Klarinet Archive - Posting 000326.txt from 2005/01

From: Adam Michlin <amichlin@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Morales and Mozart
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 19:57:13 -0500

Joe,

Things today are very different from the days of Szell and Cleveland. Back
then, the conductor was a dictator who could hire and fire people at will
and pretty much did anything he wanted any way he wanted to do it. Apples
and oranges, I think.

From a musical standpoint, this has advantages. Every other way, I'm glad
to be living in more... enlightened... times.

I do believe the soloist (especially in orchestras without contract
Assistant Principals) can opt to play the rest of the set. It does save
money, for obvious reasons. Not a big deal for the major orchestras, but
often very important in the smaller regional orchestras (or at least to the
*contractors* of the smaller regional orchestras).

-Adam

At 12:30 PM 1/20/2005 -0600, jmesseng@-----.edu wrote:
>I'm sure the practice varies from orchestra to orchestra. When Marcellus
>played the Mozart with Cleveland, he returned to play the Tchaikovsky on
>the second half. Most of the major orchestras that I have heard perform
>Tchaikovsky 6 have used all of the players to double the wind parts. When
>I heard Philadelphia perform it several years ago, all four of the
>clarinetists were on stage and Ron Rueben played the bassoon solo in the
>slow movement (four notes!) on bass clarinet, as seems to be the practice
>in more and more orchestras. Obviously, programming a large work such as
>the Tchaikovsky, which would usually use assistants on all of the wind
>parts, on the same concert as a concerto featuring one of the principal
>wind players could create some personnel problems if the principal player
>was excused from performing the large work.

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