QuArK 6.4.0 alpha 3 is out! Get it here.

I've been busy this weekend. On Friday, the Central Music School (CMS) Sinfonia (of which I am principal horn) played two concerts at the Sheldonian Theatre for primary school children, so I got to miss school.

On Friday night, Lizzie and I went into Oxford with some friends of ours: L. (a rower friend of Lizzie's) and A. (her boyfriend). I was amused to discover that L. had recently got an offer (of 3 As) to study History of Art at Pembroke College (Cambridge), and that A. was on a gap year before going to read Bio. Sci. at Selwyn College (also Cambridge). That made Lizzie the only non-Cambridge-associated person there... talk about putting the pressure on. Teehee.

I was annoyed to discover that the cocktail bar we were hanging out in did not have any cinnamon.

I stayed over at Lizzie's on Friday night, and on Saturday we went to CMS together. Now that the Sheldonian concerts are out of the way, we're starting some new repertoire with the Sinfonia, including Liszt's 2nd Piano Concerto, for which our friend M. is the soloist. Unfortunately, the orchestra parts are very difficult, not aided by the fact that the piano he's playing it on is very quiet.

I had my weekly horn lesson this morning, and the ridiculous amount of practise I've been doing this week had paid off: I managed to convince my teacher that I could hack the Schumann, and so he's set my large amounts of exceptionally strenuous exercises and studies, which I'm unlikely to be able to do in the near future. Ah well, lots more lip-torturing practise, here I come. But it'll help my horn playing in general, I hope, so it'll probably be a good thing if I persevere...