Thanks to Peter Shaffer's wonderful play Amadeus we all know that Salieri was fiendishly upset by Mozart's take over of the musical pole position wherever it was in the Austo-Hungarian empire they plied their trade.

Having played some Salieri this morning I can understand why he was so miffed because his music is really lovely.  The piece (Armonia per un tiempo di notte) looked somewhat daunting at first glance but fortunately it was designed to be played at a tempo within my range and I didn't feel that I let down the ten piece band I was playing in.

The range of tempi that I'm comfortable with doesn't extend much beyond a metronome marking of 100 and not at all above 120 so in the slavonic helter skelter dash by Dvorak that we went on to, marked at 240 I was tempted to surrender.  However I ploughed on and waggled my fingers about somewhat aimlessly during the excruciating runs up and down and the wild leaps from low to high and down again.  I took the frequent key changes in my stride mostly by ignoring them but had the great satisfaction of  hitting the longish notes that occurred every few bars at the right time and ending the piece triumphantly on the right note and at the same time as the rest of the band.