Author: DougR
Date: 2016-02-18 02:28
A story: a friend of a friend is associate principal woodwind in a major, MAJOR orchestra. One day at rehearsal, a sub showed up to do the 2nd part: young, bright, eager, etc. At one point the sub had a solo, and started doing that "floaty" thing. After she was done, associate principal leaned over and whispered to her, "We don't do that here."
I have another friend who's done first-call work in the period instruments field for decades, playing with major orchestras in THAT area. He's been finding that lately, some ensembles are asking for more physical movement from players, as a way of conveying excitement. (My friend isn't at all against this, his attitude is "If it helps get an audience in the door, I'm for it.")
I'm a little bit agnostic on movement -- I mostly listen to live music with eyes shut because I get so distracted by the visual aspect of performance that I don't always hear what I'm hearing, if you follow. But I'm tempted to wonder if there isn't a little bit of an age breakdown in the "movement vs. dignity" divide (I just made up a name for it!)--older people like me who remember the solemnity of the televised Bernstein concerts in the '60s versus younger people who like to witness more evidence of musician involvement?
I suppose one could get "sold" on a performance by an overt visual expression of excitement, lyricism, and whatnot rather than the musical content. In the old days, with orchestras behaving with a fair amount of decorum, you really had to LISTEN rather than watch, and I suppose you could argue that a visually relatively static orchestra leaves one more room to hear the music (if you're easily distracted by the visual, as I am). But not everyone is afflicted in that way; possibly audience tastes and performance orientation have changed as well, and if one can adapt to those taste changes without screwing up the music, why not do it?
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The Clarinet BBoard
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