Orchestra Rehearsal

An unusual rehearsal tonight. It was a Strings Only rehearsal, and our principal cellist was unable to be there. We had one other absence, which left the cello section at half strength, and me in the first seat. Too bad for them. We played Bach and Vivaldi, and had an altogether delightful baroque time of it.

First up was the Bach Double. I have previously mentioned it as the Bach Conterto for Two Cembalos in c minor. Turns out the Bach Double is variously arranged for two violins, two harpsichords, or the way we are playing it, violin and oboe. The continuo part is a little tricky, with three flats and lots of accidentals, as you would expect in c minor. It was great fun, though, and a tiny bit of work will make it more so.

We’re playing Vivaldi’s Spring from The Four Seasons this go ’round, with Bridget soloing again. Since we’ve played this before, it was just brushing up and adding a few more details, PLUS I got to play to solos in the continuo part. Have I mentioned before that I do not like E major? Enough said.

I wish we played music like this more often. What fun.

Orchestra Rehearsal

New music in the folders tonight.

• Selections from Les Miserables
• Berlioz Le Carnival Romain (Overture)
• Mozart The Marriage of Figaro (Overture)
• J.S.Bach Cembalo-Konzerte No. 1 c-moll (BWV 1060)
• Vivaldi Spring from The Four Seasons
• Bartok Rumanian Folk Dances

Utter disappointment. There’s nothing new here at all. OK, that’s not true. I don’t know the Bach concerto for 2 cembalos, but that is going to be a continuo part, fun but not too challenging. And I don’t think we played Les Miserable last year, but that’s show tunes – not my cuppa tea, at all.

On the other hand, Maestro is not here and we have a sub, my favorite amongst all the conductors I know here (admittedly not many – but he ranks high with all those I know, ever). Imagine my surprise and delight when he sat down next to me while we were tuning (the principal was a little late) and asked me why I’m not playing for him. In shock, I stammered out that I would love to play for him, but the orchestras he conducts are too far away from where I live to be practical. Can he not know that I have fantasized about doing just that for months, ever since he first subbed with us?

Anyway, the moment passed, and we got down to work. I really wished we had not been sight-reading, if you can call the first look at the music after several months away from it sight-reading. I was at a disadvantage, not having been at rehearsal two weeks ago when the folders were passed out, so I was pretty cold. But rehearsal was every bit as delightful as I expected it to be, with Maestro-sub at the helm.

We started off with Les Mis. A couple of tricky rhythms that should polish up with a brief look at. Great moment in Do You Hear the People Sing. The rhythm is dotted eighth-sixteenth twice, quarter note, triplet. We were all dutifully playing our sharp dotted eighth-sixteenth motifs, when Maestro-sub stopped us and asked us to play that like singing – more legato, less dancey. Huge difference.

The Marriage of Figaro was truly an aha event. He took the tempo 30% faster than we ever played it before, and in 1, not 2. You could see the shocked looks, but amazingly we rose to the occasion. Even though the notes went flying by, it was much more musical. I seriously faked my way through this the last time we played it, but tonight, thanks to my fast-playing breakthroughs in lessons, I was ready. Surprise! Happiness! Delight! My fingers flew, I got all of the rhythms and at least 70% of the notes. It feels like it’s worth practicing now, because I am capable of making it better – I hadn’t quite reached that point before.

Karma also payed me a visit in the Roman Carnival overture. Classical pulsing eighth notes underlying the harmony are usually no problem for me, but I never did get that little syncopation last time – da DAH da da DAH da instead of DAH da da DAH da da, with actual note changes on the DAH. This go ’round I think I can do it with a little practice in the usual spots.

This was also the first time as a group that we made progress on heeding the dynamics in both of those pieces. Maestro is usually satisfied with a fairly uniform mf. I think this is why I like playing for Maestro-sub so much. His expectations are higher, and he also has the ability to help us reach them.

We finished with the first five Rumanian dances. Learning point here was to be flexible in the accompaniment, and go with the solo lines. As far as practice goes, a couple of run-throughs with focus on V should do it.

Maybe I’m not so disappointed to see these old pieces reappear, after all. Maybe I’ll actually be able to play them this time!

Orchestra Dress Rehearsal

As dress rehearsals go, this one was pretty good. We got through the entire program and ran only a half hour over our usual rehearsal time, and though we still have a few hairy moments, most stops were for just a bit of polishing. We were also joined by a tympanist and a contrabassoonist – Maestro commented that it was like adding a super woofer to the orchestra. Brahms is so much easier when you can hear the heartbeat! Tomorrow we’ll also have a harpist. It’s always a bit nerve wracking to have new parts added at the concert.

Rehearsal began with 45 minutes or so on Katherine…. We had new parts last week, but no surprises this week. The composer asked for a few details to be brought out more, but seemed generally pleased. One of the more interesting moments came towards the end. There are a number of entries marked “n”, for niente, meaning that we are to enter with barely any sound and then usually swell up to piano over a measure or two. One of the later entries is managed by most of the woodwind section and I think a few brass. The composer asked how we could make that entry more quietly. Maestro replied that he should give it to the strings. I think there might have been a tiny, tiny bit of derision in his voice, but I’ll chalk that up to stress from the concert being so soon and no more time to make changes.

I wasn’t sure what to make of this piece at first, but the more we play it, the more I like it. I’ve finally had a chance to hear a recording of the piano version, and I do prefer the orchestration, with all of its “maybe this could be a little better” moments. Maybe that is just familiarity, but I’m looking forward to the premier tomorrow night. A couple more things to make things interesting: there was a big article in today’s paper about the composer and the impetus for writing this piece. I’ve written before that this was a response to the experience of his daughter’s murder by her mother. I won’t rehash the details, but this was a case where mother and child were overseas while Dad was in the US, struggling to have his concerns taken seriously, and we will be fundraising for Childhealth Advocacy International. On a practical level, that means we may have a larger audience than usual. And also, there’s a college hockey game that starts at nearly the same time as the concert, right across the street. I expect traffic to be… interesting. I will leave very early and hope to have lots of time to warm up.

For the last 1.5 hours or so we ran the Brahms, followed by Tchaikovsky. Not much more to say there. I love both of these pieces, and they’re just fun to play, even when I feel like I’m playing maybe 30% of the right notes. We have a useful division of labor at my desk. The principal has great tone and intonation, and I have great rhythm and concentration during rests. We have one last try at getting that stringendo at the end of the Brahms – no, we were still a half measure ahead tonight.

Orchestra Rehearsal

Started off without Maestro, who was delayed by My Fair Lady. Our oboist is our pinch hitter, and he started us off on Brahms 1st mvmt. When Maestro arrived he finished that, then the fourth mvmt to take advantage of all the horns being present, then moved on to the second and third mvmts. Wow. It’s been awhile since we played the middle movements. I need to put those on my practice schedule this week.

Good news on the fourth mvmt: I played that dotted half note (see last week) properly. Unfortunately, I am still faking the deedle deedles. Bad news on the fourth mvmt: neither I nor the principal has figured out why we can’t get the timing on the stringendo. We were closer this week, though. Maybe another week will do it.

The last half hour or so we spent on Katherine…, again with the composer. He had made a number of changes, and Maestro was obviously not happy. Passing out the parts was taking too long, he didn’t like the idea of changing string parts this close to the performance, and he was also time pressured because he needed to leave for another gig. So we reverted to the old version for tonight.

I have to say, the first run-through before Maestro had to leave went pretty well. Changes are on hold until next week, and if Composer gets organized so that the parts can be distributed before rehearsal I think we will be fine.

The most amusing part of the rehearsal came at the end, when Maestro handed the stick to the composer and dashed off. Composer made a valiant effort, but couldn’t figure out how to conduct downbeats. Big laugh. So oboist took over, with coaching on tempos from composer, and we had a few more productive minutes until the end of rehearsal.

Two weeks to go.

Orchestra Rehearsal

This evening’s rehearsal was split evenly between Tchaikovsky and Brahms 4th movement. The room was like a sauna, but I think even under optimal conditions this concert is going to require considerable stamina. Lots and lots of errors this week, after not rehearsing these pieces for at least two. Maestro was snapping a little. My major faux pas was shorting a dotted half note before some deedle-deedles in the slow section of the Brahms 4th mvmt. Must remember not to do that! He visually checked our part to make sure we had marked four slashes (for the beats) over that measure. How embarrassing.

One thing I find remarkable is that both of these difficult pieces bear a strong resemblance to the music, even though most of us are faking the fast notes. I am bringing these up to speed in practice, but still feel like I’m mostly flailing during rehearsal. I’ll see what more I can do in the next three weeks.

The two major parts I need to practice this week in the parts we rehearsed:

• Those deedle-deedle runs in the Brahms 4th mvmt (32nd notes following half and dotted half notes)
• The stringendo near the end of the Brahms

BTW, the string crossing section I worked on last week went very well.

Orchestra Rehearsal

Tonight we spent both hours working on Katherine…, the second hour with the composer present. It was very interesting, and somewhat tragic, to hear the motivation for the piece. We didn’t go into a great deal of detail, but it was written as a response to the murder of his infant daughter a number of years ago, by, as he put it, his then-wife. It was originally two pieces, written for piano.

The first piece, entitled Katherine on my Chest, is slow, gentle, contemplative, with the irregular, widely dispersed movement (of notes) meant to mimic the irregular motion of the baby’s feet against his chest. The second piece, With You at Your Grave, was inserted in the middle of this piece. The notes are faster, the melody that is passed around has wide skips (difficult to make legato) in a basic heart-beating 12/8 time interspersed with those irregular 5/8, 11/8 disturbances I wrote about last time. Dr. Woolner spoke of it as welling from the ground as he responded to the realization that, yes, she really was dead.

I’m not sure if this is his first attempt at orchestration, but he doesn’t do much of it, and he was very excited that we are going to perform this. I think it is going to be a very interesting piece, once we get past the need to count so excessively. He brought several CD’s with him, not nearly enough for all to listen to this week (of *course* we would like to hear his concept of the music, played on his piano) so we are taking turns. I had hoped I could find a copy to purchase, but they don’t seem to be available for sale anywhere. The album art is a black-and-white photo of him with Katherine on his chest, a darling dark-haired, dark-eyed baby girl with a little stork bite on her left cheek. Yes, I was stricken. She looked a lot like me.

It’s quite a bit different, focusing on a piece from the emotional aspect first, rather than defining that for yourself sometime after learning the notes. And speaking of notes, there are a lot more in the Brahms and Tchaikovsky. Four more rehearsals until the concert. I hope I get a chance to assess how my practicing is coming along next week.

Orchestra Rehearsal

Tonight was split fairly evenly between Brahms 1st mvmt and our first look at a contemporary piece by Stan Woolner entitled Katherine on my Chest/With you at your Grave.

Brahms practice notes:

• opening, especially arpeggios
• large intervals near beginning of Allegro, and at C
• sextuplets at K are really, really fast at tempo. I suppose practicing the gesture is the way to go there.
• Otherwise, fingerings are done; I just need to run the movement a few times.

Woolner notes:

There’s not much here to practice, really. The big challenge is the constant key and meter changes, not so much the notes. At rehearsal we marked in cues and obvious bowings. The other thing I learned was how to mark in cues for the more unusual time signatures, like 5/4 and 11/8. The measures are divided into groups of 2 or 3 notes, with each two note group marked with a slash and each three note group marked with a triangle. So for instance, a 11/8 bar may be marked above as ^|||| or ^^|^, etc. That really helped. The notes may not be difficult, but the harmonic motion is not yet obvious, so heaven help you if you mess up the counting.

Orchestra Rehearsal

Tonight’s rehearsal was physically exhausting. I had received an e-mail from our principal cellist, J-, warning me that he wasn’t going to be at rehearsal this week, so at least I was forewarned. And it was nice to have what should have been my lesson time this afternoon for what I call “cramming” and T- calls “practicing.” It did some good, even though I spent it all on Brahms 1st mvmt and we rehearsed Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet Fantasy for the first 1.5 hours and Brahms 4th mvmt for the last 0.5 hours. Too, too, too many notes, and too, too, too many accidentals. A real workout, and no, I’m not actually playing all of the notes correctly yet. I say it that way, because I am playing all the note values, one of the first rules of sight-reading. It’s the notes themselves that are somewhat random. However, I played all of the cello excerpts we were asked to demonstrate acceptably, so I was happy. And tired.

Rehearsal notes: Tchaikovsky

• work out the divisi parts on p1 and 3
• fast scale passages to bring up to speed at A, E, F, O, P, T (still need to do fingerings for most of those)
• fast triplet sections at Q, R
• fast section in rhythm before S
• fast scales with slur two bow two bowing at K, L
• exposed chromatic scale fragments in E and O (all the same)
• need to get V1 bowings at Q (in unison)
• need to have bowing decision on cello opening and similar passages

Brahms Symphony #1, 4th mvmt

• fingering for little scales around A
• (review fingering whole movement)
• ask T- about how to bow fast alternating notes at B and C – one string vs. adjacent strings
• need to get V1 bowings for the thematic section at H
• many little fast scale fragments to bring up to speed: before E, mid K, end K and L, late L
• arpeggios at F, mid O
• fingering and rhythm in stringendo after Q

Still a lot of work to be done. I am frankly not optimistic that I can learn all of these notes by March 7th. Instead of scale practice this week I am going to work on the scale fragments in the Tchaikovsky. If I am going to have a chance, it will be through rhythms and repetition.