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I just participated in one of the most intensely emotional concerts I've ever performed. The farewell concert of my school symphony before our NY tour. We played a Rachmaninov Symphony and Barber's Overture to School for Scandal. Somebody, please go buy cds of those and listen to them. I promise you your life will be enriched.
Barber wrote in the avant-garde genre in his time. He was ridiculed and unpopular, as are many musical geniuses whose works are too advanced for their audiences. Now, we (or at least I) consider him just to be cool. The intricacies of the overture, and the mood, and the atmosphere, and the detail marked in the scores all amaze me. A guy had to personally come up with every single accent on every single sixteenth note in the whole thing, and it's written for around 100 instruments. The song is just cool. It's seriously fun.
Rachmaninov is not fun in the same sense. The music embodies the passionate, longing nature of some kind of emotion he had; our conductor says he wrote of his love for his wife. The plaintive, lyric lines passed from section to section, especially when we (the celli) get them... People stop in the hall to listen to our rehearsals. I often weep, or at least get watery eyes, at particularly passionate moments in the first and second movements. Or third. Or last. All of them are profoundly magical. And I was faking nearly half of it.
I sit here, with echoes of it in my head, and sizzle in my own guilt. I did not practice a single note outside of symphony, which I have every other day. The music, which I love so deeply, I attempt to grind out with my bow in a poor imitation of the next chair above me (I'm last chair). I neglect it so that I am incapable of performing it even halfway decently, a poor respect for such beauty. I'm just a hanger-on in that class, hoping to capture some of the power of the music if I stay and listen and try. It's so cheesy, I know, but if I never knew what I was missing, I do now, and I couldn't give it up.
At least the concert was good. I'm planning to buy the recording.
Barber wrote in the avant-garde genre in his time. He was ridiculed and unpopular, as are many musical geniuses whose works are too advanced for their audiences. Now, we (or at least I) consider him just to be cool. The intricacies of the overture, and the mood, and the atmosphere, and the detail marked in the scores all amaze me. A guy had to personally come up with every single accent on every single sixteenth note in the whole thing, and it's written for around 100 instruments. The song is just cool. It's seriously fun.
Rachmaninov is not fun in the same sense. The music embodies the passionate, longing nature of some kind of emotion he had; our conductor says he wrote of his love for his wife. The plaintive, lyric lines passed from section to section, especially when we (the celli) get them... People stop in the hall to listen to our rehearsals. I often weep, or at least get watery eyes, at particularly passionate moments in the first and second movements. Or third. Or last. All of them are profoundly magical. And I was faking nearly half of it.
I sit here, with echoes of it in my head, and sizzle in my own guilt. I did not practice a single note outside of symphony, which I have every other day. The music, which I love so deeply, I attempt to grind out with my bow in a poor imitation of the next chair above me (I'm last chair). I neglect it so that I am incapable of performing it even halfway decently, a poor respect for such beauty. I'm just a hanger-on in that class, hoping to capture some of the power of the music if I stay and listen and try. It's so cheesy, I know, but if I never knew what I was missing, I do now, and I couldn't give it up.
At least the concert was good. I'm planning to buy the recording.
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