Work in progress.

November 9, 2005 at 6:42 AM

Terribly busy and tiring, but fun, week with the CIM opera showing four nights in a row. The main piece is Stravinsky's The Nightingale, which is really growing on me, although I'm still unclear as to the plot since it's hard to see all the action and subtitles while playing in the orchestra, and I've been a bit too busy and/or lazy to look it up. Also some entertaining excerpts from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.

First lesson on Korngold today and things seem to be going well. The temperament of the piece comes pretty naturally to me, although if anything I'm a little too appassionato most of the time and not enough nobile. In the meantime I have pretty challenging recital rep to learn, and I'm aware that all three pieces, while I believe I can perform them well by Febraury, are not ones that are totally comfortable for my style. I anticipate being most comfortable idiomatically with Beethoven, actually, although it is certainly technically tricky and awkward. I'm glad to be doing Debussy because I feel I really need more work on French music; I have done the Franck Sonata and Chausson Poeme and of course some orchestral repertoire. I know quite a few rules of thumb for playing impressionistically in an orchestral setting, but it is not as cut-and-dried as applying that to solo playing, because there must always be a balance between creating a shimmering, otherworldly color and still hearing the true core and clarity of the sound.

I have a whole mental list of other aspects to be working on as well, which I'm sure I'll get to sooner or later. In the meantime, though, I am really quite happy here generally to have so much artistic freedom and the power to really explore my own sound and style unfettered by preordained fingerings and bowings and particular interpretations. Admittedly there's a fine balance between really opening up and unleashing one's creativity and still taking time to listen critically as well. I haven't used my MD recorder as much lately (partially because my cat is fond of chewing up cables and now I can't charge it) and I need to get back to doing that. There are also certain things that multiple people including Mr. Preucil have mentioned to me that don't bother me yet as much as they should. (And I guess I'm getting into my list already.) One is my vibrato; though I don't want to change it entirely from its natural sound, I do need to learn to control it better and be more aware of it. I am generally quite aware of intonation because that's something that's drilled into your head from day 1, and I'm aware of vibrato to the extent of being pretty good at keeping it continuous, trying to vibrate on all the small notes, etc. But the actual vibrato itself, as I have said before, needs variation and transitions between those variations, and I just need to empower myself by paying much more attention to it and asking what feels right. To a certain extent I can get away with my naturally wide vibrato, but in some spots it's simply out of place and out of character. Next on the list and no less important is the fact that I've developed a sort of mannerism with my rubato. I've been told that a good blueprint is to start slow, typically elongating the first note or group of notes, go faster in the middle, and slow again at the end. Often, as in the Brahms, this distorts rhythmic changes from sixteenths to triplets to duples or vice versa or whatever, so I definitely need to have more flow rather than repeating the same tired pattern every time. It's a very ingrained feeling for me, and in some places it makes sense and works beautifully, but it just doesn't cut it throughout an entire piece. Another general thing for me is score study. Especially in concertos, we tend to tune out the orchestra. And in sonatas, where the blend or contrast with the piano, whichever the case may be, should be apparent in every bar. I am generally not bad with direction and infusing the music with a sense of meaning and purpose, but I am less clear on really showing and feeling the grand structure, the climaxes, the important chords, and that would be a good next step to take. Technical issues often bog us down and we lose sight of the real impetus behind all the notes.

There is my list for the moment. Hopefully in the midst of all these performances I can find some time to commit to working on these things!

Work in progress.

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