The Truth About Chords

November 18, 2008 at 6:47 AM

It was section rehearsals tonight in my community orchestra. One piece we are playing is Shostakovich's Piano Concerto #2. There are long stretches in the 3rd movement that are all pizz. chords. At one point, our conductor (a flautist) asked us if we figured out the divisi for that section. We collectively gave her a puzzled look. Someone told her that there was no divisi in that section. She then gave us a puzzled look . "You mean you have to play all those notes at once?".

Yup!

From Paul G.
Posted via 75.169.224.5 on November 18, 2008 at 1:17 PM

Kind of reminds me of what happened to us at festival last year! We were sight reading a piece that was pretty much pizzicato the whole way through and on the end it had a chord and none of us really knew what to do... Luckily we could look it over before and ask questions before we started playing. I was the only one who had it in me to ask the question in front of the judge- yet after doing so, you could feel relief in the orchestra!

Now I look back at that and what I'm doing now and just think "psht, and I thought that was confusing....."

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