Comments on: Sibelius and Mahler

By: Kenneth Woods- A View From the Podium » Performer’s Perspective- Is Mahler’s music hard(er) to conduct?

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:48:29 +0000

[...] own works, particularly in his orchestration and in his handling of the conductor. Mahler was the first major composer to address the conductor directly- his scores have plenty of the kind of character markings long found in the scores of others, but [...]

By: Kenneth Woods- a view from the podium » Getting down to work on M5

Kenneth Woods- a view from the podium » Getting down to work on M5 — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:37:37 +0000

[...] Fortunately or sadly (both, really), Mahler didn’t manage to record or film and of his performances of his own music (other than the piano rolls). Instead, he fundamentally changed the function of musical notation. (I’ve also written about this here and here). [...]

By: Kenneth Woods- a view from the podium » Return to KCYO….

Kenneth Woods- a view from the podium » Return to KCYO…. — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 23:15:48 +0000

[...] The program is a nice mix of the familiar and unfamiliar- Sibelius 5, which I did not too long ago (see posts on it here, here and here) is very fresh in my mind (I hope). We’re doing the Tristan Prelude and Liebestod- I’ve done the Prelude before and did the Prelude to Act III with BBC NOW a couple years ago, but I’ve never done the Liebestod before. I find it much harder to pull off- I really miss the singer, even though she is mostly commenting on the melody rather than singing it. I’ve often felt that orchestral performances of it are too static and slow- ponderous in a way that would never fly if a singer was there. From the ultimate German piece, we go to the ultimate French piece- the Nocturnes of Debussy (we’re only doing the first two, sadly- no choir!). I’ve got a great story about Nuages, but I’ll save that for another post if I have time. [...]

By: Kenneth Woods

Kenneth Woods — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 12:25:45 +0000

Dear Maurice

What a pleasure to hear from you- it’s always great when a colleague weighs in here. Thanks for the note and all best wishes for a very successful 2008.

Warmest regards

Ken

By: Maurice Peress

Maurice Peress — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 22:08:29 +0000

I thought I was the only one who uses Mahler’s scores as music making manuals for myself and my students. But remember his ideas are most appropriate for the repertoire he wrestled with. MP Bravo insights.

By: Kenneth Woods- a view from the podium » Haydn’s on- let’s cancel the concert and rehearse

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 09:15:05 +0000

[...] What is fascinating about this music is that the more work you put in to it, and the better you play it, the more obvious it is to everyone in the room that we could do more on it. At the first rehearsal it feels like we’ve hardly got to worry about anything with the piece- it is all idiomatic, and accessible, at the second rehearsal, I’m just sort of figuring out how far we could go with the piece with the bennefit of the score, and at the third rehearsal the whole band seems to be realizing just how much there is to work on. Just about the time you have to go onstage and perform, everyone seems to know how much work there is still to do. I’ve written before on how studying a Mahler symphony can feel like taking the best conducting lesson ever- rehearsing a Haydn symphony in detail feels like the best orchestra-ing lesson ever. [...]

By: Kenneth Woods

Kenneth Woods — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 18:58:50 +0000

Good question, Steve.

Certainly, there are composers who have provided a completely overwhelming density of expressive markings, often combined with needlessly intense rhythmic and pitch notation, to the point that no performer could really do justice to them all. I know one very wonderful composer, Gordon Downie, who seems to intentionally overwhelm the performer with information, because the very struggle to absorb and process all that information becomes a constructive aspect of the musical experience.

However, more often than not, I find myself, and most of my performer colleagues, frustrated that the composer has not been specific enough in telling us the articulations, phrasings and colors that they want, or have depended too much on subjective descriptions (“with a hopeful outlook”) instead of explicit instructions (“faster”).

In fact, when teaching or conducting very densely notated music (Mahler, Schoenberg, Bloch, Rachmaninov), I find that the more you focus on the minute details, the more individual the performance becomes. If I have three conducting students all do the Mahler Adagietto and make each of them show every single expressive nuance of the score, their performances will become more and more different from each other, not more similar.

So, sometimes, markings are really food for thought, to help the performer get closer to their own realization of the music, rather than putting them in some musical straight jacket.

Last thought, though, coming back to Sibelius vs. Mahler- know what your score is. Is it what you want us to hear or what you want us to do? If we know which approach you’ve taken, and you stick to it throughout the piece, we can cope.

Cheers, and thanks again for writing
KW

By: Steve Hicken

Steve Hicken — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 18:41:28 +0000

Thanks, Ken. This issue is something I struggle withh all of the time from the other side of the score.

How many markings are enough? How many are too much? How much verbiage is needed? At what point do the markings constrain the performer and and what point do the lack of markings do the same?