G.P.

I got today a sudden inspiration from my colleague who lives in a different country. We had email correspondence after a long break and because there was actually more to say than was convenient to write on the email I asked if he has a Skype account so we could actually talk about these things. And *bang* - suddenly he was there, smiling on my computer screen!

We had a very nice chat and he asked my help with programming a concert with Finnish repertoire. So, I shared with him a link to a Sibelius database so that he could look up some less well known pieces with their opus numbers and descriptions. But there was an additional problem of knowing how those pieces sound, because I didn't know many of them at all! So I guided him to another web-based service where he could for sure find most, if not all of them! Problem solved!

Ten years ago it would have been a project of many weeks to do what we managed in half an hour - not to mention the times when recordings were not yet readily available. Internet is such a marvelous time-saver in situations like this, that every conductor would do well to look up the resources that are available in the internet for free or for nominal cost. And it is not only music related things that can help us. We have flight search engines, Google maps and calendars, hotel bookings, Babel Fish translations and so on - a lot of things to help us in this international profession!