Myth-busters and how to hype-proof your magic
Thursday night saw both Donald Runnicles and launching their new tenures - here and in LA respectively - both sailing forth on Mahler's First. So, conductors are the hot topic. fired a whacking great torpedo at the whole conductor thing, and on Thursday, in The took vigorous evasive action........both actions stirring up turbulent wakes of discussion posts, crossing and splashing against each other. I doubt if any conductor in the history of the world has ever had such a massive cargo of expectations and hype dumped on him as Dudamel: 'Saviour of classical music' - the messiah of music, no less!? In the zazzy documentary preceding our live TV Mahler 1, Norman Lebrecht (a familiar prowling musical MTB in these waters) fired a torpedo something like, "The new conductor has to create the myth that he is doing things better than has ever been achieved before". Ouch! 'Ouch' because it has a hype piercing tip. But, maybe, there is something vulnerable needing to be shielded by that hype.....
"Most of them are totally hopeless". That was Greg, our principal second violin, being interviewed about conductors during the documentary. Was this a depth charge.......a tad indiscriminate? The negativity of that comment is the shadow of a passion, the shadow of our musical desire and enthusiasm. We all know what 'the magic' feels like when it happens - we want to have it every day - and are frustrated when we can't. Strident disappointment and feelings of being thwarted morph into anger and a sense of injustice. I've talked endlessly about the magic. Here's Donald on it, minutes before going on stage to conduct the big Strauss Prom: "Will the chemistry happen? ....you don't know till you do it ....anything can go wrong". There's the vulnerable underbelly. Did stuff go wrong for us on Thursday? Huge expectations were loaded on all of us. Beethoven 1 is exacting, needing cut glass accuracy, it's incredibly difficult to perform that extra bit better. (As if we aren't trying to play it that extra bit better every time we have to play it!) Precision is not enough. Donald asked us to play the Beethoven with a smile. The tantalising thing here is that a smile is a spontaneous reaction, it comes as a consequence of something pleasant and unexpected - so if you're having to think too hard about what you're doing, you've probably already done it wrong. Trust and friendliness are needed - openness, freedom of imagination, freedom in the body, freedom flowing out from the core of the body. You can't 'fix' these things - you need the right mood music, and then just hope that 'it' happens. (Currently, I'm hearing the nicest mood music I've ever heard.) If too many of us, players or conductor, get nervy and uptight........no magic. Players, conductor, and you the audience, all depend on each other for that illusive trust and freedom. Talking about uptight......have you seen any of the You Tube videos of the doing I've Got Rhythm...... dancing around waggling their arses at the audience.....both in the concert hall and rampaging in the open air Caracas concert? Uptight, it's not. Is there a message in that? Some of them are coming to our concert on Thursday, as part of their visit to the Big Noise conference in Stirling.....maybe we'll persuade them to give us a wee bit of advice.
A strong thread being unpicked from the Guardian articles is how the magic is actually woven into the performance during rehearsals, not at the show. The documentary highlighted this: Lebrecht and Donald both made the point, and Liz also, when she demonstrated the difference between a quiet phrase and a magically quiet phrase, both being played at the same volume. Now we're getting to the heart of the matter. This is the interesting stuff. However entertaining the Proms 'Maestro Cam' proved for many viewers, it missed this fascinating aspect of the business......hey, this is more than just an aspect - this is the biz. Here's an idea for a good programme: Get a conductor with whom we have a nice trusty relationship, and then look at the way he (or she) transforms the sounds we make during rehearsals? Start by listening to the sort of adjectives the likes of Runnicles or Manze use to evince our inner reactions. It's not the words, as in the dictionary, it's the overtones of feelings carried in those words - George Mackay Brown's 'aura' (see my last blog). Feelings express themselves in gestures, and we can bring gestures to the notes - and they'll be unified - but only as and when the conductor gives that inspiration. Orchestral players know within seconds if a conductor is really living the sounds he wants to hear, or merely conducting the notes. Dare I go as far as to say that the actual notes (even Beethoven's), and the actual rhythm, are secondary to that inner impulse? (Don't tell the academics I said that.) It doesn't matter which genius wrote the notes if the instrumentalist has nothing to say. Michael Tumelty says in the documentary how he's spent a lifetime marvelling over how ninety players can play so miraculously together, and on such completely dissimilar instruments. Each of us knows our instrument, be it sleigh bells, piccolo, or trombone, and each of us tries to project 'feeling' through the medium of our own sound. But watch out for the oxymoron lurking here: You can't 'try' to have a feeling - you already feel it, or you don't. The trouble is feelings don't lend themselves to be talked about, so we latch onto objective things that are easier to talk about - and so we miss the point. Feelings change, or dodge out of view, when you try to examine them. They have already changed because you have looked at them. Like sub-atomic particles, they can't be pinned down - but you can see the ripples and trails they leave. I'm hoping we can churn up a wake with our music-making, and really splash you with it.
I reckon there's a tectonic process going on here. The "Maestro Myth", as Lebrecht has called it, is a fairly recent phenomenon. (Incidentally, he cites Mahler as the first overpaid superstar conductor.) The great maestros built up reputations and orchestras - autocratic, demanding, often ruthless. The very best orchestral musicians adapted and survived. Wanting to return to that system would be like hankering after the good old times of Stalin's leadership. Employment law and common sense have moved on. But what is El Sistema showing us, with Dudamel riding high on the bridge of the flagship? There's never been an 'of the people, for the people' phenomenon like it. The big difference between Venezuela and the Old World is that in Venezuela there was no substantial musical superstructure already in place. Now they're building concert halls quicker than we're building sports centres. Here, old-think is built into the existing musical structure - starting with the grassroots music lover, through the massive layers of the professional music business, up into the lofty ivory towers of academe. Will we resist change? Will we adapt, and flourish? Or will we old-thinkers get subducted.....?.....that's when strata are buried under a geological plate being pushed up and over.
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