We had a guest conductor in to handle the first half of Wednesday's rehearsal, as our conductor was off at his own retirement dinner. (Or I may have misunderstood and it was someone else's retirement. Whatever: he was not there, being otherwise engaged in dining to celebrate someone's retirement.) The guest conductor's first name was Peter, although I missed his last name.He was brilliant.
We worked on the 32nd symphony, and he was fantastic. He had us really work on the musicality of the piece, asking for different sounds, talking about how the parts worked with/against one another, how the dynamics were crucial. He was a violinist, and so now and again he'd grab his violin and demonstrate the sounds or the phrasing he was looking for. He used simile, metaphor, and humour to get us to understand how to produce the sounds he was asking us to do. (He told the celli we sounded like a nail gun at one point, and although we all laughed we knew exactly what he meant, and proceeded to shape the repeated eighth notes in a particular cycle as he requested.) And it worked, it all worked. He had us sounding tight and focused and blended. Ultimately, what he had us work on was the emotion of the piece, something that's hard to focus on by yourself in a large ensemble. The first half of the evening flew by until he suddenly looked at the time and said we had to stop. The orchestra broke into spontaneous applause for him, and the first question asked was, "Where do you conduct?" He admitted that he didn't, but that he did coach.
Now, none of this implies that our regular maestro isn't a good conductor: Douglas has done fabulous things for us in the past five years, introducing new styles of music, broadening our scope, and pulling a new sound out of us. What Wednesday night demonstrated to me was that having a fresh leader and a different spin on the music made us think about how we play it in a different way. It's kind of like how running your writing past a fresh set of eyes helps you understand it differently. I wonder what having a guest conductor in a rehearsal now and again on a regular basis would do for us. By addressing different details, Peter gave us a new understanding of the piece, and I really hope we can carry it over to the other pieces we play. It's not enough to just play what's there; we have to give it personality as well. We've been trying to focus interpretation in our section by emphasizing certain things, making repeated phrases after the second time, leaning on certain beats and so forth, but we can't make it happen everywhere. There was a complaint in our section that our principal was complicating the music and we should just stick to what was written down, but there's so much missing if you just follow the bare notes. Interpretation and style are crucial. I'm glad Peter demonstrated that the entire orchestra could do it, and make the music sound extraordinary.
Our principal had to leave at the break; I won’t see her again until next fall. Simply sitting next to her has helped me so much this past season. It meant that in the second half I sat alone, and I have been very bad and not learned the principal’s solo in the My Fair Lady medley, so when it was suddenly there I stalled. Fortunately the man who sits behind the principal played through it, and I gave him a grateful smile. Everything else I handled pretty well, except the transition into “Edelweiss” in the Sound of Music medley, where the celli have the theme, and all of us stumbled. The transitions are nasty things in medleys; usually the key and the beat both change, and you have to go right into it. And for some reason my fingerings weren’t intuitive for me. I mean, they are intuitive in that if I remember where I have to go they work, but if I blank and just stare at the number (as I did Wednesday night) I’m lost. I’m thankful I’d reviewed all the musicals over the week at home (shock, surprise! I actually had time to practice!), otherwise I’d have really disgraced myself. I managed to be the only cello to carry on in a couple of odd places, too. Go me.
Three more rehearsals — next Wednesday, an extra one next Friday night, the dress the following Monday — and then the concert on the Tuesday. And then no orchestra until September again. This season has flown by. I’ll miss it a lot.
(Originally posted at Owls' Court.)
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