Method Music

I trust, ladies and gentlemen, that you are familiar with the theory behind method acting? Roughly speaking (and I’m no expert) rather than simply imagining you are a criminal gangster and acting in a film, you actually rob a bank as part of your research and stay in character throughout the duration of filming. Or something like that anyway. Robert De Niro famously trained as a boxer for his role in Raging Bull and gained the appropriate physique and skills associated with the pugilistic art. This of course made his performance more realistic and is a landmark in method acting. I haven’t actually seen one of his other famous films, Taxi Driver, but I imagine he did a fair amount of minicabbing around Brooklyn for that one. Probably. Back to that later.

Of course in 21^st century classical music, its no longer enough to simply do concerts, you know, an overture, a concerto, a symphony plus interval drinks. Now we all have to have marketing to keep up with other more fashionable art forms. I don’t think that this is a bad thing-if you are passionate about something and want to tell people about it, then its a busy world out there with lots of other distractions. You have to shout about it these days. Its not a new idea, but we often have themes, like many arts organisations. Of course we have always had concert series devoted to the works of one composer. Over the last few seasons, we have had Mahler with Valery and Beethoven with Haitink. Those of you who visit the LSO website will have noticed the various themes, like “Love Brahms?”-well, yes, as you asked.

If you were at the concerts in the Barbican last week, you will have noticed the Emigre series where we programme works of composers who left their homelands. It was a fascinating evening with the Stravinsky symphony in 3 movements and the Scheonjberg Violin Concerto played magnificently by Nicolaij Zneider. The second half of the concert was Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances. I had a chat with Valery the other day about the emigre series and it was very interesting to hear him talk at length about the way leaving your homeland can affect you. In case you were wondering, this wasn’t a random conversation in the corridor, it was a lunchtime talk in St Lukes. Of course all three of the composers had very different experiences and all of them ended up living fairly close to one another in Hollywood funnily enough. However Rachmaninov left a pre revolutionary Russia whilst Stravinsky left a rather different homeland and you can hear the difference in the pieces in the concert.

We played last night in Belgrade, not as part of the emigre series, but the Rachmaninov was played none the less along with… yes, Prokofiev 5. Whilst Prokofiev wasn’t an emigre, he certainly travelled around a lot in his time-at least until his passport wasn’t renewed. Now if you have been reading my blogs over the last 6 months, you will have noticed that they have been popping up with alarming regularity. You will also notice that I often divert from descriptions of the concerts as it is very hard to think up yet more ways of describing how terrifying the Classical symphony is. Only 3 more by the way-boy are we going to have a drink after those! Anyway, I digress again. The reason there are so many blogs, so many sentences and so many words is that there have been so many tours! As my long suffering, patient and beautiful wife pointed out as I unpacked one case and packed another, I have spent more time out of the country than in it in the last 2 months. Which is where we get back to method acting or in our case method music. What better ensemble could you ask for to play the music of emigres, than an orchestra made up of people from every corner of the globe who spend a huge amount of time away from home. Music can make you feel a lot of things, but when you play those searing bitter sweet lines of Prokofiev and Rachmaninov on tour, and you long to be at home with your family, they take on an extra depth. It’s hard on us, but quite something for you.

When I spoke to Valery, I asked him if he thought that Rachmaninov had an idealistic vision of an old Russia which no longer existed. A Russia which he saw through rose, rather than red tinted spectacles, and did he think that this came through in his music? And did he think that Stravinsky had a more realistic view because of his different experience in Russia, and did this come through in his music?

Valery paused and thought for a while. I then expanded my theory. I explained that my father left a small mining village in Wales in the 1960’s. There wasn’t really any work, the mines were closing and he moved to England. I often wonder when he expresses a fleeting thought that one day he might move back home, whether he would be disappointed to find a very different place from the Wales of his childhood. I wonder whether this meant that he had an idealised view of a past which was no longer there. Did Valery think that this was a similar kind of thing which some of his Russian emigre composers had been through?

Valery paused again and then roared with laughter. I asked him why he was laughing. He said

“I love that you compare the suffering of the Russian emigre composers with your father having to move from Wales to live in England!! That is so funny!”

I thought about it and realised how stupid I had been.

Rachmaninov had it easy.

Sunny Spoleto Part 2

The concert started about 15 minutes late in Spoleto, partly because everyone coming to the concert was so relaxed, and why not. Its one of the prettiest towns I’ve seen, lots of nice places to sit outside and eat, tiny cobbled streets, and an evening of beautiful music followed by fireworks to look forward to. Whats the rush?

I should mention by the way, that we were being filmed by Italian broadcasters RAI for a television show of the concert next year, so we were under a little extra pressure. Hot lights, cameras on stage and a swoopy boom camera that flew over our heads were all extra distractions. Its amazing how much noise an audience can make simply by sitting talking and moving around whilst we tune up. Its often not until everyone is totally silent and we are about to begin that you become aware of the ambient noises around you. This didn’t really matter as Daniel strode onto the stage, turned to us and launched in Don Juan, all you could hear was the sound of the LSO reverberating off the ancient stone walls which surrounded us.

Gradually the light levels began to drop, Daniel returned to the stage to conduct the Firebird. Now if you don’t know this piece, the first minutes are incredibly quiet, and outside they are almost inaudible. I have to tell you that the Italian audience were incredibly attentive and quiet in seats which didn’t look the most comfy in the world, they also tipped forward down the hill and I imagine, were still a little damp from the earlier deluge. Now when I used to live just off Guildford High street many years ago, I would often be woken up or indeed have my al fresco (thats Italian) wine drinking shattered by the local youth racing up and down on small scooters or souped up cars making a right racket. The young people of Spoleto were not to be seen anywhere, but the second we started playing, very quietly, about 30 swifts decided to swoop endlessly around the courtyard where we were playing. Their shrieks drowned out most of the first ten minutes of the Firebird, and the bird like figurations from the woodwind in the 2^nd part whipped them into a frenzy over my head. I had one hand poised at my umbrella. I have heard that they throw vegetables sometimes in Italy if they don’t like the performance. I couldn’t see the birds carrying any vegetables, but I’m sure they were armed and I only had one set of tails. We scared them off in the infernal dance, but once again in the very quiet horn solo at the end, David was drowned out by the constant shrieking of the birds. Being as famous as he is however, I’m sure its not the first time.

We had an interval of 15 minutes during which time everyone stood up, wandered around and then sat down again as there was nowhere to go. We all looked up at the sky as by now the wind was picking up a bit and it was turning an ominous shade of black. Oh well, the show must go on.

The second half began with a huge gust of wind as we played the opening of Brahms 2. I reached for my pegs and carried on. Its all right when you are a string player, as you have two players to a stand, so at least one of you keeps playing whilst the other puts pegs on everything. I am always left in a bit of a pickle. Take the first page turn of the Brahms. It is pegged to the stand on the left and right hand sides. At the end of the right hand page I have 4 bars to turn, always a bit tricky at this speed, but much worse when you have to undo two pegs. To make matters worse, on the next page is a solo, so I have to decide whether to sacrifice the last few bars of page 1 and peg down page 2 to play the solo; or do I play the last 4 bars of page 1 , turn and leave page 2 unpegged, thereby courting a possible wind induced solo malfunction? I should add that whilst I am making such important split second decisions, there is a camera on a boom swinging over the second violins coming straight at me for my solo. It is at this point that I am sitting on the edge of my chair, my flute on my lap, trying to peg down one side of music with the other peg in my mouth, looking like a right idiot. Should make compelling viewing. I bet you never knew playing the flute could be so stressful.

Sp predictably, music and stands became separated by the wind throughout the first movement. You can always tell when it happens, because all of a sudden the first bassoon, for instance, suddenly stops playing, to be replaced by frantic rustling of papers and usually a fair amount of swearing. We can but hope that there are no subtitles on the TV broadcast. In situations like this, there is very little you can do but laugh, shrug your shoulders and carry on. That is until we reached the second movement.

I was fairly relaxed, I’d kept all my music on the stand, and there were no page turns in this movement so I had 4 pegs on. The wind was whipping across the stage and ominous black clouds were racing across an ever darkening sky. It all started well enough and we reached the half way point when gradually it became evident that it was starting to rain. When this happens in Britain everyone gets their brollies out and we carry on playing under the all weather canopy. There was no canopy and we were getting wet, and the rain was getting harder. Everybody was watching Lennie the chairman to see what we should do, and as quick as a flash, without stopping playing and Daniel continuing to conduct, they had a conversation which went something like this,

“Its raining”

“Yes, I’d noticed”

“Lets get off”

“OK”

It was the quickest negotiation in the turbulent history of the LSO.

The last time I saw the orchestra get off stage that quickly, was when we had the free beer in Cologne a few blogs ago. Of course there was little for us to do but stand under the arch and wait for the rain to pass, which took about 15minutes. We went back on to huge applause, the audience put away their umbrellas and we started the second movement again. I am happy to report that the swifts had gone to bed and the rest of the concert went smoothly. Although the woodwind section nearly all missed the last section of the symphony when the oboe player( who shall remain nameless, but read the last blog if you want to know!) made a basic outdoor concert error. In his relief to get to the last page before more rain, he forgot that he had pegged it down and succeeded in ripping half the page off in a spectacular fashion, he then spent the rest of the piece trying to stop it being blown away. It kind of summed up the day really.

All that followed was a very nice meal and fireworks and a mercifully short night in the worst hotel in the universe before returning back to now sunny London.

By the time you read this, we will all be on a very well deserved holiday and my flute will be in its box until we reconvene for the gargantuan Prokofiev cycle which we will be playing around the world. I hope you have enjoyed our blogs over the last year, let us know what you think. Its been read over 12500 times now and only 50 of you have left comments. Stop being so lazy! Enjoy the summer and see you soon.

All the best

Gareth

Dusseldorf, Cologne and Chocolate

Since we last spoke, the LSO has been busy with Gergiev doing Mahler, Strauss and Mozart with Haitink, and Mozart and Brahms with Previn. It has been non stop, with a whistlestop trip to Paris that was so brief, I didn’t have time to tell you about it. We now have 3 weeks left before the end of term with one more trip to Italy later on in June, and then we can all relax for a couple of weeks before the Prokofiev Cycle starts in Edinburgh before we cover most of the globe in the following months.

I am writing this in my hotel room in Cologne as we tie up a few loose ends from the last tour. We are playing Bruckner 6 and Schubert Unfinished with Sir Colin. Last night we were in Dusseldorf in a concert hall which looks like a cross between the London Planetarium and Guildford Borough Council Chambers. I’m sure you can picture it perfectly. We actually got on a bus after the show and came to stay in Cologne. It made for a very long day as we had checked in at 8 am in terminal 5, but it did mean we all had a very welcome lie in today.

Now those of you who follow our travels, will probably be smiling at the thought of the entire LSO losing their luggage in terminal 5, much like when the instruments didn’t arrive in Dijon. I am happy to report that this time, everything went smoothly, although despite my previous experience of Gordon Ramsey in NY, his full English at £16.50 lost out to a coffee and sandwich in a well known chain.

Of course, as I didn’t have to get up this morning, I woke up bright and early and went for a run along the river in the ever increasing temperature. Its amazing how many people from the orchestra you bump into, running on tour. Mainly the thin ones of course, but with so much sitting around on planes, trains and woodwind sections, it certainly does help blow the cobwebs away.

Sadly any good I did was destroyed by a visit to the Chocolate factory here in Cologne, and the shop. There is a long line of machines which do various things to chocolate and finally spit them out into bags which a little old lady ties up and packs away. Rather disappointingly, she was a normal old lady, didn’t sing and there was no river of chocolate.

Sir Colin is on fine form once again and once again he coaxes a sound out of the orchestra which is unique. Someone asked me last week, why different conductors make the orchestra sound so different. The answer is that I really don’t know, and to be honest I don’t want to think about it too much. I’m sure somebody knows why Sir Colin, Haitink, Previn and Gergiev all make us sound different, but don’t tell me, I’m enjoying the magic.

Besides, I’ve already discovered that umpa loompas aren’t real, and the river is made of water. I can’t take anymore revelations today. I’ve got a concert to do.