Klarinet Archive - Posting 000129.txt from 2005/03

From: Tony Pay <tony.p@-----.org>
Subj: Re: [kl] Expectations for professionals
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 13:59:03 -0500

On 2 Mar, Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net> wrote:

> Tony Pay wrote:
>
> > In fact have to say that -- of course -- I found that performance
> > deficient myself.
>
> Could you explain some more about this?

Well, it just didn't go as well as the two previous performances. I was a
bit intimidated by the occasion and by the rather closely placed microphone
-- I always hate that, because what you have to try to do to get across in a
big hall always sounds coarser close to -- added to which I felt as though I
had to fight the reed, which I was adjusting up till the moment I played.

So there were things that I wasn't so happy about, and some of those things
were technical slips -- and of course that's always open to criticism.

> I have for a long time now had the impression that what sets apart many of
> the really significant workers---whether it's musicians, scientists,
> artists, whatever---is that they're never satisfied with what they do;
> they're always looking for something beyond, one step better.

"A man's reach should exceed his grasp
Or what's a Heaven for?" (Browning)

> I seem to remember you saying at one point that what you find sometimes in
> teaching is not so much that students can't get it right as much as that
> they can't hear when what they do is wrong.

Something like that. It's that sometimes they can't hear that it doesn't
work, or doesn't fit, because they're too concerned with whether it's right
or wrong in a technical sense.

> Of course in a negative sense this could lead to paralysis, so it's also
> important to have a sense not just of what's wrong but of how right
> something is---so that one can say, "I know this is incomplete but at
> this point in time I can say this without fear," or something like that.

Yes, it's trying to have a balance.

BTW, a perhaps amusing story: years ago I took my younger son Mungo, who was
around 7 at the time, with me on a trip to Italy that included a series of 3
or 4 Mozart concertos like this series; and on the second one he noticed I
was a bit down at dinner afterwards. "What's the matter, Dad?" he said.

"Well, I made too many silly mistakes tonight," I replied.

"But still, they weren't the same ones as you made last night, were they?"

I told this once to Julian Bliss, who you remember was at the concert at the
RFH, and of course afterwards he came straight up and said, "Still, they
weren't the same mistakes as you made last night, were they?"

And they weren't!

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd tony.p@-----.org
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE http://classicalplus.gmn.com/artists
tel/fax 01865 553339

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