Klarinet Archive - Posting 001133.txt from 1998/11

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] Absolutes
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 02:38:34 -0500

Leila,

As a fan of the David Lodge books, I'm very interested that you were in
his class. His academic work is pooh-poohed of course by my
post-modernist friends, but what do they know? Anyway, I think that his
novels are great fun, and often very insightful. Do you have any good
stories to tell about the class?

Your observations about cultural differences are also interesting to me,
particularly because my own impressions, based on nothing very much,
have always been the opposite. I've always thought that American
players are in general particularly well prepared from the technical
point of view, compared with British players. (So in fact, a lot of my
work has been directed at technical problems.) The continent is perhaps
another thing -- Paris was always thought to be rigorous and demanding,
though I think that's changed.

In Italy, where I do a month's summer course in Siena and have a
graduate class during the year, there has been an overly teacher-driven
musical culture for much too long. I encountered a student who was
'diplomato' without ever having played a Brahms sonata with the piano,
and I'm not talking about a concert, either. (Of course he had all his
teacher's pencil marks on the part to tell him what to do, so that was
all right.) And the instrumental standard has been abysmally low, and
there's still a lot of political manoeuvering by teachers to advance
their students. But it's getting better.

By the way, I had an email from an ex-student saying that he had set up
a mailing list in Italian (send email to clair-subscribe@-----.com to
join the Clair mailing list, I suppose after the piece for solo clarinet
by Donatoni), so if any Italian speakers out there would like to....

Going back to Britain, the musical life here is much less formal than
the US musical life, probably. For example, the sort of situation
someone described as having arisen in Seattle wouldn't occur in Britain,
I think. And the self-run orchestras don't, or certainly didn't, have
an audition procedure that involved any obligation on the management,
being merely a device to provide a pool of players who might be given
trial periods or concerts in the orchestra. On the other hand, there is
a very rich and lively free-lance scene, sadly a little stagnant at the
moment, which means that although a good player arriving in London may
twiddle his or her thumbs for ages, in the end an opportunity will
present itself, and then the thing snowballs.

Or it used to:-(

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE
tel/fax 01865 553339

"...his playing soars so freely, one is aware of witchcraft without
noticing a single magical gesture."
(C.D.F.Schubart on the harpsichord playing of C.P.E.Bach)

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