Sarah
Burnett
Principal
players
Miranda Dale
Julian Tear
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Meet Sarah Burnett
Principal Bassoon
What do you enjoy about
playing with Britten Sinfonia?
Britten Sinfonia is an orchestra
that offers a vast variety.... from tiny ensembles to large chamber orchestras,
from Purcell to Frank Zappa. This not only leads to challenging instrumental
diversity but also keeps boredom at bay! It's also full of people who
enjoy what they do, are prepared to meet any challenge head on, all with
a sense of fun and pride.
When did you start
playing the bassoon?
At the age of ten I decided I
wanted to play a woodwind instrument. The local education authority gave
me an oboe to fiddle about with over the summer holidays. I adored it
and spent most waking moments making an abominable sound, driving my parents,
sisters and the local farm animals insane. At the start of the new term
it was taken away from me because ‘someone older wants to play it’. I
was distraught. Mum and Dad tried to console me by buying me a plastic
recorder as a replacement. That made me even more distraught!! Then a
friend of the family bought a new bassoon and I inherited his old one,
a Chinese "Lark" - what a misnomer! I resumed the occupation
of driving parents, sisters and farm animals mad, this time down an octave
or two, and have never looked back.
Do you make a living
playing music?
I sometimes look at the friends
with whom I went to university and wonder how they've got a five bedroom
house with two cars, three annual holidays and a weekly shop at Waitrose...
and then I remember that I'm an orchestral musician. They do something
which earns them a fortune, but they do envy me because I love what I
do and they can't believe the variety I have. I feel very fortunate to
be able to make my way in music. My other commitments are with Glyndebourne
Touring Opera and of course with the Haffner Wind Ensemble (the principal
wind section of Britten Sinfonia). Then on top of that, I have a fairly
hectic schedule playing with other orchestras on a freelance basis up
and down the country. I am also a professor at the Royal College of Music.
I adore teaching and relish the individual challenges that each student
brings to a lesson.
What has been the most
memorable experience in your career so far?
The first orchestral experience
I ever had was with the National Youth Orchestra. I had only been playing
for 18 months - to this day I maintain I was only brought in as a mascot!
The first thing we played was Shostakovich's 5th Symphony. I was so bowled
over with the sheer volume of it that I was unable to play for the first
three pages. Just as well I was only 8th bassoon! Then later in my youth
orchestra career, I was lucky enough to work with Bernard Haitink. This
time it was with the European Community Youth Orchestra at the Concertgebouw
in Amsterdam doing Mahler 9. The silence at the end of this monumental
work seemed to last forever, with most of the audience, the orchestra
and the conductor himself in tears. AMAZING!!!!
…and the funniest?
Unfortunately I am a terrible
giggler. It takes very little to set me off ... usually just a loud instrumental
squeak will do. The audience is also a fabulous source of entertainment.
Once, years ago, I was playing a particularly modern wind quintet which
was ferociously difficult and needed full concentration. Halfway through,
an elderly lady said to her neighbour, in what she obviously thought was
a whisper, ‘Oi, Bessy! Have they finished tuning up yet?’ We didn't make
it to the end...
Do you have time for
anything else?
I'm so little at home that one
of my favourite pastimes is just being there; pottering in the garden,
cooking, and having friends round for supper. I'm also a complete bookworm.
Sailing used to be a passion, but neither time nor money permit right
now. One day...
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