Blog

So today was a bit of a confusing day.  We were supposed to be able to go to the Traviata rehearsals, but unfortunately, the staging director decided he wanted to close ALL of the Traviata rehearsals.  It’s a shame that they would leave young conductors out of such great learning opportunities as rehearsals for a major opera.  It is a bit frustrating because Opera was one of the biggest reasons I wanted to come to Salzburg.  I have the opportunity (and I DO know how lucky I am) to work with such conductors as Masur, Muti, and Haitink.  So, for me, watching the orchestra rehearsals here is VERY educational, but for me, watching opera rehearsals would broaden my horizons, I think.  Oh well, we make do with what we can.  Unfortunately, we seemed to have triggered a bit of a controversy.  When my colleague called the office this morning to see if we could go to any rehearsals today, he was told “no.”  And they added, “There are none for tomorrow.”  So suddenly, if all the Traviata rehearsals are closed, we have absolutely nothing to do this week.  I don’t mind vacation time, but the weekend was already a bit boring.  And, honestly, I came here to go to as many rehearsals as I could.  So, of course we mentioned this to the people at the AAF office who promptly called the Salzburg office…  Well, by the end of the day, I don’t believe anybody was really happy with us, BUT they did allow us to go to Sir Roger Norrington’s rehearsal in the afternoon.  So, we hurried from the Schloss Arenberg to the rehearsal room to watch Sir Roger… Who, I have to admit is a riot.  He is truly crazy, and I loved it.  Granted, I’m not sure I bought into everything he advocates, but he makes you think, and in my opinion that’s a good thing.  For example, some of you musicians might know Gunther Schuller.  Well, Schuller is a famous American musician.  He played horn in the New York Philharmonic at the age of 16 or something.  He is no doubt a brilliant musician.  He has a book called “The Compleat Conductor.”  The book is polemic in nature.  Basically, he takes famous pieces recorded by famous conductors, and he proceeds to tell you why they are wrong.  (The conductors in their interpretations, that is.)  Now, you can argue with Schuller, and you can disagree with him all you want.  (And I do!)  But, he makes people/conductors think!  And I think too few conductors think about their interpretations.  They simply follow tradition or follow their teachers, etc.  But, people like Schuller and Norrington force conductors to think.  So, Norrington was conducting the Camerata Salzburg in music of Schreker and Schumann.  It was fun to hear.  Norrington’s big kick (now that he has solved the metronome marking issue) is that orchestras didn’t play with vibrato (ie, the string players didn’t use vibrato) until the 1940s.  For my non-musical friends a quick definition of vibrato:  From a visual perspective, vibrato is what string players do with their left hand.  You may notice that they shake their left hands while they play a note.  (Wind players and singers do it as well, but I’ll get to that.)  By “shaking” their hand, they cause the pitch of a note to modulate at the speed they “shake” their hand.  Now, what this does is cause the note to sound “warmer.”  (You can try this at home…  Sing a note out loud, fairly loudly.  Now listen to your voice.  It won’t stay “still.”  It isn’t a pure tone… It vibrates.  This is vibrato.)  So, Norrington is on a kick to take vibrato out of our playing.  Most people agree that in the baroque period, they probably didn’t play with much vibrato, if any. (Granted, this might lead us into a discussion of baroque instruments and baroque performance practice, but it won’t because I don’t have time to write a book, and frankly, it’s not my expertise!)  So, Norrington posits that since they didn’t use it in the baroque, it shouldn’t be used even into the 20^th century.  His reasoning is that the Germans tended to guard their tradition rather heavily.  (And in his favor, it does make sense in the classical period to not use vibrato, and one could argue that early romantic composers KNEW the classical period, so they wouldn’t have heard much if at all any vibrato, so maybe THEY didn’t use it?  THEN, you could say the late romantics knew the … ok, you get the picture.)  Now, Sir Roger also says that if you listen to recordings of the Vienna Philharmonic in the early 20^th Century (until 1940), they don’t use vibrato!  As an argument, though, in talking to my teacher William Henry Curry, who is the most recording literate human being I know cites the same recordings as Norrington and says they USE vibrato.  I haven’t heard the recording in question.  (Bruno Walter’s recording of Mahler’s 9^th Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic from 1939 for those of you wanting to get the recording and decide for yourself.)  More on this tomorrow as I have to get going!