“Nothing communicates better than art. It is quicker than language and clearer than philosophy.” Frederick Weisman
“If the key is in question in Shostakovich, it’s always in the minor.” Gunther Herbig
I’ve been using Twitter to query my followers about the value of music and the arts. I was curious if people thought there is a purpose to classical music beyond entertainment. According to Wikipedia, entertainment “consists of any activity which provides a diversion or permits people to amuse themselves in their leisure time.”
One person wrote of the value of classical music, “To cultivate a healthy mind, it’s needed!” Another said ” Music is the one language we all understand.” Another said good classical music helps us “explore truths and open conversations beyond wordly understanding”.
But few can explain how and why some music goes beyond mere entertainment. Music can challenge the audience to a wide range of emotions from bleak to angry to ecstatic.
Some of the music on program of this weekends Columbus Symphony concerts may stir the listener to more than a lulled state of amusement. We’re are playing two pieces by Dmitri Shostakovich, his 10th Symphony in E minor Op. 93 and his Piano Concerto No. 2, in F major Op. 102 written for his son, Maxim. Gunther Herbig leads, with his wife Jutta Czapski playing the piano concerto.
The Symphony was first performed soon after the death of Stalin in 1953. It was his first symphonic work since his (second) “denunciation” by Stalin’s government in 1948.
The first movement opening is bleak, desolate. A ruminative, only mildly optimistic theme is played by the clarinet and developed, almost bitterly, by the rest of the orchestra. Glimmers of hope (major chords) are but passing shadows. A second theme, introduced by the flute, is jovial by comparison, waltz-like, but certainly not what I would call happy. When the clarinet returns with the first theme, the solo seems to wander aimlessly before finding the theme again. Later the bassoons take the theme and darken it more with their plaintive tones.
The second movement, probably the most famous in the symphony, is said to be a “portrait of Stalin.” I found this video on YouTube which makes the point quite clear. It is relentlessly angry and violent, miltaristic and unstoppable.
The third movement is again waltz-like, but not light in spirit. It communicates more sarcasm and irony, an almost creepy drunken mood, a sodden, bitter smile: Dark circus music. A horn solo, repeated numerous times in the middle, signifies Shostakovich’s name (thumbing his nose at Stalin?), and his love for a student named Elmira Nazirova.
The fourth movement, after an alternately tender and eerie slow opening for oboe, flute and bassoon solos, goes into another ironically humorous theme which builds to the ecstatic, if not happy, ending.
This symphony is surprisingly well known and loved by audiences. Why? It seems to reach out and draw the listener in, not so much to entertain, but to offer an emotional glimpse of one of the darkest periods in human history.
Luckily the piano concerto is un-customarily sunny for Shostakovich, and should be a nice balance for the program.
My sister and I played recitals the past two days in two different “recreation halls”, both at senior citizen centers. Not only were the pianos awful, but the acoustics were very dry in both places, caused by numerous curtains above the stage and acoustical tiles on the ceilings of both halls. Luckily I have learned not to struggle against acoustical vacuums, difficult as it may be to resist.
Playing in these halls reminded me of a harrowing experience I had at a budding solo artist. I was 18 or so when I won a state-wide solo competition, the prize being a live recital on the largest classical radio station in the area. It was not pre-recorded. It was live on the radio.
I showed up at the studio to warm up. They showed me the room I was to play in. In a radio studio, all rooms are completely dead acoustically. This one was literally carpeted on every inch from top to bottom, an acoustical vacuum.
The clarinet, along with all woodwind instruments, has no acoustical ring itself. The small flare in the bell does little to give fullness to the sound. Clarinetists rely on the room to fill out the sound.
A string instrument has a small acoustical “shell” in its body, a hollow box with some resonance capacity. A piano has a large sound board and body to enhance the sound. None such enhancer exists on the clarinet.
Throughout the program I struggled to get the full round sound I knew I was capable of, to no effect. The room swallowed any tone. All the I could hear was the reed’s buzz. But a musician often cannot control their desire to sound good. I subconsciously opened my throat, raised my soft-palette, anything which might enhance the resonance of my tone.
The recital ended with Claude Debussy’s Premiere Rhapsodie, about 8 minutes of gorgeous, lyrical, often very soft music. By the middle of the piece, my throat and soft-palette were completely distraught and fatigued by the constant and un-natural stress of trying to “resonate” my sound.
I began to leak air through my nose, a sort of snort, or snoring sound. Also, since the air was leaking through my nose, I couldn’t get enough pressure to play, so I had to blow harder, which caused the snorting to increase. Remember,this was live on the radio, heard by thousands. I couldn’t just stop and rest.
Can you picture it?
I managed to finish the piece, barely. My pianist said I deserved a purple heart for getting through it. I’ve never forgotten the experience.
I have also learned something from it, and found a way to test and challenge that “compulsive” desire to fill out the sound in un-tenable situations.
I occasionally practice with earplugs in. It creates an uncomfortable detachment from the aural feedback which all musicians rely on to adjust their tone and pitch. Using recordings for feedback, I found that I sounded much better than I thought, despite being cut off from feedback. I began to accept the limitation instead of fighting it, and even began to thrive while playing with earplugs.
The vibrations can be “heard” inside your head. After all, the reed is vibrating inside your mouth, and if you play single lip, the vibrations transmit through your teeth. You can even notice slight variations in the resonance between notes, and adjust to equalize them. In fact, the longer I played with earplugs, the better it sounded in the recordings I made of the tests. Finding the most “resonant” tone in my head translated into a beautifully even and resonant tone outside my head.
If only I had grasped this valuable truth before playing that recital live on the radio.
Today’s recital with my sister went well. Except the piano was flat AND out of tune. We played at a retirement recreation center, where my mother takes dance classes. At a place like that, you get what you get.
Pianists have no control over the quality of the instrument they get to play. They learn to detach from a bad instrument to survive.
But as a woodwind player, I am accustomed to tuning to what is around me. We must do it constantly in orchestra. But at least the orchestra tunes to a 440 A to begin with. So out of tune is relative to the “in tune” beginning.
My sister, a flutist, and I are adept at tuning to each other. We grew up playing duets and have always had a remarkable ability to blend, tune and phrase together.
But with the sour piano twanging sharp or flat depending on the note, my sister and I flailed to find notes as they passed, and tried to find each other in the process, with little luck. Talk about distraction from the music making! I finally put on a longer barrel, which helped a little.
Oh well. Smile, play as if it’s exactly the way it should sound, and move on. The audience loved it.
Here’s the second movement of the Brahms Quintet Op. 115 in B minor, written in 1891. The gypsy Brahms shows heavily in the middle of the piece, and then he smooths out his shirt and the music goes back to the sublime mood of the beginning. I particularly love the coda of this movement, when the clarinet floats (hopefully) up to the high d.
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The difficult passages in the Sierra “Fandangos” were, as I expected, mostly for “effect”, meaning the notes themselves didn’t matter as much as the shape and volume of the passage. Delfs used the word “Sirocco” to describe the blurs of loud runs. A Sirocco is a “hot or warm wind of cyclonic origin from an arid or heated region.” The piece overall was entertaining and colorful, and used the orchestra effectively. I can see why Sierra has gotten some attention as a composer.
Andre Watts performed the Beethoven Emperor piano concerto like a seasoned pro. His famously full tone on the piano transformed the piece into something larger than life. Delfs followed his lead with a rich and full accompaniment, which few pianists could cut through, but Watts had no trouble.
Unfortunately, the concentration of both performers and listeners was annoyed by a high pitched whine from a hearing aid or some other electronic device. Delfs even spoke to the audience between movements, requesting the owner of offending hearing aid to turn it off.
The incident reminded me of similar event I experienced a few years ago. It occurred at a concert of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion which I attended at the Kennedy Center. A guide-dog, which accompanied a listener in the audience, didn’t like the music being played, and whined through several movements. The conductor did not stop and request that it cease immediately, but the animal and its owner were asked to leave during intermission. Yet the entire audience had to withstand a substantial distraction during an otherwise stellar concert. It raises thorny questions about the limits of inclusiveness at concerts.
I had forgotten how tricky Beethoven concertos could be. His 1st piano concerto has a lengthy clarinet solo in the slow movement. His violin concerto has another such delicate and difficult solo. Tonight’s concerto, the 5th and last concerto he wrote for piano, has yet another dicey part, difficult to tune and phrase, especially at the dynamics Beethoven requests. Yet I felt better than usual about it, armed as I am now with Legere synthetic reeds, which don’t collapse under the stresses of heat and tense playing. After the concerto, I commented to my colleague Woody that I had never felt so (relatively) comfortable in a performance of that piece.
The second half featured Brahms’ magnificent 2nd symphony, which a friend of mine claims is his best. It’s Brahms’ “happiest” symphony, with cheerful themes throughout. Yet I never fail to be amazed at Brahms’ rich and dense score. In my view, there is more music packed in each measure of Brahms than any other composer. It’s as if he wrote a piece two hours long, and then somehow condensed the same emotions into 45 minutes. Delfs’ traditionally expansive reading allowed us to feel and explore much of the hidden detail.
As for my own experience, I was a happy clam. I had settled just this week on playing my Hawkins B mouthpiece. I had not played it much with the Legere reeds, but after I grew accustomed to the combination, I was quite happy. For the first time in years, I felt and heard the resonance of my own sound coming back to me from the hall. Remember, the Ohio Theater is quite large, 2800+ seats, and not a particularly resonant hall. Much of the sound just bounces around the boxy stage. But I remember the comfort of knowing I had filled the hall with my sound, when I was playing on my old Lelandais in its heyday before it lost its integrity. Tonight I felt that resonance again. Hallelujah!
As for Gremlins, they exist. They will creep into a passage and throw a few notes off, just for gremlin fun. As any seasoned orchestra player will tell you, if one person gets a gremlin, they are sure to bounce around to a few other players before ceasing. There were a few gremlins tonight, but nothing Brahms’ glorious music couldn’t handle.
This weekend the Columbus Symphony is playing a symphonic concert featuring pianist Andre Watts in Beethoven’s 5th Concerto, Emperor. Andreas Delfs, former music director of the Milwaukee Symphony, leads us in Johannes Brahms’ 2nd Symphony in D Major.
Delfs had some interesting comments during our rehearsal of the Brahms today. At one point, wanting to urge us to play particularly passionately in one place, he said “You never know how many people in the audience are hearing this for the first time.” I agree. And his comfortable familiarity with the piece promises a rich and noble reading.
To open the concert, we are playing something new to us, Roberto Sierra’s Fandangos, written in 2000.
Mr. Sierra, Puerto Rican, was born in 1953. He studied in Europe, notably with György Ligeti, a well known avant-garde composer, whose music was featured famously in the move 2001 A Space Odyssey.
Fandangos has some passages which are, for all practical purposes, unplayable. The photo below shows the first page, listing the tempo at quarter equals 96, the second photo shows the passages in question. Notice also that the first page also says “Improvisatorio, and a bit later “con garbo”, meaning “jauntily”. The possessed passages will definitely sound improvised, and not just a little bit jaunty.
Dear Mr. Sierra, what were you thinking? Why did you write such fiendish licks for us? Musicians are good creatures, never wishing to harm anyone, except themselves. Did a musician mistreat you at a tender age? What did we do to deserve banishment to the guilt-riddled purgatory of failing to play exactly what is written? Please, send me a list of clarinetists who can play these licks perfectly, and I’ll show you a clarinetist like the technical genius monster Kari Krikku, or another once in a generation player.
So Mr. Roberto Sierra get the “Naughtiest Composer so far” award.
We clarinetists are lucky, we’ve got 4 major works for clarinet written by Johannes Brahms: the Trio in A minor for clarinet, cello and piano, Op. 114; the Quintet in B minor for clarinet and strings, Op. 115; and Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2, Op. 120. His association with clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld gave the world some great music, and clarinetists some of their best. Too bad he didn’t write a concerto for clarinet.
Here’s the first movement of the quintet, with that silky lullaby main theme. I was privileged to performed this with my fine colleagues from the Columbus Symphony a number of years ago. I was playing my Lelandais mouthpiece, for those interested.
Written for the A clarinet, Brahms explored the dark lower range of the instrument. He also featured the clarinet’s gypsy side in the second movement which I’ll post in a few days.
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My sister and I played recitals the past two days in two different “recreation halls”, both at senior citizen centers. Not only were the pianos awful, but the acoustics were very dry in both places, caused by numerous curtains above the stage and acoustical tiles on the ceilings of both halls. Luckily I have learned not to struggle against acoustical vacuums, difficult as it may be to resist.
Today’s recital with my sister went well. Except the piano was flat AND out of tune. We played at a retirement recreation center, where my mother takes dance classes. At a place like that, you get what you get. 
