by Richard Harwood (Principal Cello)
The RPO recently presented the Pinchas Zukerman Summer Music Festival at Cadogan Hall. It brought back a lot of happy memories from January's US tour, which began with ten days of touring the east coast with Pinchas (with me as a Guest Principal), and led to me being offered the Principal appointment by the end of the second part of the tour in San Francisco.
by Patrick Flanaghan (Principal Cor Anglais)
May has probably been my craziest month since joining the orchestra in August 2016 because I played Cor Anglais for half the time and had the dubious pleasure of covering Principal Oboe for the other half.
Playing Cor, the month began with our Symphonic Rock concert at the Royal Albert Hall – a staple in the RPO’s schedule, good fun and always a full house. During the interval I met some of our “Young Professionals” club members. Meeting sponsors is an important part of our job and it’s particularly interesting meeting similar aged people from different fields and answering their large array of questions on the life of a musician.
by Peter Graham (Tutti Second Violin)
On paper, April appeared to be a familiar looking month for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, a variety of concerts in many of our regular haunts: Cadogan Hall, the Royal Festival Hall, Hull City Hall, The Hawth Crawley and the Royal & Derngate theatre Northampton with long-standing established conductors such as Thomas Dausgaard, Hilary Davan Wetton and Alan Buribayev. However, on closer inspection, something unusual caught my eye which turned out to be the most goosebump-enducing patch of work. It was the great honour of accompanying the finalists of the Yehudi Menuhin violin competition in the beautiful Victoria Hall, Geneva.
by Fraser Gordon (Principal Contrabassoon)
It’s quite tricky to not feel smug about a flight to Florida on a cold January day, something we at the RPO are lucky to experience every couple of years. But how to pack for a three week trip which starts with warm weather (Florida), goes cold for a few days (New York), then gets even colder (Indiana), and ends up warm again (California)?
