Klarinet Archive - Posting 000157.txt from 1994/11

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Prokovieff Overture
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 1994 15:11:53 -0500

> From: MX%"lgbuick@-----.14
> Subj: Re: Some advice on Prokovieff Sextet

> On Tue, 8 Nov 1994, Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu wrote:
>
> > I was just asked to play the Prokovieff "Overture on Hebrew Themes." I
> > know the work well having first played it in the late 1940s after having
> > studied it with Dave Weber in NY.
> >
> > I always played it like the Brahms quintet; i.e., serious music, dignified,
> > dull.
>
> Hello? Ummm.... would you care to rephrase that?

Certainly. Whenever I played the work as Mr. Straight-arrow, it was dignified
and dull. The piece requires a lift and I was beginning to think that
introducing some elements of Klezmer playing might do that for this work.

But let me go further. I am of the opinion that the Mozart quintet is dull
when played in too dignified a fashion. It is wonderfully fun music and when
approached as if it is some kind of an icon, it becomes as dull as dishwater.

I don't know if this is true at all, true in specific, or true in general, but
a great deal of fun chamber music is, in my opinion, played too seriously.
If someone playing the Ibert wind quintet can't get a smile out of me by
the way he or she plays the last movement, then I see it as being overly
impressed with both the composer's and the piece's reputation. It is a
funny piece. The player should treat it like telling a joke: "Well,
it seems there was this travelling salesman and he met a farmer's daughter
..."

Pieces that are not funny include the slow movement of the Brahms quintet,
and the slow movement of the Beethoven septet.

Do you remember the movie about the two comedians who hated each other.
One was played by Walter Mathau and the other by George Burns. Mathau
is telling his nephew that "words beginning with a 'P' are funny, like
pickle, or Petunia."

Well, slow movements are rarely funny, and movements that are genuinely
funny are often played too seriously.

====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
====================================