by Kenneth Woods | Jan 9, 2007 | A view from the podium, Mahler, Nuts and bolts
There are some pieces of music which are widely misunderstood because they’re too popular. I had a “teacher” in grad school who taught the History of Opera course who thought Puccini was an idiot because he was popular, and that we should all be listening to Pfitzner...
by Kenneth Woods | Jan 7, 2007 | A view from the podium, Explore the Score, Mahler, Nuts and bolts
As promised, I would like to try to backtrack to the time this film was shot and just throw in a bit of a performers perspective on the first song of the cycle. It’s quite common for non-musicians to say things along the lines of “you must feel so lucky to get to do...
by Kenneth Woods | Dec 4, 2006 | A view from the podium, Nuts and bolts
In the last installment of this series, I tried to look at some of the questions that leading musicians of the past may have been asking when they were performing in ways that we might now find foreign. We can’t go back to that old, Furtwanglerian, manner of...
by Kenneth Woods | Dec 3, 2006 | A view from the podium, Favorite posts, Nuts and bolts
What then of someone like Furtwangler, who’s Beethoven tempi tend to be quite uninhibited by the metronome? Many leading modern Beethoven interpreters and commentators, including John Elliot Gardiner, Gunther Schuller and Benjamin Zander have all held up Furtwangler’s...
by Kenneth Woods | Dec 1, 2006 | A view from the podium, Nuts and bolts
Intermezzo from the score questioning series- Some (late night) thoughts to ponder in Dvorak 8, 1st mvt…. What is the first note of the piece (in the melody)? Middle “D” What is the last note of the cello melody that spans the first 16 bars (yes, the cellos...
by Kenneth Woods | Dec 1, 2006 | A view from the podium, Nuts and bolts
The only black-and-white, nuts and bolts questions in musical performance are “what” questions- we can say with specificity what note is being played, what the dynamic is, what instrument is playing it, even what motive it is part of, but the execution of these...
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