In general, if you’ve been to the exhibition before, you know whether you should go again, because it’s quite similar. Some long-term exhibitors didn’t make it this year (OMI and Courtly Music are two that I miss). There are a lot fewer keyboard makers with a room. But there are chances to play most of the instruments you’ll hear this week, and to buy a lot of good music.
The thing I like about going on Wednesday is that it’s usually the least crowded day, and the vendors aren’t anything like as tired of dealing with the public as they will be later in the week. I usually save my serious purchases for Friday or Saturday, so the only thing I actually bought was a piece of recorder music which I’m currently working on from a borrowed copy. Mostly I just wandered around and played instruments that I have no intention of buying, but wanted to see what they were like to play.
Early brass is better represented than it has been at some festivals. “Musikinstrumentenbau Münkwitz”:http://www.trumpetmaker.com/ let me play a baroque trumpet. It’s actually no harder to play the in between notes on trumpet than it is to play the hard notes on a serpent. And the good notes slot better than anything slots on a cornetto. So if I had anywhere to play one, I would be lusting after one. And Lynn Elder has a cornetto, two sackbuts, and a serpent, as well as lutes, hurdy-gurdy’s, crumhorns… Unfortunately, I can’t play any of those instrurments, because I don’t do sackbut, and the other ones are all designed for people with bigger hands than I have.
“De Luna Harps”:http://www.delunaharps.com/ has a nice selection in a wide range of styles and price ranges. After I fumbled through the one piece I know by heart on 3 or 4 of them, I was starting to remember it better. The Camac pedal harp is definitely too high tension for a casual player, even if the player were rich enough to afford a pedal harp. I enjoyed hearing what a small harp the size of my harpsicle but costing 5 times as much sounds like.
The “Wolkenstayn”:http://www.wolkenstayn.de/ portativ organ was fun to play. It’s small enough to hold and work the bellows with one hand while you play with the other, or you can do what I did and leave it on a table with one person working the bellows and another person playing with both hands. There are ingenious little clips to hold down a key if you want it to be a drone.
h3. Facilities
The most obvious problem is the elevators. For some reason, although there are many vigorous people who would be much happier taking the stairs for a few floors than waiting 10 or 15 minutes for an elevator, which is then overcrowded when it comes, the Radisson Hotel does not allow non-emergency access to its stairwells. There are four elevators and they go up and down in sync, so if you hit the wrong time in the cycle, you can wait a long time.
This is more of a problem for the people who want to go to the 9th floor. The Mezzanine is accessible without elevator. There are an extra two elevators that go only as far as the sixth floor. Unfortunately, you have to call them separately, and it’s hard to keep an eye on all six even when all six have been called for the direction you’re going it. I expect the cooperative spirit of BEMF attendees will evolve a system for dealing with that problem, though.
LayMusic.org 