Klarinet Archive - Posting 001463.txt from 1999/03

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] mistakes
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 16:03:40 -0500

On Sun, 28 Mar 1999 21:45:46 -0500, bcaslin@-----.com said:

> I have a few CDs of Thomas Hampson (yes, I know, not a clarinetist),
> which I enjoy very much; he is a fine, sensitive musician, and his
> forays out of traditional classical repertoire (Irving Berlin songs,
> etc.) are good in that he adjusts his interpretation to fit a more
> "popular" genre.

> On the other hand, I have heard from people who have heard him on
> several occasions (I have only heard him "live" once, at Tanglewood)
> that his interpretations tend not to change at all from concert to
> concert. I found that rather a bothersome thing to ponder, and it has
> since colored my feeling toward Hampson as a performer.

If you're a fan of Thomas Hampson, I'd say you'd be better off not to
rely on other people's opinions about how variable his interpretations
are. You might not have the same experience as those other people.

But I want to say something else.

Though the performances of good performers do tend to vary to a greater
or lesser extent, it's not *that variability itself* that is the source
of their aliveness and expressivity. Rather, that variability is a
byproduct of their recreating the piece anew each time, and being
responsive to what else is going on, or has just gone on.

So everything could be very different in the next performance -- but
equally, everything could be almost exactly the same.

The question is, where are you looking, when you play?

If you are looking simply at the details of what you already decided to
do, and reproducing those, then your performance will probably seem
mechanical -- as when you concentrate just on saying the right words
when you are speaking.

But if you are sensitive to higher level things, like atmosphere,
meaning and phrase-structure, and looking at those, either in music or
when you are speaking, then what you say will probably be more
convincing. (Because it will be alive, and we are very sensitive to
aliveness.)

And, incidentally, it may vary, from performance to performance, or
statement to statement.

Or not.

It's a mistake to go for the variability directly.

> So I guess what this boils down to is, while the mechanics of
> musicality can be taught, a reliance on the mechanics produces dull
> performances. We must always always be flexible and willing to take
> risks; only then does music LIVE.

Absolutely. It's always a risk not to know how things will turn out.

But that's true *even if they happen to turn out the same*.

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

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