We have been rehearsing for a large program this week, one which will be recorded. The repertoire is Hummel's Trumpet Concerto, Kerschek's Trumpet Dances (a Japan Premiere) and Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra. Our conductor this week has taken advantage of the full rehearsal time to clean up places that usually get swept under the rug of live performance: here one minute, gone the next. A recording, however, lasts forever.
It isn't the same as actually undertaking a recording project where an engineer sits with the score and has the orchestra play 5 second chunks over and over again. But in its own way, this is a rewarding practice. We have benefitted from playing things over several times, in different ways, of coordinating timing and rhythm, balance, and intonation. And as the pieces become more comfortable I'm curious to see if something else will start grow from them. Will it become more possible to hear the meaning and purpose of these compositions as the technicality of them wanes from the forefront of concern? Or will we have become so practiced in this focus, that we will be unable to give our attention to any other aspect of the music?
Today in rehearsal, we reached a major climax in the Strauss after which there is a long pause. It is both dramatic and practical as the conductor must wait for the trombones to put in their mutes as stealthily as possible before the next dramatic downbeat. And as they fumbled today in rehearsal, he smiled and chuckled despite the enormity of the music. The gravity of Strauss and the humor of the humanity performing it. Our hands become the magician, and our eyes marvel at his works.
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