the Carnegie role since February 24, 2020, a gap caused by the pandemic. The tour shows that such events can take place as the pandemic continues, the AP reports.
New music director Vasily Petrenko and cellist Kian Soltani received a long and raucous welcome for Britten Grimes’ Britten Grimes’ Britten for Sea Interlace, Elgar Concerto for Cello and Holst’s The Planets. The program was broadcast over the radio and broadcast over the Internet.
Before opening remarks, Petrenko took the unusual step of using a wireless microphone to address the nearly full house in the 2,804-seat auditorium, speaking proudly of his music becoming the first orchestra in the United States.
“This means for us that anything is possible, even in such difficult conditions,” Petrenko said.
It’s been 708 days since conductor John Elliot Gardiner led the Orchester Révolutionnaire et Romantique in Beethoven’s Eighth and Ninth Symphonyes at Carnegie, which was closed from March 13, 2020 until last October 6. Delaying a more stable schedule for large-scale performance until 2022.
The Royal Philharmonic traveled with the director of the orchestra, the tour director, a three-stage crew, and six assistants, and filled the Carnegie Theater with 104 players. The orchestra began its tour in California – Santa Barbara on January 11, followed by concerts in Palm Desert, Northridge, Costa Mesa and Davis – and then to Orlando, Florida for residency at the new Steinmetz Auditorium. The tour concluded with shows in Fairfax, Virginia; New Brunswick, New Jersey, and she finally returned to Carnegie Hall for the first time since 1997.
Three buses and a truck were needed for the travel group, which were tested daily.
“Shipping is one of the costs that has impacted us the most this year,” said James Williams, managing director of the orchestra. “Logistics, shipping and all of those things, costs have gone up exponentially. So, flying our instruments here has cost us a significant amount of money more than it would normally have cost us in the pre-pandemic time.”
A handful of musicians, in single digits, have tested positive for COVID-19 and were left in their hotel rooms in Los Angeles and Orlando for isolation until they tested negative on consecutive days. Some were released in time to join the tour.
“It was incredibly challenging for all the reasons you can imagine,” Williams said. “It’s just unforeseen consequences of the issues related to COVID, and this is changing the testing systems, the players contracting with COVID and what you do with those, how you can replace them, the logistics.”
The musicians of the Royal Philharmonic are self-employed, like other Great London Orchestras.
“If they don’t work, they won’t get paid, so the incentive for them to keep them safe is very high, because if they get hit in a hotel room for five days missing five concerts, that’s five fees they don’t get paid. So it’s a real challenge for them,” Williams said. Hats off to risk.
Pandemic lockdowns have wiped out players’ income.
“A lot of our work disappeared overnight,” said Knight, vice-chairman of the orchestra board. “That’s why we’re so happy when a tour like this happens – well, it’s going to be a good January. We’ll survive.”
When concerts first resumed during the pandemic, they were without spectators and streaming. The musicians were 2 or 2 1/2 yards away.
“Live music doesn’t work without an audience,” Knight said. “It was a very strange feeling to sit in an empty Albert Hall and try and really perform.”
The Vienna Orchestra is the next European orchestra scheduled to arrive in the United States, its first appearance in America in three years. Valerie Gergiev leads performances at Carnegie February 25-27 and Hayes Hall in Naples, Florida, on March 1 and 2, although the orchestra has canceled late February concerts with him in Germany and France due to positive COVID-19 results within the orchestra.
Williams says the Royal Philharmonic tour is proof that concerts can go on safely.
“I really hope it will give other orchestras, both locally and internationally, confidence that it is actually possible to achieve these things,” he said. “It’s tough, but it’s totally possible. And I think now we all have to start thinking about how we’re going to live with this virus. It’s not going away.”