Kenneth Woods- a view from the podium

Exhausting work this morning on Shostakovich Quintet and Faure Piano Quartet. The Shostakovich is getting better and better, and we’re certainly getting more unified in our approach, but it is unforgivingly difficult and very hard to pull off musically. I don’t think we’ve quite answered the tempo questions yet, but we’re progressing in a more unified and thoughtful way. It’s certainly the hardest piece to play on the borrowed cello- if I try to turn on real “Shostakovichian” power, it just stops making sound….

 The Faure is an interesting contrast- the Shostakovich is a real masterpiece, but is elusive, hard to pull off and full of contradictions. I think it is easy for a performance of it to fall completely flat. The Faure, on the other had, is amazingly non-problematic. Everything works, and there’s not a lot to discuss. The slow movement is one of the glories of the chamber music literature, but even that only poses a few tricky interpretational issues. In the rest of the piece if we play with great rhythm, do the dynamics and listen, its pretty effective.

We finished the morning (and early afternoon) with a run-through of the first movement Faure (having worked our way back from the finale), and I’m now more than happy to drink a little coffee and teach a cello lesson. Conductors (including me) do well to remember that it is tiring work playing an instrument….

Not much to report today. We had a really positive and exciting rehearsal on the Dvorak Piano Quintet this morming. The textures are getting clearer and the shape of the whole work is starting to come through. Such fun to play, especially when we don’t wallow in it.

Cello and I are feeling less estranged. I’ve decided the key with this (borrowed) instrument is to just let it get on with its job and not piss it off. If I really try to “play” it, not much happens, but if I just kind of encourage it, it sounds rather nice.

No Shostakovich rehearsal today, but I did re-listen to the famous Borodin recording. It’s a live performance, and wonderful one. They do keep the tempo relationships more-or-less intact, but the whole piece is quite a bit on the slow side. It seems obvious that this piece is related to the Preludes and Fugues and is modeled more on a Baroque Suite than a traditional sonata (note the slow-introduction-alla-french-overture first movement and the five movement form). Therefore, I would think there might want to be more sense of forward motion, but I can cope with the slow tempi as long as we can respect the overall shape of the piece. We’ve got plenty of time tomorrow, so I’m sure it will come together….

Durango continues to be beautiful, and there seems to be an endless abundance of good food and coffee here. the weather is glorious and the campus area is stunning. I’m having a great time working with all the new and old colleagues. My only regret is that United Airlines has lost my luggage, so I’m wearing less than fresh clothes until I can do some laundry. Just for the record that is the 11th time in 5 years that UNITED AIRLINES has lost my luggage for more than 24 hours. That’s UNITED AIRLINES that LOST MY LUGGAGE, for the 11th time in 5 years.

 Sorry, don’t usually like to turn this into a diary, but I just wanted to be clear about UNITED AIRLINES LOSING MY LUGGAGE, and the fact that UNITED AIRLINES NEVER SCANNED MY LUGGAGE, and that they (actually the UNITED AIRLINES REPRESENTIVE IN DURANGO COLORADO) LIED TO ME ON MONDAY when they said it was in Denver. I know they were lying because they’ve now admitted it has never been scanned anywhere…. 

Good times!

Second day of hard work in beautiful Durango. Spent most of my morning getting used to a cello that is very different from mine. It only takes minutes to figure out what one needs to do differently on a new instrument. Less bow pressure or contact point generally closer to the bridge might be the name of the game for the bow. It takes only a second to realize that 4th position is a little further from the corner than on my cello. However, it takes quite a few hours to stop thinking about those corrections and to start incorporating them naturally. I’m not there yet, but I at least had a few good stretches today. I don’t know how pianists are able to change instruments all the time and still play in tune. Wait…..

So, today was our first slightly spirited discussion, which I relay to you not to spread gossip, but because it brings out a very interesting point. We were rehearsing the Shostakovich Piano Quintet, an amazing masterpiece and somehow quite different from much of his music (although it has a haunting quote from the Fifth Symphony, which he wrote just before it). It seems to me that he’s thought a lot about tempi in this piece: the first movement introduction and allegro are both marked with the same metronome mark as are the second and third movements (one is a slow fugue marked quarter=84 the second is a scherzo marked bar=84). The fourth movement is also marked 72, the same tempo as the first two sections of the first movement. Along with these overlapping tempi, there are thematic references that come round and round throughout the piece.

Our discussion became spirited whe we came to the scherzo. Two of my colleagues felt strongly that it should be played quite a bit more slowly than the metronome mark. They have some good arguments to make- one is that many groups, including the Borodin and Richter, who would probably have coached the piece with Shostakovich, do play it that slowly. Also, at the slower tempo it is somewhat easier to give each note a sense of brutal intensity and weight, which can be very effective. One of them also refered to an annecdote about DSCH’s metronome running at the wrong speed- according to her source, his metronome could read 20 points too high.

 Both of my colleagues are exceptional musicians, people of high intelligence, and deeply invested in Shostakovich’s music. They both happen to be Russian, as well. Any recent RCICW students will remember me talking about the 8th quartet last week and saying that it was important to know the recordings of the musicians who knew and worked with Shostakovich, as there is a performing tradition there that we can learn from.

Nonetheless, I’m struggling to feel that the slower tempo can be right. If anything, I think most groups tend to take the fugue a bit faster than it’s marked, and if one then takes the scherzo slower than it’s marked, his tempo relationship ceases to exist. If there was just one re-occurance of a metronome mark in the piece, maybe one could write it off as a coincidence, but it seems that these tempo links are somehow integral to DSCH’s overall concept.

Yes, we can learn from the Borodins, but surely we have to treat the text as a higher authority? Yes, there is a tradition of playing the movement slower, but I’m skeptical about whether we should accept that tradition. Why? More than almost any composer except Beethoven, it seems like Shostakovich’s music has always been played at “traditional” tempos that are quite different than those he marked. The last movement of the 5th Symphony with Bernstein’s famous keystone cops ending is a good example. However, it seems that as the decades go by and people do more research and analysis, most of his metronome markings seem quite integral to the formal construction of the piece. Again, look at the Fifth Symphony- both the first and last movents are constructed in tempo arches. If the last movement ends fast, something of the structure of the entire symphony is lost (nevermind that it was never supposed to be a happy ending).

Like Beethoven, it seems like we ought to at least be like Mr. Rodgers and be in the neighborhood of his tempi, and more importantly than that, we ought to recognize when he asks for specific relationships. Just as the pulse of the last movement of Beethovn 5 MUST be slower than the third movement (this is non-negotiable, never mind George Szell), so it seems that the pulses of the 2nd and 3rd movements of the quintet must be the same.

I’m going to re-listen to the Borodin recording tonight and do a little web reading. Just when you dig your heels in on something like  this, one must remember that the composer himself might have told the Borodins ”not so fast.”

Nevertheless, I’m sceptical about the broken metronome theory. After all, we’re talking about Dmitri freaking Shostakovich here- I can’t imagine him being off by much. He was not only a composer but a pianist who played every day, and a genius. I doubt a man who could play at the piano almost anything he’d ever heard really needed the metronome anyway…

This is what it’s all about, though: challenging our own assumptions to get closer to the composer. One day I’m advocading it to my students, today I’m doing it.

Fun.

Just completed my first day at the Clocktower Chamber Music Festival in Durango, Colorado. The festival is the brainchild of violinist Mikayla Myers McTeer and pianist Lisa Campi. Lisa is a dear friend and one of my oldest and closest musical associates. We’ve known each other nearly 20 years and have played together in all kinds of recitals and festivals and co-founded the Taliesin Trio, which was a big part of my musical life in the 90s.

 What a great contrast after four days working with conducting students. I have to say, it’s a relief to be making sound (even on a borrowed cello) rather than encouraging sound (or worse yet, trying to explain how better to encourage sound) right now. Repertoire couldn’t be better- today was the Mozart D Major quartet (”Hoffmeister”) and the Dvorak Piano Quintet. Lisa’s the only person here I’ve worked with before, and I have to say that it is refreshing to meet new colleagues. We started with the Mozart and it was great just to launch into a piece like that with three musicians you’ve never met. Should be a memorable week, but I’ve got some practicing to do.

 KW

There’s a fascinating, kind and thoughtful comment from David Hoose on my last post- thanks David. It’s nice to hear kind words from someone I respect and like so much. Be sure to read it (you can skip the eulogistically nice things he says about me and Chris, and think extra hard about what he says about music).

 After reading his post, I wanted to follow up on his point about finding the right balance between musical discussion and technical discussion for conductors. I have to say that most of our students, if not all, were able to cheerfully listen to any musical suggestions or observations we made during the workshop. I never felt any resistance on that front, but, like David, I would have been really happy if a few more questions in the final discussion session were focused on study and analysis.

A musician’s relationship to music is a very  deeply personal thing. We each come to the life of the performer because of how closely we identify with the music. When a teacher challenges the interpretive approach of a student (or the other way round), it can feel to the student as the though the teacher is trying to come between them and the music. I can think of many times in my study where I felt that when my teacher tried to get me to, say, omit an interpolated ritard at the end of a section, they were coming between me and the music, and that they were trying to take away something in the piece that had meaning to me.

 Now, looking back, I got plenty of advice from teachers over the years that I have happily disposed of, but more often than not, they had a point, and had they not had the courage to challenge my assumptiions, I would have ceased to grow as an artist. In fact, as you live with a piece like Beethoven 3 you understand that there is always a deeper level at which you can understand it. What the teacher takes away, Beethoven gives back, and as your intellectual understanding of the music becomes more sophisticated, your personal relationship to the work becomes ever closer and closer.

One can’t make music without technique- to say you should just focus on the music wouldn’t fly on the violin and it doesn’t fly on the podium. Nevertheless, in those few moments on the final concert when things when wrong, the causes were not really technical. If a student takes and unplayably fast tempo, or grinds a slow movement to a halt, its not simply a question of not having worked with a metronome enough. I firmly believe that if you have gone deeply enough into the music that you understand what it is saying, how it is constructed, what the composer is asking of the instruments, how the textures work and where the notes go, you almost can’t take the wrong tempo. The meaning is the the tempo and the tempo is in the meaning.

 Beethoven 3 slow movement played to slowly ceased to be a funeral march and becomes and elegy. Those are two different things. An elegy consoles, a funeral march mourns. An elegy marks the moment of release, and the consolation of rememberance and eternal transfiguration. A funeral march is the last few moments before we say goodbye for ever to those we love. Each of those moments is only infinitely precious if we know that they are finite.

Likewise, if you understand why the 2nd violins come in sooner the first fugal section of the Shostakovich 8th quartet, you’ll never forget to cue them (nobody did, by the way). It’s hard to memorize details, but easy to remember things with meaning and context

More soon.

KW 

Day three is somehow both the longest and shortest day of the workshop. By this point, one feels that one has really gotten a very good sense of each of the conducting students, both as musicians and as people. By this point in the workshop, we’re starting to see real progress and a few genuine breakthroughs. We’re also seeing more of the strengths of the students as they settle in and get used to the orchestra and to the faculty. At this point I feel like I’ve known them all for weeks, not days.
On the other hand, we’ve turned the corner and are already much closer to the end of the workshop than the beginning. By the end of day three we’re done with all the teaching sessions except for one Beethoven 3 masterclass. Also, today was the day to finalize concert assignments, and that’s a difficult and time consuming job. I think all of us on the faculty felt reluctant to make assignments based on just the first thing we saw someone do, and I’m sure that experience has validated that reluctance. After seeing them do 3 or 4 different things and work on whatever we’ve thrown at them over several sessions, you can see their strengths and weaknesses in much more detail. It’s important to assign things to people that they can do well, and that they’ll learn from doing.
I’ve enjoyed working on all the pieces with the students, but also working on them with David and Chris. We each have particularly strong affinities with some of the repertoire, and it’s as fascinating for me as I would hope it is for the students to see them breakdown things in ways I wouldn’t have thought about,  I’m sure I’ll be fresher in my own score study after this.
Very interesting watching faces of orchestra players and conductors after the Shostakovich sessions- almost everyone seems quite shaken up by it, but in a good way. People go out smiling when Carmen dies at the end of the session, but not when we sink into the final C minor abyss in the Shostakovich.

Orchestra has been great this year. There hasn’t been as much interaction between players and students in the sessions as last year, but we’ve had more of our regular players, which means a better orchestra. Hopefully they’re making connections in the breaks and at the pub or coffee shop.
Sunday AmJust a few precious hours left. We’ll give each student a mini-lesson in the morning on they’re concert repertoire, then we’ll have one final Beethoven masterclass (such a hard piece for me to teach as I’ve gotten a little too opinionated about it this year!), a wrap up and the final concert. I think the concert will have some great moments this year. I’ve got my ideas about who might be the one(s) to hit the ball out of the park tonight, but I’m sure there will be some surprises, and, who knows, maybe a disaster, what they call a “teachable moment” in academia…..

The last day of this year’s workshop.
On paper, it looks like the most laid-back schedule of the week- we start a little later, have only one teaching session and the concert. It wasn’t unreasonable of me to think that this would be the one day I could get a few things done….
Of course, that is forgetting all the private consultation time, answering last minute questions on breaks, and dealing with performance logistic issues all day. Now 2:02 AM, post-workshop, and the day has come and gone like a hurricane. Hardly a second’s rest.
Last things first- the concert. Frankly, I’m somewhat ambivalent about the concert. We included it in the curriculum in year one because we were keenly aware that we needed to make the workshop sufficiently attractive to enough applicants that it would be a viable project. There are any number of conductors who will come to a workshop just for the chance to get some video footage of themselves. They may not be approaching the workshop with the most positive attitude, but at least they help make possible the infrastructure that allows those who are truly coming to learn the chance to do so.
Two years in, and I’m sure I have yet to see a single student who’s come for any reason but to learn. I don’t know if doing a concert helps recruit students (we know it was not a prime factor for last year’s students),  but it does add an aspect of culmination to the weekend, in ways both good and bad. A long evening of difficult music that hasn’t been rehearsed being directed by student conductors who haven’t actually conducted the entire piece before may sound like a recipe for disaster.
In fact, we did have the odd disaster, and, fair enough, that might have been predictable. Concerts should be rehearsed. Music is important, and we ought to always allow for the pieces we love to be heard in a sympathetic environment. Nevertheless, the concert gives each conductor a chance to test themselves in the music we’ve worked on, and it adds a level of gravitas to the project. Even with a tiny audience, it’s a different kind of pressure.
Fortunately, I think there were more than enough fantastic moments to justify the risks and wrecks. More on those later. Now, at 2:30 AM, having said goodbye to students, orchestra musicians and colleagues, I’m callin’ it a day. We’ve survived two years, and, though I’m kind of heartbroken to be done for this summer, it feels like the RCICW has turned the corner that will let it really endure.
KW

Absolutely shattered after a long, intense day at the RCICW, but really want to make note of a few thoughts.

• The more I teach and the longer I work the more I’m in awe of the students. One leaves one’s studying years behind for two reasons. First, you may be lucking enough to have accumulated enough skill and knowledge to continue your education under your own guidance, but two is that you may no longer have the strength to put yourself in that situation any more. All day, I’ve been impressed at how resilient everyone’s been; how far they’ve come from session to session and how courageous they are in trying new things in front of the orchestra.
• Why is it that it’s the person who’s late to rehearsal who’s watching the clock at the end of the session?
•  Conductors should collaborate more often. It’s so refreshing to work with and absorb approaches other than my own. For example- a student encounters a technical problem, and David or Chris suggests a solution, but it’s not the one I would use or suggest. Nevertheless, the moment may come when I have to help teach the non-Ken approach, and it’s like WD-40 for the brain. You take your thinking out of it’s automatic patterns and suddenly you’re working more creatively and smoothly
• There’s nothing better than standing near an opera singer  who’s in the zone
• I really don’t know why servers are so reluctant to give separate checks in larger groups. They’d get paid faster and make better tips.

A few big challenges ahead tomorrow.
·         We have to finalize and announce performance assignments to the students, which is a difficult task. You’re trying to find a convergence of ability, affinity and aptitude. Not easy.
·         I think the teaching gets harder now. We’ve fixed the things that are easy to fix. The deeper one goes into the art form one goes, the more personal the issues become, which means it’s more emotionally draining for everyone.
·         Beethoven 3- one of my constant companions the last 12 months, having done it with so many groups. Very exciting to work on and explore, but so, so difficult.
All music is opera….
            Human being has a thought or an emotion
            Human being breathes with the thought
            Breathe initiates expression of the emotion through release of breath in sound
.
Beethoven 3 is a great symphony, and full of rigor and structure, but it’s as much opera as Carmen.. What is the thought that precedes the first two E-flat major chords? How many characters are in the drama? Where do some of the great harmonic shocks in the development of the first movement come from? We’ll find out tomorrow….

kw

Very intense, but exciting, first day of the RCICW.
For those of you who aren’t conductors, here is basically how most workshops like this work….
The main challenge for any young conductor is finding an instrument (orchestra) to practice on. In order to provide an orchestra for the student conductors, we have work on a very tight time table, so in each 2 ½  hour service we have 10 conductors who actually get up for fourteen minutes each. In the best of all possible worlds, a student would use the first 5 or so minutes of their time to read through a good chunk of whatever piece we’re working on, then the three clinicians will coach them for the remaining 9 minutes or so. Sometimes, if the piece has a particularly gnarly technical problem for the conductor, we may take 10 minutes to coach them through the first 3 bars and then let them read once the critical issue is resolved.
For all of the teachers, I think the time pressures are as quite intense as they are for the students. Of course, conductors are always agonizingly aware of time pressure- we never feel that we have enough rehearsal time for our own concerts. Having to share these tiny bits of teaching time amongst the three of us is even trickier. We have to strike a balance between getting our points in and letting the student conduct enough, and we also have to take care that we don’t completely overwhelm them.
When one is conducting, it sometimes feels like nobody is actually paying much attention to you (how often does one hear conductors admonishing the orchestra to “watch!”). This can lull you into forgetting just how on show you are up there. They may not be watching your conducting (especially if they’re sight-readying) but you can bet they are watching you! When today, as a teacher, I saw 20 conductors, almost all of whom I’m seeing for the first time, in such a short time frame, it really, really hit home to me just how much of you comes through so clearly in such a short time. The moment a conductor steps before the ensemble it’s as if they’ve been put on a 50 foot movie screen and plugged into a PA system. Their personalities, body language, demeanor, quirks, gifts and weaknesses are instantly and powerfully on show. In this environment it’s a lot for the players and the teachers to take in- you’re not just evaluating their conducting, you are getting to know a great deal about a human being in a very short time.
Other highlights of the day- a very good pastrami sandwich at Bridgeport brewery (a pleasure denied to me in Wales!), listening to David and Chris talk about music, seeing friends in the orchestra, reconnecting with the alumni from last year who are back, and getting to hear some of the wonderful touches in the Stravinsky Octet in fascinating detail. What he can do orchestrating an E major chord! Other big dramatic moment of the day was firing a pianist! If only it was always that easy every time a group needed to part company from an individual who’s unable to show their interest in music through preparation….
By the way, here’s a shout out to Mary Rowell, who’s put together a great band this week, organized all the music and is leading the orchestra- hey Mary!

Beethoven- 

Why do we talk about him in such simplistic terms? Why do we have to choose sides between old school loud, slow and flabby and new school fast, shrill and cold? Is absence of vibrato really a sophisticated sound concept? Is vibrato on every note really a sophisticated sound concept? 

Twenty years after the period instrument revolution, are we ready to apply those lessons with more imagination, more depth, more wisdom? Can we play this music with more color, rather than less? 

This issue will be one of many that is sure to come up this week at the RCICW 

We all know that the first movement of Beethoven 8, the first movement of Beethoven 3 and the Egmont overture tend to inspire debate among musicians as to whether they should be in three or in one. Beethoven’s metronome markings are in one. Generally speaking, old school conductors (Furtwangler, Bernstein, Klemperer,) tended to do these movements in three, new school conductors (Zinman, Norrington, Gardiner) in one. 

Conduct the music that is in one in one, and the music that is in three in three. 

I’m heading back to Oregon this week for one of my favorite projects of the year. From June 22-25, I’ll be working with two outstanding colleagues as director of the Rose City International Conductors Workshop in Portland, Oregon.

This workshop was the brainchild of the musicians of the Rose City Chamber Orchestra, a player-run orchestra who I’ve been working with for a couple of years now. When they asked me if I would be interested in creating and directing an advanced symposium I was completely surprised, but delighted. I’ve been even more delighted to see us have a successful first year and be looking forward to a very exciting second. This year, the international aspect of the workshop has really come to the fore- we’ve had applications from Israel, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Korea, Japan, Great Britain, Mexico and Germany.

 Joining me on the faculty is the sage Christopher Zimmerman, director of orchestras at the Hartt school and music director of the Symphony of Southeast Texas who was with us last year, and our new colleague, the wise and estimable David Hoose, director of the Cantata Singers and head of orchestras and conducting at Boston University. They are both true gods of the podium, and exceptional teachers.

So, over the next week or so, I’m hoping to use these pages to talk a little bit about some of the key aspects of conductor training, and give readers a chance to understand a bit more about how a conducting masterclass really works.

Movement V of the recent Oregon East Symphony performance of Mahler 2 can be heard HERE.

You can hear some selections from the recent Oregon East Symphony performance of Mahler 2 HERE. This is selections from movements I-IV. Movement V should be available tomorrow.