Back this morning from a tour with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra playing Tchaikovsky Manfred Symphony - 7 concerts in 7 different European cities in 8 days..... including travelling days to and from the UK! We had a few spare hours in Paris so managed to fit in a visit to the wonderful harp shop near the Arc de Triomphe, Le Magasin de la Harpe. Yet again, Alexandre Budin very generously gave up his time to show us the amazing historic harps he has in his workshop, a few doors down from his shop. Erards in the front of the photo below, and Pleyel chromatic harp at the back/middle. He also showed us a couple of Sylvain Blassel's harps which are kept downstairs. His small Erat harp is absolutely stunning to look at and has the most amazing tone. Here is a video of Sylvain playing Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Tarrega on the Erat. Check out his fingering of the repeated notes throughout, also his use of the little finger in the left hand. Very interesting!!! I'm going to see if I can work out using this fingering and whether I can actually use my left hand pinky on my Salvis. I fear the tension on the Salvi will be too much for my little fingers alas! It's very easy to just repeat what we have been taught and say that we don't play using our little fingers, but as Alexandre said, "why not?" why not indeed. Japanese style Erard harp - only around 7 ever built!
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My husband, as well as being a composer, is also an amazing jazz musician. So having been to so many jazz gigs and listened to so many amazing jazz musicians over the years I've always been a bit wary of jazz played on the harp... But here are 5 very different harp versions of Take Five, commonly attributed to Dave Brubeck, but was of course written by Paul Desmond, the sax player in his group. All of these harp versions are great, but I have a soft spot for Joy Yu Hoffman's version played on the chinese harp. I really like the middle section of her version, and it just sounds great on the Konghou. Park Stickney - solo harp Jakez Francois - harp with piano, drums & bass Amanda Whiting - solo harp (nice video!) Polish harpist Małgorzata Zalewska & flugel with orchestra Sarah Deere-Jones - celtic harp & guitar Holy cow - a whole new world of neurosis for harpists! Konghou Harp 47 + 47 strings,double-row strings with pedals Height: 222 cm Width: 110 cm Weight: 53 kgs Joy Yu Hoffman performing her arrangement of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" on the Kong Hou (Chinese Harp). Wow - what an amazing harpist and singer! Not being really up on the early music scene I hadn't come across her before, but stumbled across a video of her on YouTube. Arianna is a fascinating musician, being an acclaimed early music opera singer as well as harpist and has an impressive back catalogue of CDs of early music both as a harpist and separately as singer.
However her latest CDs seem to be of her own compositions played with her band, with Arianna playing triple harp, gothic harp and celtic harps as well as singing. The rest of her band are playing various early and folk string instruments (not sure what they are because of the language on the website!) and also hand percussion. The result is a very tasteful and sublime world music album which gets the thumbs up from everyone in my household - which is quite a feat as we all have very diverse tastes! Very difficult to pick a favourite track, possibly Aurora as it's a harp only track. Suite Celtic has a more traditional vibe and shows the musical excellence of all the musicians. A "chill out" track with a very wide appeal is El Llenguatge dels ocells. Although every track on this CD is fantastic. No UK dates in her concert schedule which is a shame, as I would love to see her live. |
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AuthorLauren Scott is a harpist & composer and has been blogging on Harpyness for over 10 years. If you enjoy reading Harpyness and you'd like to buy me a virtual coffee that would be very welcome. Cheers!
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