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Master Class: Take the heat

Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2006-03-05 03:31

I just witnessed four young women playing bassoon in a master class over at Eastern Washington University. The teacher was Francine Peterson, who is the principal for the Seattle Symphony, and several other orchestras, chamber groups --and who claims to work 7-days a week, carring 82 students.

The first player was about to graduate with a degree in Bassoon Performance and head off to grad school in the fall. She played the Mozart Basson Concerto masterfully. Great phrasing, proper dynamics and apparently flawless execution. THEN, Ms. Peterson made some points: The concerto is in Common time, often taken as 4/4. She suggested that we think of the piece as being in 2/2. This change of perspective dramatically altered the player's execution of the piece. Further coaching produced more colorful dynamics (louder crescendos, particularly) and extended releases --like an em-dash or slurping a single strand of spaghetti.

Ms. Peterson noted that the player was counting the rests and pointed out that is absolutely necessary. She said that the judges are reading the music and counting, too. Further, players from other sections are imagining their parts as the auditioner plays --and will notice immediately if the soloist interrupts the flow of their part by entering early or late.

Next up was an even more dynamic player doing (the bassoon part only) of an absolutely awesome duo for piano and bassoon. A very dramatic piece. Ms. Peterson, once again encouraged more dramatic colorings. This player seemed calm as ice cream, but raised her shoulders in self-disgust when missing a note in a complex riff. Ms. Peterson admonished her for that, explaining that the notes actually played probably made good sense in the context of the piece and would go unnoticed (particularly in a litle known piece like this one). (Later the performer told me that her habitual treatment of slips is to stop, raise her shoulders and loll her tongue out of her mouth.)

The increased playing confidence, "exaggeration" of the piece's dynamics, careful releases and bigger accents took very competent playing to a simply stunning performance.

Next up was a player who undertook a similarly (very) difficult set of jazz variations. Superb technhique brilliant playing. Ms. Peterson's stopped to make some comments about a-capella playing. She said that, when done well, they will go home with the audience as favorites. BUT, it is difficult to get your message over to the listeners without a rythmic and harmonic accompaniment. Therefore, Ms. Peterson says that the player must transfer the rythms to the audience. She first had the student re-play the first few bars and challenged the audience to recognize the rythms. We didn't get it!

Then, she had the player exaggerate the pulse; and the whole thing clarified. Once again, Ms. Peterson encouraged the performer to do more with the dynamics, and that helped greatly. The composer's markings were sparse, so Ms. Peterson gave some hints for picking dynamic levels. One hint: when the composer marks something new (e.g. grazioso), its a signal to the player to bring out the start of the phrase. She suggested coming up to mf in honor of something new.

The final masters' class student was a 9th grader with only 2-years in the bassoon camp. She was recruited to play the school's new bassoon from the clarinet section. After agreeing to take over the instrument, she went home and "bassoon" to find out what it was/is. She is starting now for next year's All-whatever orchestra auditions. This young woman, being 7 or 8 years behind the others still had a full and impressive tone quality. Whe was working toward mm 1/4 = 152 from a playing capability of 96 or so.

Ms. Peterson took time out to explain what students should be concious of in learning to play and making audition tapes. She said: Rythm first, phrasing second, then tone (probably not reliabley reproduced on the student's recording equipment anyway).

Ms. Peterson took the student back through the piece pointing out weak phrasing --particularly mild accents that should be forceful.

All four of these students have the impression of being in control and not nervous, but all claimed to have performance nerves.

It is clear that all benefited greatly from the good advice of a seasoned player. We, in the audience, benefitted, too; but the real action was on the hot seat up front in the classroom

Bob Phillips

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