Page 135 - IELTS Preparation Grammar and Vocab

Exam practice The passive 18

II

The response was overwhelming, particularly
A Now what has become the world's most
from clarinettists. I suspect that a very high famous amateur orchestra is about to perform
proportion of the population is exposed to the in London. The Cadogan Hall is the site of this
clarinet at some stage and that British attics imminent musical disaster, and all 800 tickets
are crammed full of forgotten clarinet cases. vanished in a trice.
Many of these were dusted off for the first
An orchestra needs to perform, and we decided
meeting of the Really Terrible Orchestra, as F
to hold a concert. Wisely, we took the view
were various other instruments. We appointed a
that the audience should be given a glass
professional conductor, Richard Neville Towle, a
well-known Edinburgh musician and founder of of juice,or even more than a glass, before
the concert. This assisted their enjoyment
the ensemble Ludus Baroque, and we began to
and understanding of our idiosyncratic
rehearse. The result was cacophony.
performance. Virtually every piece we played
The Really Terrible Orchestra, however, was greeted with shouts of applause and a
was an immediate hit. The concert sold out standing ovation.
well in advance, as it has done every year
The orchestra's fame spread. Earlier this year
since, attracting an audience of more than
the New York Times, for a mention in which
500 people, some not actually related to the
many professional musicians would sell their
players.
souls, devoted a quarter of a page to an
'We are pretty awful,' admitted one of the
C article about the Really Terrible Orchestra. A
bassoonists. There is a very wide range few days after the appearance of the article
of playing abilities, she added, noting that the orchestra's chairman, Peter Stevenson,
she herself had only passed Grade 3, the received an approach from the same New York
examination normally taken by 11-year-old impresario who had first taken the Beatles to
British schoolchildren. the US.
Eight years ago my wife and I decided that we
would do something about never having played
in the school orchestra. We are both very
challenged musicians: at the time she played
the flute - hesitantly - and I played the bassoon
- extremely incompetently.

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