Facing the music

[A Lark Ascending]

The Guardian runs a lighthearted set of series of interviews with classical musicians here:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/series/facing-the-music

Standard set of questions to which the musicians respond, usually bringing out a breadth of interest and a down-to-earth approach to music a million miles away from the mythologies that get constructed around them.

I'm always especially fascinated by What single thing would improve the format of the classical concert?

An amazing number mention the performers actually talking to the audience, something that I'm noticing more and more (yippee!).

The most recent response from Pekka Kuusisto is a good one:

"Improvisation. Not only in the music being performed but in everything that happens inside the concert hall. I think we should try different gestures more often, even when there’s a risk of looking like an ass. Maybe especially when there’s a risk, or rather, an opportunity, to look like an ass. I’m not particularly excited about the persona of the performer overshadowing the repertoire, but I often feel the nature of the concert makes us performers seem detached and alien in a way that might actually obscure the message in the music. The audience should not always be allowed to sink into a comfortable familiarity at a concert, but they should be derailed in all kinds of ways that scratch the skin of whatever organs they receive their experiences with."

[JSngry]

My experience has been that when you talk to a working (as opposed to a "star") "classical" musician about things like gig conditions, bandleaders, crowd response, venue sound, you'd probably not know they were a "classical" musician in particular until you started asking them about "classical music" or until they dropped specifics. Or about drugs and alcohol, maybe alcohol, not so much. Players like to play, just as often as not.

We're all, musicians and everybody else, too often held in check by employer expectations and the returns we aspire to get by fulfilling same. It's not complicated, except when it is, and vice-versa.

 

[A Lark Ascending]

Facing the music: Rachel Podger

"What single thing would improve the format of the classical concert?

More communication with the audience. Firstly through playing of course. If you’re not moved by what you’re playing, the audience will not be moved either. But by talking as well. If and when I speak during a concert the vibe in the hall changes dramatically, especially if there’s a joke in there (a successful one that is!). I remember the first concert I dared do this I was much more nervous of saying anything than I was of playing, but it’s got easier, it seems to somehow enhance the enjoyment of an audience if you communicate with words what the music means to you."

As far as this member of various audiences is concerned, spot on. 

Edited October 18, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[A Lark Ascending]

Facing the music: Lawrence Power (viola player)

Another vote for the de-toffing of the concert going experience.

Really interesting answer to the "We’re giving you a time machine: what period, or moment in musical history, would you travel to and why?" question. The usual response is Leipzig in the 1730s with Bach or 1820s Vienna at a Schubertiade. He responds:

Possibly to save Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas, Hans Krása and Viktor Ullmann from their premature deaths at Auschwitz. This whole school of Janáček was wiped out by the Holocaust and has denied us all of these extraordinary composers. Twentieth-century music might have developed in such a different way with these composers.

I've not come across Klein's name before. 

 

Edited November 1, 2016 by A Lark Ascending