³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Sometimes, things go wrong that simply cannot be foreseen. This was the case last week when, due to ill health, Lisa Milne was unable to go through with the performance of our composer-in-association Simon Holt's final Radio 3 commission for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ National Orchestra of Wales.

It is always disappointing when something like this happens - for the players who have spent their Easter break learning the incredibly challenging parts, and especially for the composer - but these things do happen. The immediate result is a flurry of activity. A replacement, or replacement work, has to be found, players rescheduled or booked, rehearsals reorganised.

And so it came to pass that, after all my smugness, the violas are playing in both halves of last Friday's concert after all. As Simon's The Yellow Wallpaper was a commission that would be premièred in Friday evening's concert, it was impossible to find another singer to take Ms Milne's place, so unfortunately it had to be dropped from the programme altogether. Fortunately Lisa was well enough to sing the relatively short last movement of Mahler's Fourth Symphony (she sung the movement with Utah Symphony Orchestra and Thierry Fischer just a couple of weeks ago) - and she performed it beautifully.

Instead of Simon Holt's work, we played Haydn's Symphony 104. We performed this work on our recent north Wales tour, so it was still fresh in our memories. We had a quick rehearsal of the work with principal conductor, Thierry Fischer, as each conductor will have their own interpretation of the work. For example, Thierry likes Haydn played completely without vibrato, whereas when we last played it, the conductor had asked for a little bit of vibrato. It sounds like such a small thing, but it does make a difference.

The second half of the concert remained unchanged and was my first performance of Mahler's Fourth Symphony! I'm a huge fan of Mahler. I know some people find his music over the top, overly self-indulgent, a bit too like an overly rich dessert, but I genuinely could listen to the symphonies and sing cycles all day.

The Fourth contains the song Das Himmlische Leben which is a child's vision of heaven. Surprisingly, this was also Mahler's starting point for the gargantuan Third Symphony and so, while they couldn't be more different in scope, the Third Symphony (which I actually shed a little tear in when we performed it last season - that last movement!) and the Fourth Symphony are intimately related.

Conductor Kenneth Woods in his blog A View From The Podium expresses it brilliantly when he writes "we have two symphonies... made of the same musical DNA - it's like a pair of siblings, or even fraternal twins - they are made of the same genes, but they grow up to be completely dissimilar people".

As a player, Mahler is always a demanding play. There are always lots of performance directions and subtle changes of tempo and character. In rehearsal, I suffered a terrible attack of brain freeze and lack of co-ordination and kept putting my mute on when the score read dampfer ab (mute off) and taking it off when it said dampfer auf (mute on). Thankfully normal brain function was regained by the concert!