{"id":174,"date":"2006-10-20T10:38:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-20T10:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2006\/10\/20\/npo-oct-21\/"},"modified":"2006-10-20T10:40:58","modified_gmt":"2006-10-20T10:40:58","slug":"npo-oct-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2006\/10\/20\/npo-oct-21\/","title":{"rendered":"NPO OCT 21"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just a quick reminder that I\u2019ll be performing tomorrow, October 21st,<\/sup> with the Nottingham Philharmonic at the Albert Hall in <\/span>Nottingham<\/span>. I\u2019ve heard from quite a few of you around the <\/span>Nottingham<\/span> area who\u2019ve found out about the blog from the NPO website or their press release- do come say hi after the concert. It\u2019s always nice to have a human face to put on the email address.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a program built around two of the greatest pieces of the early 20th<\/sup> Century- Sibelius 5 and Prokofiev\u2019s Second Piano Concerto. Either work can warp your fragile little mind- they have mine.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I played cello in the Taliesin Trio we did a lot of school concerts, and I always noticed that our performances improved a lot once we had gone through our informal discussions about what to talk about with the kids in each piece. Years later, I remember Allan Gilbert saying the same thing a different way\u00a0during a conducting seminar at <\/span>Aspen-<\/span> he said he knew he was getting to know the music well when he started to have strong opinions about it. I\u2019d even suggest that trying to articulate those opinions helps drive the process of internalizing the music. That\u2019s one thing I like about this blog- it gives me a reason to verbalize my feelings about pieces, which I always find helpful in developing a performance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are a few opinions about this program-
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\nSibelius 5-<\/span><\/p>\n

Tempo molto moderato, not largo for the first movement. I bet most of you have never heard it even close to Sibelius\u2019 metronome marking of 66 (most take it between 36 and 52). I think the composer was right- it should certainly\u00a0 be in the Mr Rogers Neighborhood of moderato, not adagio.*<\/span><\/p>\n

In the whole opening movment(s), from the down beat to the end of the scherzo-like section, the phrasing should grow out of the overall form of the movement. The whole thing, on every level, is a series of ever-expanding, ever-intensifying waves of energy. Each gesture, each phrase is part of this great effort to generate forward motion.<\/span><\/p>\n

The second movement (the Andante con moto, quasi Allegretto) sounds like the most straightforward bit of the piece, but in many ways it\u2019s the most elusive, the deepest, the weirdest. Anytime Sibelius writes something that sounds harmless and carefree, be sceptical.<\/span><\/p>\n

The finale is about struggle. The opening is NOT a scherzo- it shouldn\u2019t sound playful but alive, vibrant, driven<\/em><\/strong> and very caffeinated. It\u2019s not a release of tension but a return of tension. The struggle goes through the whole movement- even when you get to the big swan tune. In that whole opening section up to the first appearance of the swan theme, and in it\u2019s return afterwards, Sibelius keeps you constantly off balance by using very irregular phrase lengths. Then, he keeps interjecting little three bar groups, most of which go against the overall phrasing of the main melody. It is as if he is trying to will the music into a more stable shape, and finally succeeds in the swan theme, where everything falls into three.<\/span><\/p>\n

The whole symphony is about three- each movement deals with three-ness in a different way. Can you think of another symphony that is all in meters built on threes? I\u2019m not sure what it means, but it\u2019s cool.<\/span><\/p>\n

Opinion on Prokofiev 2nd<\/sup> Piano Concerto-<\/span><\/p>\n

Best Piano Concerto written in the 20th<\/sup> Century (including Rachmaninov)<\/span><\/p>\n

Hope to see you there<\/span> <\/span>KW<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>
\n\u00a0* Everything you need to know about music you can learn from children\u2019s literature. Tempos don\u2019t have to be exactly at the metronome markings, but like Mr. Rogers, they need to be somewhere in the neighbourhood. Dynamics and intonation are like Goldilocks and the Three Bears- that was to sharp, that was too flat, and that was just right. Critics, audiences and performers would be wise to remember Dr. Seuss\u2019s Green Eggs and Ham. Old-school versus New-School performers (HIPster non-vibrato bands vs \u201cModern\u201d nouveau Hollywood sounding orchestras and ensembles) would be wise to remember the Butter Battle Book, where the end of the world is brought on by two cultures who can\u2019t agree whether to eat their toast with the butter side down or up.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n

c. 2006 Kenneth Woods
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