Just offstage after the second half of SMP dress rehearsal. God its flippin\u2019 hot. It\u2019s so hot that I\u2019m not the only one sweating. Everyone\u2019s sweating. I find it kind of a relief, since I\u2019m always hot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Schumann went well. What a piece- it\u2019s the sort of music that makes me feel like I\u2019m spending my life on a worthwhile endeavor. Gemma sounds great, and is very easy to work with. There really is a difference between British and American cello playing. Both make creative use of sounds that the other school would never allow. If you listen with open ears to someone from a different school, you can hear some new possibilities. People with small minds and smaller imaginations complain that Schumann was a poor orchestrator. Nonsense- the orchestration to this piece is gorgeous, and who gives players more room to make colours than Schumann? Color is the key with Schumann- you have the most amazing freedom to do interesting things with sound, whether you\u2019re the soloist or the last chair second violinist, but if you\u2019re not searching for sounds, nothing really happens. It\u2019s like German Debussy. Is that an oxymoron?<\/p>\n
Did I mention how hot it is on stage?<\/p>\n
The first two movements of the Schumann the dead hall didn\u2019t cause us too much trouble, but the last movement took a few adjustments. The main problem is short notes and silences- in such a dead space where the sound after you release has no shape, it\u2019s hard to feel like there is an organic shape to the space between notes, so people tend to crash in a little early. The theme of the finale starts with two short notes in a not-too-fast tempo, and the second note always wants to come early in here, where it was fine in the rehearsal venue. That fixed, it grooves along wonderfully.<\/p>\n
Good news- NO BOGUS CADENZA from Gemma! Did she read the blog??? More likely, she’s just a musician of taste…<\/p>\n
Talk about dead silences. Coriolan Overture is not the piece to do in this space, but it is the most fantastic etude. I haven\u2019t told the musicians, but part of the reason we\u2019ve worked so hard on this is that we\u2019re really rehearsing for Beethoven 5 next year. If you\u2019re going to do the ultimate warhorse, it had better be mind-shatteringly good. Coriolan has the same challenges, only worse, distilled down to eight minutes. The play it fantastically, but again, it took a while to get used to playing short in this space.<\/p>\n
Off to guzzle some water and get some food in me.<\/p>\n
I always\u00a0 mean to let everyone out early and have an easy day, but it takes all the time we have to sort out this space. Maybe we have to try to get more than one rehearsal in the hall so this one isn\u2019t so grueling.<\/p>\n