Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2011-12-20 14:55
John wrote, in part:
>> It may seem evident to many what Mr Pressler is getting at but I am having some trouble understanding...is it as Tony Pay suggests that "phrases start"?>>
I would say that phrases-beginnings are bound up with what he says, though he never makes that explicit.
What he does first is to reduce the 'drive' factor in what they do, starting with the pianist. He has them try to have the music 'sit down', rather than hurrying or crescendoing toward the next bar, Tabuteau/McGill style. (That's what I think of as 'utility expressiveness', because at its worst it gets applied across the board, irrespective of the stylistic requirements of the piece.)
In the thread at:
http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=1&i=351988&t=351928
where the link to this video first appeared, I wrote:
"...his overall message, in all three pieces, has the effect of stopping the players being 'players', and having them, instead, be 'contributors' to the musical argument and magic."
To do that, he reduces their utility expressiveness, and their tendency to make crescendos towards barlines, so that phrases CAN begin and come away. Then he focusses attention on beginnings; but indirectly, dealing with their performance by requiring greater diversity of character between different phrases, and appropriate responses from one player to another.
The crucial point is: if you have to change character between one phrase and another -- as opposed to simply, 'being expressive' -- it very quickly becomes apparent that how the phrases BEGIN is an important and powerful tool.
See what happens when he asks the violinist for her "Sunday sound". After several attempts with an upbow, she switches to a downbow, realising that she needs a warmer beginning if she is to be able to use the sound itself as a mode of expression. And that begins to have a knock-on effect, as the musicians relax and answer each other, allowing Mozart to speak through them, instead of hyping him up with unwritten crescendos in their own parts.
Of course there is much more than this -- including the wonderful poised stillness that he manages to to get in the slow movement. (The players themselves begin to SIT STILL -- like him!)
Tony
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