Klarinet Archive - Posting 000063.txt from 1998/06

From: Lee Hickling <hickling@-----.Net>
Subj: [kl] Tempi and so on
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 12:04:43 -0400

I like to have my students hear how the great performers do a selection,
but I also tell them, "Just because a great virtuoso played that movement
presto instead of allegro, or that one grave instead of adagio, doesn't
make that compulsory. You're the artist now. You're the performer. What
feels right to you? How fast do you think it should go?"

Isn't music supposed to be fun? We play it for fun, and people listen to it
for fun, right? Then why approach it reverently, with long faces?

My point is that yes, students must have models. They probably need good
ones more than ever, when you consider the dreck they probably listen to
all day on the radio and records. And up to a point they need to follow
them. But eventually a performing artist has to acquire the confidence to
impose her or his own interpretation on a score, whether it's a little
retard here or a decrescendo there, or even when it means overriding the
tempo or dynamic markings - which very often only reflect some editor's
opinion, and not the composer's intention.

After all, music is one of the performing arts, and we teachers often play
down or overlook the performing part. Eventually an artist has to acquire
the supreme self-confidence to take charge, the minute he or she steps
on-stage. That's what comes across the footlights. It even has an impact on
the adjudicators at a competition.

And a clam or two won't matter, as long as the performer has the poise, the
arrogance even, not to get rattled by them. Critics wrote that the first
Rubenstein used to leave the concert hall "littered with wrong notes." He
sneered at them, and kept packing the concert halls. And I love what
Beethoven is supposed to have told his piano students, "Do not be the
prisoner of the score!"

Of course, you need to take into account that Anton, Ludwig and I were all
incurable romantics.

Lee Hickling <hickling@-----.net>

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