6.10.08

Detroit Symphony – Fun, Frightening, and Familiar.

What’s with all these Orchestra concerts? For most euphonium players, the chance to play with orchestra is both rare and welcomed. It’s not often we get to put on the tails/white tie and play with all those strange looking instruments. Recently I have had the good fortune to play on three different pieces with the Detroit Symphony, as well as several concerts with the Gilmore Keyboard Festival and the Kalamazoo Symphony. I will certainly be happy if this amount of orchestral work (or any other work, for that matter) keeps up!

FUN: Corigliano Circus Maximus
Band – with Tails and a White Tie
This was an interesting event since the piece, which is Corigliano’s Third Symphony, is actually scored for wind band. The DSO decided to create a band to do this piece, since they wanted to do all three of Corigliano’s symphonies this season in honor of his 70th birthday. Certainly, euphoniumists the world over are hoping that more professional orchestras find occasion to program wind band pieces! We all await the day when we can talk about who won the audition for the New York Philharmonic Band.  It may be a while.

In any case, this work is quite a tour-de-force. It includes about 40 off stage players along with the onstage band. In this case, “off stage” really means “out in the hall”, and the 40 players are organized into various groups, including 9 separate trumpeters at various locations, a sax quartet with string bass, a few horns, a clarinet, and a mini marching band. This all makes for quite a spectacle – both visual and sonic. The on stage and off stage groups trade back and forth; sometimes within a movement, and sometimes from one movement to the next. To sum up the piece, I would borrow the term “Shock and Awe” from the Defense Department. Corigliano, a friend and frequent collaborator with Leonard Slatkin, attended the second rehearsal and first concert. He explained to us that the piece is meant to be a modern day reflection and comment on the ancient Circus Maximus, when hundreds of thousands of people would show up on a daily basis to be entertained by gore and violence despite the inevitable decline of Roman dominance. Today, Corigliano feels, we are all too wrapped up in our cell phones, 500 channel TV offerings, computers and the like to perceive the decline of our own culture. Or, perhaps it is these distractions which are themselves responsible for such decline. In any case, the piece is meant to depict, broadly speaking, those crude elements in modern culture which are today’s “Circus Maximus”.

Personally, I prefer what some call “music for music’s sake”, and to let the audience make up its own mind. However, “Maximus” is certainly effective, and it went over well with the audience. The members of the DSO were spectacular as always, and the University of Michigan Symphony Band, under the direction of Michael Haithcock, provided the “off stage” players (I’m still trying to come up with a good term for the “stationed-around-the-hall” groups). It was quite amazing that a piece this complicated was put together with only two rehearsals. Personally, it was a real honor to play under Leonard Slatkin, and to have Corigliano attend and give us comments was pretty cool as well.  Here’s to the DSO for organizing a performance of a band piece, too. I’m not sure if this is precedent setting, but if so, let’s hope for more work for euphonium players!

FRIGHTENING: Ashkenazy/Pictures

A few weeks after school ended, the DSO personnel manager called me to ask if I could do Bydlo. He explained that this performance was a bit different since the orchestra would be playing Vladimir Ashkenazy’s lesser-know orchestration, but that Ashkenazy, who was conducting the performance, wanted to play some of the Ravel orchestration as well to illustrate the differences, with Bydlo among his choices. I relish any opportunity to perform with the DSO so I agreed right away since I was available. However, as Maestro Ashkenazy further considered the concert, he decided that he did not want a rehearsal of the Ravel movements. This left me a bit concerned, since I wasn’t too keen on the idea of just showing up at the concert and performing Bydlo. It would at least have been nice to know the tempo and whether it would be conducted in 2 or 4. Plus, being an extra player, I am obviously not as familiar with the orchestra or as comfortable as I would be in a group of which I was a regular member. In any case, I showed up for the concert and it seemed to go fine.  As I think about playing Bydlo it seems to me that it is a very difficult excerpt on which to sound spectacular, but a very easy excerpt on which to sound horrible. I think a lot of euphonium players would agree that the best thing about Bydlo is the last note.

I really took a liking to the Ashkenazy orchestration. It has many differences but also some similarities to the Ravel version. In particular, Great Gate of Kiev has some similar brass parts, and Ashkenazy had the DSO brass on full throttle with no signs of giving “the hand” at any time. The DSO brass is quite amazing top to bottom, and it was awesome to sit in that section during Great Gate, although at the time I wanted more than anything to be playing as well.

FAMILIAR: Holst/The Planets

A couple of weeks after the Mussorgsky, I was back to play The Planets. Since I had recently performed this piece with the Kalamazoo Symphony, I felt a bit more comfortable with it. Luckily I have also played this piece many times before, and overall I have to say that, of all the orchestral stuff euphoniumists occasionally play, the Holst is the easiest experience. Most of what we play feels just like a band part, and there isn’t a single passage as scary as Bydlo or the opening to Mahler Symphony No. 7.  I will say that it is always a bit tricky to fit into the tempo in Mars since the fast 5/4 time usually exposes whether the orchestra tends to play with the stick, or (as is usually the case) a bit behind. Every first rehearsal of Mars I have ever played on has had some phasing issues with the tempo, and since the tenor tubist is almost never native to the orchestra, it can be difficult to fit in. The Planets is also a piece which is often performed on one or two rehearsals for summer concerts and such since it is an audience favorite and orchestras tend to know it. However, that does not make it any easier for the euphonium player sitting 60 feet away from the conductor trying to figure out whether to stay with the stick, the strings, the brass, or the snare drum. My best advice is close your eyes, take an “average” of the different tempos you hear around you, and play just slightly on the front side of it. P.S., the two bar intro to the solo is often slower than the previous tempo, despite its not being marked as such.

The Friday night performance of the Holst was also Wes Jacobs' last performance in Orchestra Hall as member of the DSO. This guy sounds amazing, and has decided to retire after 38 years. Even though I'm not a regular member of the orchestra, it was neat to be there for Wes' last concert. An interesting but little known fact: Wes is only the third principal tubist in the history of the DSO. Sweet!

I will be back at the end of July to perform on Leonard Slatkin’s orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition, which apparently also includes euphonium. What good fortune for me since this will be the third version of Pictures I will get to know.