Attentive Observer

Our very own Sado-san is leading us through Orff's Carmina Burana this week.  Despite its dramatic intensity, the work itself is technically quite accessible.  Regardless, we had sectionals today and played through every passage of sustained open strings, repeated pizzicato and even long sections of silence in want of our wind section and the singers.  Sado marked their parts under his breath.  His typical style of rehearsing is to run through large sections, and then run through them again.  Sometimes he stops and works on a detail, but compared to other conductors I would not categorize him as a detailed rehearser.  While generally rehearsals are times for working through details, I wonder if this isn't simply a different way of thinking about music.  He has an incredible primal energy in performances; at times it's terrifying.  It seems that for him, music is less something to rehearse than to experience.  It's almost like he isn't a musician, as though he is that passionate audience member who bypassed the routine and frustration of a practice room and went straight to being on top of the music world.

Regardless of the origin of his rehearsal and performance style, this morning we played a lot of music that was the wallpaper for other things.  In the slow pace, I couldn't help but notice and become a tad bit fixated on the man sitting behind a table at the front of the orchestra.  He was there the day before, as well, just sitting there with a notepad and a pen on the table in front of him, watching and listening.  Occasionally something would happen in the rehearsal that would cause him to write something.  Most of us who were playing had the surplus mental capacity to at least be reading a good book while this paint dried, but there he was, right with us, attention nowhere but with us.  

This is far from the first time that I have noticed this in rehearsal–some sort of aid to the conductor that isn't watching the clock or studying the score, but just watching, listening.  I live in a land of patience, of gentle observation, of conscientiousness.  One in which an aide would not deign to hoard the time by reading a novel.  And it changes the way I feel about rehearsal.  It's everywhere and it makes a difference.