The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: TonkaToy
Date: 2006-10-27 16:11
Nice article. Sounds like a wonderful idea to give students a little something that is lacking at most conservatory's and high level schools of music like IU...an honest assessment of what it's going to be like after school.
In school I always thought they should teach auto body mechanics or computer programing in addition to theory, solfege, and all the rest. Either that or close down all the music schools in the US for twenty years to reduce the glut of extremely well qualified graduates wandering the landscape and working at Border's.
I hope the IU students have the opportunity to work with Leonard conducting. He's fascinating in that he can accomplish more in two hours than most conductors can in ten. I found him to be very organized. He knows just what he wants, knows how to communicate with the orchestra, and usually gets a very polished preformance.
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Author: David Peacham
Date: 2006-10-27 16:32
"communicate with the orchestra"
he's a very good communicator. I've been to two versions, years apart, of his lots-of-orchestrations-of-pictures-at-an-exhibition, and he is just fun and interesting to listen to
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If there are so many people on this board unwilling or unable to have a civil and balanced discussion about important issues, then I shan't bother to post here any more.
To the great relief of many of you, no doubt.
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Author: TonkaToy
Date: 2006-10-27 16:54
"lots-of-orchestrations-of-pictures-at-an-exhibition"
I love it. That's the best description i've heard. In St. Louis I've heard it called, "Slatkin's Chinese Restaurant Menu Version of Pictures".
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Author: BobD
Date: 2006-10-27 20:45
"In school I always thought they should teach auto body mechanics "
Well, they did when I went there.
Bob Draznik
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Author: Alphie
Date: 2006-10-27 23:36
Last night and tomorrow I played and will play Schostacovich 7 (Leningrad) with him. His conducting is really beautiful, it’s almost impossible to make mistakes under his baton and the sounding result is really perfect.
As usual in my orchestra there is an ongoing discussion about the American school of conducting. (We have many American guest conductors and one chief conductor). However perfect the result after a few days of rehearsals may be, it never really takes off emotionally. He didn’t mention Leningrad once in the whole week, only dots, dashes and slurs. There was no indication that he even knew what the symphony was about. The tempi were constantly on the slow side. Still, it was perfect but not exciting in the dress rehearsal.
So, for the concert the winds decided to challenge him by adding some extra juice that he hadn’t asked for, like playing extreme dynamics and stylistically more dramatically. Already from the beginning of the march starting with the snare drum that sounded like the percussionist was tapping the drum with his fingers he got the message. When the flute played literally pppp in her variation and the strings only lightly lifted their fingers from the string in the pizzicato he shone up and got very inspired. The rest of the piece was also very different from the rehearsals in terms of inspiration and really reached climax several times. The tempi were faster too. I knew it was there. Why didn’t he show his depth from day one?
Alphie
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