Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2020-09-18 18:32
ruben wrote:
> I will answer my own (rhetorical) question: a loud, emphatic
> "yes". I imagine the reason for this is the large size of most
> modern concert halls.
Are the newer halls in Europe larger than those of the late 19th and 20th centuries? I don't think that's the case in the U.S.. They were already pretty big. I could be wrong.
> In addition to this is the fact that we
> live in a noisy, high-decibel environment.
But, so far at least, all that noise (including the over-amplification now ubiquitous in American theaters and commercial/pop/rock concerts in any venue) is left behind in "classical" concert halls. Modern orchestras, at least American ones, can count on a quiet, peaceful physical space when they play.
> Yet the two
> clarinetists I most admire here in France: Philippe Cuper and
> Pascal Moraguès, are not loud, raucous players. Nor were
> Harold Wright or Yona Ettlinger.
>
I'm not sure that Stanley Drucker in his younger days, particularly in Bernstein's years with the NYP, didn't have a reputation for loud and sometimes crass playing. But LB's Philharmonic was always noted more for its aggressive exuberance and musical adventurism than for polish. I think both Bernstein and Drucker mellowed as they aged.
I suspect the answer to your question is that it depends on which players you mean. A basic problem with comparing how loud players played "then" (whenever that was) and now is that you need to compare "apples to apples" - you can't compare players' volume in person during live performance to the volume level you hear in recordings. Most of us only get to hear a few local players and maybe a player occasionally in a touring ensemble that passes through our area. Excepting my teachers and a dozen or so section colleagues I've played with locally, almost all the clarinetists I've ever heard were on recordings. Maybe you have more opportunity to hear in-person performances than I do and you *can* make more meaningful comparisons.
Two specific examples from my own personal experience here in Philadelphia:
Anthony Gigliotti, my major teacher in college and a contemporary of Wright, Drucker, Marcellus, etc. coined the term BTSOOI (Blast The **** Out Of It) to describe how loud he sometimes had to play to satisfy Eugene Ormandy (the Philadelphia Orchestra's conductor until the early 1980s). When he tested a new reed, his first few notes could have peeled paint off the walls. He did make a tuning bar on the other side of his teaching studio resonate. I have to assume there were times in the orchestra when Ormandy called for that kind of volume and Gigliotti needed to be sure his reeds could produce it. But I can't say whether Gigliotti played louder than the European players I heard regularly on the major record labels of the last century. He didn't (still doesn't) sound any louder than others when I listened to Philadelphia's recordings.
The primary complaint - for some admirers the only complaint - made about Ricardo Morales by Philadelphia Orchestra listeners is that he plays too softy and doesn't project well, at least in the context of that orchestra in Verizon Hall. I've seen him play very soft passages that I couldn't hear because his idea of pianissimo is sometimes barely audible on the stage and inaudible from my 2nd tier seats. Verizon Hall isn't the Academy of Music, where you could literally hear a pin drop from the 3rd balcony.
So, there are two examples that don't fit your theory of louder playing among today's players. Are they simply exceptions? In the end, I'm not sure you can establish a trend, but the only evidence on which I could base an opinion would be recordings, on which no one ever sounds too loud or too soft if the recording engineers are competent.
Karl
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