the show must go on – but on what?

The London Symphony Orchestra recently had a mishap of mammoth proportions occur on a trip to Dijon, France this past weekend. A French ferry strike led to the stranding of the truck containing almost all of the orchestra’s instruments, wardrobe, and music. The musicians had been flown into Dijon, but the truck could not make it over the Channel in time. Read on to see what happened – the orchestra managers must have been having absolute fits trying to work this one out in time!

The Seventh Symphony of Gustav Mahler presents as great a challenge as any musician might fear, but by late Saturday afternoon it was rapidly growing more difficult for the London Symphony Orchestra.

Although they had arrived in Dijon, in eastern France, in plenty of time for their concert at 8pm, it appeared that they would have to perform without most of their instruments, their music and, in many cases, their clothes, all of which were in a lorry on the other side of the Channel that was edging slowly through Kent in a tailback caused by striking French ferry workers.

That evening Kathryn McDowell, the managing director of the LSO, told the audience that the orchestra had decided not to cancel its performance. Instead, the musicians had embarked on a frantic attempt to beg and borrow nearly 100 instruments from across Burgundy. Mrs McDowell told The Times: “Normally when we are travelling a third of the instruments are carried by hand. This time we had played on Friday night. People were going home and then getting up to go straight to the airport, and we thought it would be easier to put nearly all the instruments in the lorry.”

Alas, the orchestra had not been aware of the strike by SeaFrance workers that had led to huge queues on the roads of southern Kent. On Saturday morning they remained hopeful that the instruments would arrive, but they made a tentative inquiry with the organisers in Dijon: was there any chance that they might lay their hands on 28 violins, 11 violas, a full complement of cellos and double bases, two flutes – ideally solid silver – bassoons, horns, trumpets, trombones, tubas, various percussion instruments, timpani and some cow bells?

Read the rest of the article here.