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 Site © 1999-2008 Rothwell Temperance Band and All Rights Reserved. |
25th September 2004 - Swiss Open, LucerneFriday After an excellent weekend in 2000, the band this year decided to return to the Swiss Open contest. Unfortunately, we booked it before we knew that we had qualified for the British Open, so we ended up having two contests on consecutive weekends, one in Birmingham, and the other in Lucerne, Switzerland. 
The format of the contest had changed since the last time we competed there, with just a single contest for both the Swiss Open and European Open contests. The European Open champions would be the band placed first, whilst the Swiss Open champions would be the highest placed Swiss band. Each band would play a set arrangement of a hymn tune, Abide with Me, then a test piece and finally a march. The band submitted the names of three test pieces from a set list, and the organisers allocated pieces to each band. We played Carnival Overture by Dvorak, which was a very challenging and complex piece of music, with some very difficult keys to play in during the middle section. We had been rehearsing mainly for the British Open, whilst still running through the required pieces occasionally. During the final week before the Swiss Open we were also requested to play for a live Swiss Radio broadcast on the afternoon of the contest. This involved selecting and rehearsing concert material to play. After an intense week’s rehearsal after the British Open, the band met up at 1pm on the Friday to have a final practice before taking a coach to the Airport. Our first problem occurred when Alison Stockdale, our second trombone, had to leave us and return home to look after her ill husband and was therefore unable to travel with us. After some frantic phone calls we managed to replace her with Simon Powell, second trombone at YBS, who was travelling to Lucerne the following day to play with YBS at the gala concert. We managed to get him to fly with us, and after much persuasion managed to get his name changed on the ticket. We were originally due to leave the bandroom at 3pm, but ended up leaving at 2.30pm due to a mix up with the bus driver’s hours. 
Twelve members of the band remained from the trip to Lucerne in 2000 (Contest Report), and on the bus on the way to the airport we watched the video that was taken during the first trip by London Weekend Television, for the TV programme Airline. We managed to get into the airport at about half past three and had to negotiate the huge (and slow) lifts up to the departure area to locate our particular check-in desk. We monopolised one of the Swiss Air desks with our enormous queue of luggage and people, and ended up directing other travellers to the other desk, rather than have them wait for us. At the desk, we were told that the flight was full, and we would not all be able to travel. This was rather annoying, especially because we had spent over £9000 on tickets, and had booked them over six months ago. The standard practice is apparently for airlines to deliberately sell more tickets than there are seats on the flight, as on average 20% of people do not turn up for the flight. After much fighting, we managed to get everyone a seat on the plane. Eventually, the woman on the desk came around us all and collected our passports and tickets, and then took them away to process them. Glyn Thompson came around and asked us how many pieces of hold luggage we had so we could check them all in together. We then waited. And waited. And waited. Richard “Gas Cooker” Glascodine declared he was hungry at one point and began to eat a custard tart, before Ed walked into him and in ended up all over the floor. Finally, some random people were called forward to prove that their passport belonged to them, and we began to check in the huge pile of luggage. Some of the baggage was refused and had to be taken to the “Baggage Inspection” desk along with many of the instruments. Dave Roberts handed Jamie his suit carrier back and when Jamie asked was the problem was, said with a straight face “It’s because you have snakes in your luggage.” Jamie looked worried for a minute before he realised what was going on! 
Due to the block check-in process, many of the couples in the band were not sitting together. Some took this as a benefit, whilst others simply decided to swap seats. After depositing the luggage at baggage inspection, most of the band settled into the bar, and others found something to eat, whilst we waited for Si Powell to arrive. He was playing in the centre of Manchester and was trying to get to us as fast as possible. He eventually made it with literally 30 seconds to spare. The woman on the check-in desk had to give him his ticket surreptitiously, as she was turning other people away. In the end, seven people could not travel, despite having “guaranteed” tickets. Departure was scheduled for 6.55, but after we had gone through customs we discovered that the flight was delayed until 7.25. We made our way to the departure gate, which seemed to be about three miles down a long passageway, and waited for the flight. The plane was much smaller than the one we flew on last time, with two seats down one side and one down the other. On our previous trip to Switzerland we had travelled with EasyJet, where there were three seats down either side. The smaller plane did however mean than two thirds of the band got a window seat! The plane had about 48 seats, of which 36 were taken up by band members. The other few travellers must have wondered what had hit them! Graham Williams and Si Powell were still listed as “Stand By” passengers, and had to get on the plane last. 
We were all sat on the plane by 7.45, and the captain came on the tannoy to explain to us that there would be a delay before take off. This was because we had more pieces of luggage in the hold than we should have, and that they would have to unload it all and check it. This problem was caused by the check-in staff. At 7.55, he came on again to tell us that we would have to get off and identify our own baggage, so they could work out what should not be on the flight! Passengers on the plane had to get off in groups of three rows, and move the luggage that was theirs, before getting back on again and letting the next three rows find their luggage. This was all complete by 8.05 and the plane was finally loaded and ready to go by 8.15. We finally began to move at 8.20, nearly an hour and a half after we were scheduled to leave. The flight was very smooth and quick, with a flight time of one hour thirty minutes, when it was scheduled as one hour forty-five. The night was clear and we had a good view down to towns and motorways lit up below. We must have flown down the country and then across the channel to France, as we flew directly over Paris and had a fantastic view of an illuminated Eiffel Tower. When we got off, it turned out that the captain played cornet! 
We arrived at Basel airport at 10.45pm local time (an hour ahead of BST), which was only an hour later than scheduled. We had to walk quite a way to get to customs and passport control, and they had some moving walkways. Rebecca Robertson and her dad were seen racing each other down the corridor, with Rebecca on the carpet, and her dad on the walkway. We got through to collect our luggage, and found that the instruments had been placed on a trolley, not on the carousel (which was good!) and we collected them and found our coach to Lucerne. We were staying in the Hotel Anker, which was the place where the band did most of their partying last time they were here. Rooms were good, all with en-suite bathrooms and televisions, though I only managed to find one channel in English, CNN. Some of the band went to bed, whilst others invaded a local kebab shop which was nearly empty – the owner must have been rubbing his hands with glee! Unfortunately they returned back to the hotel late and made as much racket as they could, slamming doors and shouting. Words were had the next morning! Saturday European Open Contest Adjudicators: Roy Newsome, Howard Lorriman, Maurice Hamers, Francois Boulanger, Andreas Sporri 
On Saturday morning, the band went down for breakfast bit by bit. The food was an improvement on last time, where we were just given bread and cheese. This time there was cereal, toast and hot drinks, plus (of course) bread and cheese! We were most disappointed to find there was no Swiss Muesli, something that is available in our local Asda! The band walked down to the hall for 11am, to watch the third band on, Ensemble des Cuivres Melodia. We purchased tickets for the supporters, at 49 Francs (about 25 quid) each and then looked at the instruments and uniforms on display in the foyer. One of the hall officials came over, asked if we were Rothwell Temperance Band, and then gave us some free postcards of the hall. The band drawn third played the set test Hymn, Abide with Me, then Le Corsair by Berlioz as their test piece (which we knew as we had played it a few years back) and finally Mephistopheles as their march. The band got a good reception from the audience, but we thought we could beat them. 
We returned to the hotel, via a sandwich shop (or McDonalds) and settled in for a rehearsal. We had no percussion equipment with us and so the drummers got to sit back and listen. The rehearsal went well, and the band were in high spirits. The band then walked back to the hall (and some of them took a taxi!) and went down in to the bowels of the hall to get changed. We then moved into the warm-up room, before the drummers were summoned to set up the equipment on the stage. Each band at this contest has a set time to start playing, so there is no pressure to get one stage and start, as there is at many of the English contests. We were still on stage, having set up, chatting to the percussion helpers about the radio broadcast when the band walked on to a round of applause and sat down to play. The hymn went well with good dynamics from piano to fortissimo, and some good crescendos in-between. We were happy with our performance. We then moved onto the test piece, Carnival Overture. This is a very loud piece, apart from a quiet middle section, and we were confident that our power would be stronger than local bands. We played the piece really well, and had very few mistakes, on what is a very difficult piece. The march, however, we felt was excellent. The Wizard is quite new for us, but we were very happy with the performance. The band then went back down to the changing room to reflect on the performance, whilst the percussion team were taken outside (after a brief stop to pick up their coats) to organise the percussion for the Swiss Radio broadcast. 
There were three stages set up outside the front of the hall, one small one held a Jazz Band, whilst the larger stage had a German Army band and the third had a brass band from Lucerne. The broadcast was live on the main Swiss Radio station, Schweizer Radio DRS 1, the one that most of the population listen to. The producers were skipping between the different bands, and doing some interviews with conductors in between. We had to wait for the Lucerne band to finish, and things were running a bit late. We originally planned to rearrange the percussion equipment but after a while it was obvious that we wouldn’t have time, so settled for just changing the timps into the correct order and rearranging the tuned percussion. It was a good job we did, as no sooner as we set up than we had to play. At the same time as we changed, a Swiss Army Recruits band took over from the German Army band. 
We started with Amazonia, with cornets stood up around the edge of the band. This was very well received by the large audience. The Swiss Radio presenter did a short interview with Dave Roberts on the stage, and then they had us play our next piece straight away. This proved to be a problem, as we had to rearrange the band back to their normal formation first, so there was a bit of mad shuffling around and then we played Summertime, with Paul Argyle on solo soprano cornet. They then cut away to other bands for a bit. The percussion section, being in shirt sleeves whilst the rest of the band wore jackets, ended up wearing their coats to keep warm. Rebecca Robertson’s dad even offered me his woolly hat at one point. Steven Haynes and John Ward were by this time dying for the toilet, and both ran off stage, under instructions to get back as soon as possible. Thankfully, they managed to get back in time and we played I’ve Got Rhythm. We then had another break for other bands, before playing Stingray to finish with. We played well, and got an excellent reception from the crowd. Mike Shenton managed a bit of impromptu CD-selling during our performance. 
Once we had finished with the concert we returned to the dressing room, got changed, and went up to the hall to wait for the results. At first, we could not get in, but eventually someone came and unlocked the doors and people began to take their seats. The band had the entire front row of the stalls, and some of the next row, so were all sat together. Like last time, the results were in German, and it took all our concentration to follow them. First of all, the various people on stage were introduced, including the five adjudicators and the contest sponsor. Then came the prizes. The hymn and march prizes were announced first, and they went to Brass Band Berner Oberland. We knew by this point we probably hadn’t won, but little did we know what was coming next. The first six prizes were announced from the stage, and we weren’t in any of them, which we found surprising. It wasn’t until we got outside and saw a printed sheet, that we found out we were last, by seven clear points. The full results were: 1. Brass Band Berner Oberland (10, 175 points) 7. Musikgesellschaft Risch-Rotkreuz (4, 160 points) We don’t really know what to make of this result as there are no adjudicator’s remarks issued. We’ve never, ever, come last in a competition before, and given the quality performance we gave on stage, are at a loss to understand why. The band left the hall, slightly shocked, but still in high spirits and determined to enjoy the rest of the weekend. When told of the last place, Steven Haynes (who was not in the hall for the results) said “Do we get a wooden spoon?” 
The band returned to the hotel, for drinks and then dinner out somewhere in the town. Some went to McDonalds (again) whilst others went in search of restaurants they had been to the last time we came. There are many stories from this night out including Andy Padgett being in the toilets of one Italian restaurant whilst the band left and Paul Argyle silencing McDonalds with a large burp. There was also another incident in McDonalds, where some members of the band were chatting to a Swiss Bandsman. Steven Haynes won a free burger and gave his voucher to the Swiss man, as he wouldn’t be able to use it. Other members of our band then began giving him other things, like the empty big mac container, and drinks cups, until he had everything on his tray, and couldn’t see where he was going. There was also a curious story told by Ed, which involved the Stingray music, and a submarine with Roy Newsome tied to the front surfacing in the hall. Apparently he had no recollection of this the following morning! The band had to leave the bar in the hotel when it closed at 1am, and retired to the lounge on the third floor. When it was obvious they would not be able to keep quiet enough for people in the rooms around them to sleep, they moved to the rehearsal room but soon drifted off to bed. Sunday 
On Sunday morning the band had some free time to enjoy the sights of Lucerne, do some souvenir shopping or catch up on some sleep. They were due to meet back at the hotel at 1.30pm in order to catch the bus back to the airport. 
We went for a walk around the town, first of all taking pictures of the concert hall from across the lake. We also looked at the Chapel Bridge, which was built in 1333 from wood. There were some very spectacular postcards available from when it burnt down in 1993. We then went up to the city walls, which was a series of towers with wall in between them. It was possible to walk along a section of the wall, which offered excellent views over the buildings below and the lake and some of the towers could be climbed up to the top. One of the towers in the wall was once used to store hay and gunpowder and in 1701 it was struck by lightning and exploded, killing several people. After buying some chocolate to take back and finding some lunch, we returned to the hotel to meet up with the others. The bus journey back was more interesting than the last trip, as it took place in daylight. There are lots of tunnels on the route to the airport, some of them as long as three kilometres. The Swiss seemed to prefer to take their roads through hills rather than going around. We arrived at the airport at 3.15pm, in good time for our flight at 5.30pm. 
Check-in was much better organised this time, with band members being booked in two by two. There were no problems this time with numbers of people on the flight. Instruments again had to be taken to a separate desk, and once that was completed the band went through passport control and customs to wait for the flight. We went on the moving walkways again, and someone dumped one of Graham’s bags over the side, onto the carpet. He had to wait until the end of the walkway before he walked back to collect his bag. The airport was very quiet compared to how busy things had been in Manchester, and there was very little food on offer other than sandwiches. The band managed to take over a cafe near our gate. 
The flight left on time, with no baggage problems, but this time there was lots of cloud and it was sometimes impossible to see the ground. We must have flown over Dover, as we saw some white cliffs, as well as cross-channel ferries coming in to the port. The flight was bumpier on the way back in places, and took the full scheduled one hour and forty five minutes. 
Once back on land we went through passport control before collecting our luggage. Unfortunately, Glyn and Jayne’s suit carrier never arrived and they had to report it as missing. Most of the band got on the coach, whilst others made their way home directly. The journey back was damp and misty, but we arrived in good time. For the last half hour of the journey to the bandroom Steven Haynes was locked in the toilet, and Ed wouldn’t let him out. Ed was travelling on to York on the coach, and we never saw Steven at the club. Maybe he’s still in there. 
The band had a fantastic weekend, and really enjoyed themselves. Dave Roberts was very impressed with the attitude of the band in defeat, and proud of the way the players conducted themselves. To be honest, the result was not really important, the weekend was good for the band, and much merriment was had by all. This contest was the last for Sophie Rhodes, who now leaves us to go and do a degree at Cambridge. The band wishes her all the very best with her studies. Thanks to:
Tim Sawyer “Are we nearly thier yet?” |