Follow The Leader

I had an exciting day today, so I figured I’d jump back to an anecdotal blog post today.

BECAUSE I’M NARCISSISTIC AND LOVE TO TALK ABOUT MYSELF.

Haha. Just kidding. But really, though. 

Today, I met with the conductor for the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra, and in four days, I’ll be performing Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini with them. Super exciting stuff! If only the date wasn’t so close.

Sometimes, when everyone has busy schedules that are hard to coordinate, we don’t have the luxury of having multiple rehearsals before a concert. I met with the orchestra’s conductor today, we have one rehearsal on Saturday, and then the concert is on Monday. I have half an hour on the day of the concert to run through my piece with the orchestra before the concert in the evening. 

If it were a different concerto I were playing that didn’t involve so much back-and-forth interaction between the orchestra and the soloist, I wouldn’t be as worried. But considering this concerto is so interactive, and I can’t even manage to get some variations to sync up with my single-person orchestra (my orchestral pianist), how do you expect me to feel about syncing up with about fifty or so other people who have never heard me play this piece before?!! Talk about stressful circumstances.

There’s something that needs to be said, though, when working with limited time in collaboration. Of course, when you’re collaborating with an orchestra, you’re dealing with a force of more than fifty people, but there is no reason for you to compromise the way you feel about a piece for someone else. 

“I want to take this variation faster,” the conductor said.

As a student, I know a lot of people who would just immediately say yes and just go with it. We, as students, are used to be told what to do. Our teacher tells us that we’re doing something wrong, and we practice to fix it. But at some point, we have to learn that collaboration isn’t just about going along with what everyone else is saying and playing Follow the Leader. Sometimes it’s important to take charge and do things the way you want them to go. You’re the soloist, after all. Put your ideas on the table, too. Discuss, and then come up with the best solution.

“Let’s give it a shot, see how it goes,” I replied.

After playing through that variation at the faster tempo, he looked at me expectantly. “I don’t really like it,” I said. “Can we go back to the tempo I originally started with?”

The point is that although we didn’t end up going with the new tempo, at least I was willing to try. That’s the beauty of collaboration. Everyone has different ideas; as long as everyone is willing to listen and try out different things, collaboration is a great experience and there’s something to be learned, and to be taught, in every session. Collaboration is about keeping an open mind, and being ready for anything.

Of course, things don’t always go the way you want them to. Be as it may that tempos might have been alright today, but I might end up taking something slower on the day of the concert. Some variations might end up being faster. Being in a concert situation changes the way our minds work, and sometimes it’s not always the best thing for us when we’ve gotten used to playing something a certain way. The best thing to do at this point is to practice the piece in a way that nothing will catch me off guard. Practice things at the tempo I want them to go at, of course, because in the best case scenario, everything will fall into place on the day of the concert. However, that’s not how things turn out in life sometimes. Sometimes, sh*t happens. I practiced the orchestra part so I know it inside and out, so I can catch onto any weird blips that might happen and potentially throw me off. I practiced each variation faster and slower than the tempo I’d like to take it at, so that if anything happens and the tempo doesn’t happen to be where I want it to be during the concert, I can still catch onto it and keep playing as though that was the tempo I wanted. Being ready for any circumstance is a skill that every performer needs to have. Adjusting on the spot to things that were not planned is something we have to always be ready for, and practicing for any possible situation is the only way to be fully prepared. The best the conductor and I can do is to listen actively and fit to each other. There is no leader in this context; we are equals, working together to create a piece of art. With that mentality, I could probably play my concert tomorrow and still feel pretty good about it. 

Four more days, and the stage is mine! (:

Until next week,

Dream big, music-makers!

Symphonic

Not too long ago, there were certain skills that were once considered essential that tend to be glossed over these days. Transposing, improvising, reading figured bass, and reducing an orchestral score.

Of course, all of these are important, and most are still taught to young pianists. However, it’s common to forget that reducing orchestral scores is something essential for pianists, especially those looking into working in the field of collaboration.

The piano is one of the few instruments, if not the only one, that covers the entire pitch range, and dynamic range, of an entire orchestra. With recordings being available at our fingertips, the act of going to the piano to try out what something sounds like is something that doesn’t really happen anymore. Although these recordings are easily accessible, though, the best way to learn a piece of music is to play it. In playing orchestral reductions, we learn how to create different timbres and colors, different textures and new ways to voice certain things. It also trains us to audiate, which is to say hear the music we see on the sheet in our heads. In our minds, we have to sight-read while figuring out which notes we should leave out and which lines we have to keep.

Almost all the great composers that we love, such as Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, and Schumann, all wrote pieces for orchestra. In learning how to read orchestral reductions and being able to hear all the different sounds of instruments in our heads, we can translate all those rich textures into our solo playing. Many of the Beethoven piano sonatas are very symphonic in nature, with their big dynamic contrasts and layered lines. The way you get a warm sound and a full texture in big chords and loud passages is to think orchestrally. Think about what instruments would be playing which notes. Think about what color you want to express in a certain passage and associate that with an instrument that’s not the piano. Maybe horns are playing the melody, while strings are sustaining beautiful long notes underneath. The flute is delicately doing runs above the texture, and suddenly one beautiful clarinet line pops out from the mass of sound. The possibilities are endless when it comes to orchestrating your solo music, and the best way to familiarize yourself with  orchestral music is to listen to orchestral music and do your own score reduction.

When your instrument can take on the role of an entire orchestra, why not take advantage of it to its fullest?

Dream big, music-makers! (: