I seem to have acquired a reputation somewhere along the line as a conductor who often chooses very challenging programs.<\/p>\n
(Some regular readers who I work with in various orchestras will already be laughing out loud wondering how I might begin to defend myself against this charge. I’m not going to. Not exactly) <\/em><\/p>\n I think I would be straining the bounds of credibility to contend that I don\u2019t have a taste for challenges, but, in my defense, many of the most challenging programs I\u2019ve done weren\u2019t chosen by me. On paper, the CMEW program I did last spring would certainly qualify as close to impossible for the amount of rehearsal time we had (Paul Mefano had emailed about 10 days before the first rehearsal to ask how rehearsals were going, and I when I told him the first rehearsal was the one he was coming to in the studio the day before the concert, I think he almost passed out). That one was chosen by the BBC and CMEW\u2019s AD, Gordon Downie. I once did Piston’s Sinfonietta, Ives 3, the Barber Adagio (which is crazy hard) and more on a concert- it was fun (and challenging) but nobody came to the concert. I was tempted to get the committee that picked the program to sign a statement that it wasn’t my idea, but I’m really glad I did it.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the vexing question of what actually makes a concert difficult. Is it a question of a program being difficult for the individual players to execute<\/strong>, or is it that it is difficult to make it sound good<\/strong>? At many levels of the music business, I\u2019m often surprised at the extent to which many players don\u2019t seem to realize what they sound good on. Sad to say, but only the best musicians seem to realize that Haydn, Mozart and Schubert tend to be the hardest composers to play- not just the hardest to play in some artsy-fartsy, abstract way, but actually the hardest to play well enough that the audience is not writhing in agony throughout the performance. Beethoven\u2019s music tends to be a little more forgiving in the hall because of the sheer energy and power of his music, but not on recording- every little blemish shows through. String players, on the other hand, tend to equate “high” with “hard” and “lots of sharps or flats” with “hard.” This would seem to mean that Mozart 41 is the easiest piece ever written. Find me a live recording of that piece without clams by any but the very best orchestras.<\/p>\n On the other hand, it\u2019s pretty hard to make Richard Strauss sound bad, but Johann Strauss Jr. is much easier to mangle. When we did Brahms 1 and Death and Transfiguration on the same program last year, I think almost everyone in the band expected the Strauss to be the tougher piece, but it was the Brahms which did the ass-kicking. I did a Young Person\u2019s Guide with a small regional orchestra a few years back and some of the players thought it was impossibly hard (I had a lot of complaints), but it sounded great in the concert\u00a0and the audience loved it. The Leonore 3 also on the program sounded pretty weak by comparison, but these musicians’ impression of their performances was exactly the opposite of the audience\u2019s.<\/p>\n The program I\u2019m doing with the Wilmslow Symphony in a couple of weeks is certainly challenging by any measure, including mine-<\/p>\n Elgar- Cockaigne Overture<\/p>\n Gregson<\/a>– Trombone Concerto<\/p>\n Arnold- Scottish Dances<\/p>\n Copland- Four Dance Episodes from \u201cRodeo\u201d<\/p>\n Gershwin- An American in ParisThe Elgar is Strauss-ian in its ability to flatter the orchestra, provided you have a mighty enough virtuoso brass section, which the WSO does. Still, it is fiendishly hard to play for everyone, and very taxing for the brass- even brass monsters. Doing such a massive blow as a concert opener can either loosen up the whole group for the rest of the night, or wreck everyone\u2019s chops and confidence.<\/p>\n The Gregson<\/a> is a lovely piece, and very well written. Eddie (that\u2019s Maestro Gregson to you, mate) came to our first working rehearsal on it on Friday and it was a tribute to his craftiness as an orchestrator that he went home pretty happy as far as I could tell. It\u2019s tricky, but very\u00a0playable. The only obvious extra challenge is that\u00a0nobody in the band has heard it before, so we\u2019re learning the style as well as the piece.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the Arnold- it\u2019s really a \u201cpops\u201d piece, and fortunately, it\u2019s pretty straightforward musically, but there are a few nasty licks which will take a moment\u2019s sorting out. Pieces like this can be dangerous, though, because you tend to under-rehearse them in favour of pieces like the Elgar, which are inescapably difficult. I like the piece, but I\u2019m not sure the concert needed it- the\u00a0 Gregson is short for a concerto at 18 minutes, but the Elgar is long for an overture. Still- they want to play it, and I\u2019m excited to learn it.<\/p>\n First impressions are important in life. Buckaroo Holiday, the first movement,\u00a0is orders of magnitude harder than the other 3 episodes from \u201cRodeo.\u201d It\u2019s also my favourite piece in the suite. Because it comes first, it tends to make the\u00a0whole piece feel harder than it is, and you can’t afford to let up on the concentration after it’s over.\u00a0By Copland\u2019s formidable standards, it\u2019s not that tricky, but it has an awful lot of gaping holes to fall into. You have to do it enough that everyone knows which version of the tune is coming next, or someone (usually someone loud) crashes in early. Hoe Down gets fingers flying, but it\u2019s a standard youth orchestra piece.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve enjoyed coming back to the Gershwin, having just done it at the OES fairly recently. I like bracketing the program with the two un-contestable masterpieces on offer, and somehow, I think Gershwin\u2019s hyper-detailed orchestration seems very close to the rarified perfectionism of Elgar or even Mahler. It doesn\u2019t sound<\/em><\/strong> like Mahler (at all), but the orchestral technique is pretty similar. All those lovely multi-layered dynamics and wonderful colors.\u2026<\/p>\n The Gershwin sounded great at the first reading, but since then I\u2019ve done a fair bit of work with the strings in particular, who tend to get forgotten in this piece. The first result of this is that they\u2019re sounding much better, which gives the piece a level of depth and sophistication it often loses if you just leave it to the brass to carry the day, but the second result of thisis that I\u2019ve convinced them that it is very hard. Now I\u2019ve got to convince them that the difficulties are surmountable. It\u2019s a pretty durable piece, fortunately.<\/p>\n I\u2019m always surprised when I come back to the piece that the great trumpet solo in the slow section isn\u2019t actually all that long. I think my misconception about this passage started with several\u00a0performances of the Cincinnati Symphony\u2019s legendary principal trumpet for many years, Phil Collins, who could make time stop with the sheer beauty of his sound. Phil has a great blog<\/a>, by the way. Conductors can learn just as much from him as brass players, I’m sure.<\/p>\n I always think of this moment, with the rather salty accompaniment in the orchestra, as the grand entrance of a burleske queen in some Paris night club. In Phil\u2019s hands, she was a sophisticated and glamorous European beauty. When James Smock<\/a> played it at the OES, she was way kinkier, raunchier and racier (definitely the tougher side of Paris), in a way that was maybe a bit more startling, but kinda alluring. John\u2019s playing her a little more upmarket than James\u2019 down-and-dirty version, but he sounds great.<\/p>\n Anyway, the band\u2019s been sounding good in rehearsals, and although I\u2019m becoming aware of the dwindling hours of rehearsal left to us, I\u2019ve been feeling reasonably confident about the concert- the orchestra has definitely grown in the year since my last visit.<\/p>\n However, I had a funny conversation after the last rehearsal\u00a0with one of the string players, which got me thinking about this post. She said the programme was \u201cso mad that I\u2019ve had to resort to desperate measures- you know… the p-word\u2026……. practice.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n She continued in a tone both humorous and ominous- \u201cI think it\u2019s a suicide mission, this program. These string parts are insane,\u201d she warned. \u201cA \u201cSuicide Mission for Orchestra-\u201d we should put that on the posters! I think we\u2019re on a suicide mission this time!\u201d<\/p>\n I\u00a0mumbled something intended to be vaguely encouraging.<\/p>\n “Well, at least the wind section are happy,\u201d she finished. \u201cThat\u2019s the important thing!\u201d<\/p>\n What was funny was that she didn\u2019t seem upset or particularly worried- hopefully she knows it all sounds pretty good, regardless of what it feels like.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n