 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: kdk
Date: 2012-11-06 15:25
My wife and I were in Houston over the past weekend. While there, we attended a performance on Saturday night of the Houston Symphony in Jones Hall. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening.
Ironically, since we live in the Philadelphia area and had left a badly storm-ravaged part of the country to make this trip (for family reasons), Sandy followed us in a way. The scheduled program was to be Tchaikovsky 5th Symphony and the Bartok 2nd Violin Concerto conducted by Alexander Shelley with violin soloist Augustin Hadelich. Apparently, Sandy's having closed most of the airports along the Northeast corridor, including everything in the New York and Philadelphia areas, prevented Mr. Hadelich from reaching Houston in time to rehearse the concerto, so a substitution was hastily arranged and the orchestra's concertmaster, Frank Huang, played the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto instead, making it an all-Tchaikovsky night.
Mr. Huang played superbly. The orchestra is excellent and, since this is a clarinet forum, I should say that the clarinet work was superb. The program lists David Peck as principal and Thomas LeGrand as associate principal. I was sitting too far front on the orchestra floor to actually see the woodwind players, so I don't know if I heard LeGrand in the concerto and Peck in the symphony or if one of them played both pieces - certainly on the basis of sound alone they could have been the same player, but I don't know enough about them to know if the two are clearly distinguishable or not. If someone reading this heard (or played in) any of the performances in this series, maybe some clarification will be possible.
I was interested to see that the "delayed beat" we talk about so much in Philadelphia is alive and well in Houston as well. For some reason, many orchestras find some sort of comfort in reacting to the conductor's beat a good 1/2 - 1 full second later. Players in Philadelphia joke about how they know when to play - it was most exaggerated under Ormandy but has persisted to one degree or another ever since. I do remember attending a dress rehearsal with Stokowski in the 1960s (he came back for several guest appearances starting with the 50th anniversary of his first Philadelphia concert in 1912) during which he made a point of asking the orchestra to play on his beat (they were used to playing a day later with Ormandy), so I assume he didn't tolerate the delay when he conducted here as Music Director. The Houston Symphony's ensemble on Saturday night was phenomenal - they seem to have developed a good feel for how long to wait and when to play.
All in all a wonderful way to have spent Saturday night in Houston.
Karl
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2012-11-06 15:59
The New York Philharmonic was famous for playing further behind the conductor's beat than any other orchestra. During the Gilbert era, they're still behind, but noticeably less.
Furtwängler's beat was so mushy that you couldn't determine where to begin even if you tried. On his recordings, the first notes of movements are always splattery. Of course the Berlin Philharmonic could play together with their eyes closed, and the coordination was perfect by the second note.
I've never head the Houston Orchestra, but David Peck has made a fine sounding recording of the Mozart Concerto. Thanks for the great report.
Ken Shaw
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Author: kdk
Date: 2012-11-06 23:48
Yes, I've heard a few re-released recordings of Furtwängler and have read similar descriptions to yours of his general conducting technique.
I wonder when the NYPhil started to do that? I may have been too young to have noticed, but I don't remember Bernstein and the orchestra being much out of sync, at least in the young people's telecasts he did in the '50s. Maybe I just didn't notice.
It turns out that David Peck played both pieces in the concert we heard. Someone forwarded my post about it to him and he very kindly emailed me to answer my question.
Karl
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Author: clarinetguy ★2017
Date: 2012-11-07 02:31
I remember reading about a famous conductor--it might have been Fritz Reiner--whose downbeats weren't very clear. The musicians quickly learned that when his baton reached the level of one of the buttons on his vest or suit jacket, it was time to play.
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Author: kdk
Date: 2012-11-07 04:17
That sounds more like the stories that were told about Ormandy. The irony was that there wasn't really anything unclear about Ormandy's beat. He just let (encouraged?) the orchestra to play after the beat had been given. There is a theoretical rationale to the practice, but it seems to have been mostly lost on the players at the time, who made lots of jokes like the one you've repeated.
Karl
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