Author: JohnP
Date: 2019-05-23 20:03
The first Act of Rosenkavalier is written for D on the third part though I expect most people play it on the Eb, certainly in my experience.
As someone who spent 39 years in an opera orchestra I would say the worst part about it is playing in a pit, the attendant poor acoustics and noise levels and poor sightlines, i.e. sometimes you can’t see the conductor clearly enough due to other players obstructing your view. We either had the horns behind us or the percussion, the noise levels could be awful. I used earplugs a lot but of course you can’t play properly with them in so we marked the part up and put them in when necessary, sometimes there wasn’t time to get them out before a solo though. We played for the ballet too which tended to be louder and have more percussion. The side drum and cymbals were right behind, within touching distance, not nice!
The upside was the fantastic music, there is nothing better orchestrally than playing the 1st clarinet parts of Rosenkavalier, Ariadne, Salome, Parsifal, Meistersinger, Tristan, Götterdämmerung, Tosca, Bohème, the Mozart operas etc, etc. That was a huge privilege.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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