I had a clarinet lesson this evening. Cheryll sprung this on me – she had given me the music a few weeks ago but I’d laughed and put it aside. I don’t do demisemiquavers*. But she issued a challenge.
I’m working on it.
- let alone hemidemisemiquavers.
Razor-blade of Life
Still sliding
Isn’t that melody also called Moscow Nights? I remember when President and Mrs. Reagan had a White House dinner for the Gorbachevs that they danced to it and supposedly it was a favorite I of the Gs
Funny the silly trivia one remembers.
Hello Kipper. Yes. A few years ago when I sang with a male voice choir, it was part of our repertoire for a while. It was written (well the music was written) as Leningradskie Vecheri (Leningrad Nights) by Vasily Solovyov- Sedol in 1955. It IS odd what one remembers, but I must admit that I checked with Google for the spelling of most of that information.
Remarkably, that piece seems to have at least four names. Both Tim and I know it as Midnight in Moscow, and I looked it up under Moscow Nights and Russian Tango too – and now it’s also called Leningrad Nights. I think I remember reading that it’s based on an old Russian folk tune – but so many things are.
It’s quite tricky to play in this arrangement, not least because of the range, from the lowest note on the clarinet to one so high I’d never learned it and had to look it up. Not the highest though, there are still a few more – and I don’t know them either.