In Holland for a fabulous six-concert tour of Wheel concerts with a new wheel made specially for these dates so we don't have to hoik it over and back from the UK. It looks great - quite a different design to the original, this will probably become our International Wheel and be shipped from one country to the next as the UK one stays on home territory.
So... the concerts have been going really well, the Wheel serving up some great programmes, audiences getting right into the spirit of it, promoters loving it. Each night we’ve been winding down in some great restaurants and tonight is no exception - we’re in Haarlem for the penultimate concert and the restaurant stayed open specially for us. After a delicious meal we returned to the car in the town centre parking garage to find that several cars, including our own, had been victims of smash-and-grab. The horrifying discovery that two bags were gone from the boot - one containing my laptop, passport and various personal things, the other, much more shockingly, containing all the viola and cello parts for ALL the music to be performed in these concerts. That means 40 string quartets, the parts we’ve worked from and carried with us for many years, some going back as far as the beginning of the group in 1972. It’s hard to explain the enormity of this - any musician will know the importance of having your own well-loved marked part, with fingerings, bowings, cues, as well as clever page-turn tricks, all essential for a smooth performance under pressure, especially when the Wheel can throw up any one of 40 works! We were devastated. After chasing madly round the immediate vicinity of the garage, we made our way to the Police Station where we spent the next 3 hours filing a report. It appeared we were not alone - this had been a professional job and 7 or 8 other cars had been done at the same time. Though they got a laptop from us, we had to laugh at the image of the thieves discovering only clothes and string quartet parts in the other bag! “Goddammit Henk, these are only viola and cello parts too!”....The lovely young man from the concert hall who stayed with us till 3.30 am was a star - buying us tea and coffee to keep us going, helping us get phone numbers etc. to start the recovery process from this horrible event.
We made our sorry way back to Utrecht, cold air blowing in through the broken side window, no-one saying much. Bed at 5 and up at 8 to start contacting the British Embassy for a replacement passport to get me home the next day - had to go back to Amsterdam and wait three hours while it was processed. In the meantime the others were busy sourcing replacement music, not only for tonight’s performance but also for the many concerts in the coming weeks, through buying, borrowing and downloading. Our manager contacted the media and had an amazing response - TV, radio, Online media and newspapers all grabbed the story and ran. We had appeals for help in finding the stolen bags, we offered a reward for anyone who did, and we had literally hundreds of messages of sympathy from colleagues worldwide offering to send music. To ease the stress we decided to offer a fixed programme for that night’s concert - pieces which could have come up on the Wheel - the audience were delighted and full of compassion for our plight (especially me in a borrowed dress and ill-fitting shoes - our concert clothes were taken too...). Amazingly, when we were about to perform Shostakovich 8 we asked a lovely man from the front row to spin the Wheel just for fun, and it landed on... Shostakovich 8!!
The next day we made our weary way home and began the huge task of assembling all the missing music for the following concerts. This meant getting composers to email their scores, searching through all our spare music, asking friends for lends, and buying the rest. The free weekend was not as relaxing as we’d hoped... And the heart sinks as you look at the virgin score, all that work needing to be replicated in the next days.
The title of this Blog suggests that there was a happy twist - and that was indeed the case. On Monday morning as I was about to start the long-winded process of filing an insurance claim, (how do you explain the value of all this music to a loss-adjuster??), I got a call from a Dutch policeman. He said he had a couple of bags belonging to me, with some clothes, passport, various things including...“sheets of music”! The excitement in my voice probably seemed over the top to him, but I tried to keep calm as I asked how many “sheets”? “Lots”, he said. YIPPEE!! Incredibly, this guy knew nothing of our filed report but had been attending a road traffic accident on a flyover when he spotted lots of dumped cases in the wasteland under the bridge. There was a canal they were probably aiming for but, happily for all their victims, they missed!
We had a few more days of suspense before finding out what we had actually recovered. Our manager was in London so couldn’t go and sign for the stuff till Thursday, by which time we were already in Glasgow for a couple of days’ teaching and our next Wheel concert. This being a lunchtime hour-long show, there was less pressure to have all the music to hand, but nevertheless the wonderful staff at RCS sourced the last remaining missing works from their library. We were able to play everything the wheel selected and even added a little extra as an opener. All went well and the audience had a ball, but I was still eager for the tantalizing possibility of getting my own precious parts back. Unbelievably, though Constance our manager moved with fantastic speed to collect the stolen goods and get the music to DHL, they managed to mess up somewhat, so instead of the music being at home on our return we had to wait till Monday, exactly a week since hearing of the recovery, to finally receive that parcel, open it and find... ALL the missing music! Not a sheet out of place, as if the thieves had carefully packed it back knowing its importance!
This delivery came just in time for us to set off for Birmingham where we had some masterclasses to give at the Conservatoire followed by another Wheel performance that night in the fabulous Town Hall. It was lovely to have all the original parts back but we’ve also had our eyes opened to the freshness of a performance from an unmarked part that isn’t totally dog-eared. Some of those old parts may be consigned to the archive...and we’ll definitely get round to scanning the entire 250-odd string quartets repertoire one day and saving it to a memory stick. Wonder how long that would take...
For anyone wondering, we did of course have our instruments in the restaurant with us. I have no idea what possessed me to leave that bag in the boot of the car, but I never would have thought it necessary to haul cases of music around with us for security. As one supportive Tweeter commented in response to a rather ungenerous Tweet berating us for being so stupid as to leave all that precious music in the car, “Yes, I suppose the only option left open to touring quartets is to eat at drive-in restaurants!”
What a life-affirming story this was. We’d like to send out many heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped along the way and for all the support and generosity of spirit we were lucky enough to receive.
