Lecture 12. Guest Conductor: Saybrook Orchestra
Yale (YouTube) · lecture · en · indexed 2026-02-08
youtubetranscript
let us begin please today should be a fun day for us we've got some visitors it's always uh this particular exercise is one of the ones I enjoy most in this course because we get to talk with real performers and find out what's in their head when they perform a concert for us so our aim today is to continue along this path to make you in this case educated critics so that you can go to a concert of classical music and you'll be able to engage it in a productive sort of way in an educated way now um there are lots of things we could think about in terms of dos and don'ts when we uh evaluate material musically in a critical fashion and we're going to be going through some of those in sections starting this evening and we'll have a big long list of this is what you put in a review and it's probably not so good to put this in a review but generally speaking when you go to a concert and you review it whether you do it just for yourself or whether you review it and then write down your thoughts and publish them as a published review you do the following you're essentially reviewing the performance how well did the performance go how did the how did the players do you're not engaging uh who the composer is you're not engaging when the piece was written and the history of the piece the historical context you're you're not engaging even oddly the meaning of the peace the meaning of the peace now on our concert for Saturday night we have three pieces one by Mozart one by Brahms and one by Beethoven what's the meaning of the Mozart the opening piece well the meaning there is its function in a sense it's it's in trying to get the concert going originally of course it was trying to get the Opera going oddly the music there in the Overture has nothing to do specifically with the music in the Opera there's no music in the Opera that's also used in the Ure but it does have a lot to do psychologically because it's a very intense compressed Overture and the Opera itself if you begin to study that in the way he's linking scenes and the way he's moving his harmonic progressions along it's also a very compressed intense Opera so some of the psychological state of the Opera is encapsulated in that opening Overture but that Overture can open other things as well so the meaning of the Mozart in essence is the function of the peace to get people in to get them quiet to get them focused and to give them uh um a heads up in a way as to the psychological uh import of the Opera that's to follow now we have also the Beethoven the pastoral symphony of Beethoven what do you suppose the meaning of that is uh pretty straightforward anybody want to take a crack at it anybody know anything about the pastoral symphony of beethova what would you guess what's it sound like it sound like a train wreck does it sound like Midtown Manhattan Elizabeth the countryside yeah the countryside a kind of leisurely Embrace of the countryside maybe a walk through woods on a beautiful spring day that kind of thing uh and each of the moments movements plays this out in a different way sort of introduction then an introduction to the birds of the forest in the second movement uh peasant romp in the third movement of storm gathers in the Fourth Movement that we have an extra movement in this particular Symphony because we've got Beethoven writing a bit of pictorial music here in the form of a Fourth Movement that's a storm and then a h Hymn of Thanksgiving um that plays out in basically a Rondo variation form there at the end so that's the meaning of that um how an individual might embrace the countryside uh what's the meaning of the Brams what's the meaning of the bronze well we've got these variations and they're simply Sonic patterns Sonic patterns uh and we have patterns I suppose in lots of different art think of abstract P patterns in duning paintings or Jackson Pollock we have a beautiful Jackson Pollock over in the yel art gallery well that's just sort of abstraction visual abstraction well you can have Sonic abstractions as well I was talking with our conductor that we'll introduce in a moment uh yesterday about this what's the meaning of the brumms or he he got to this in a different sort of way and maybe I won't let the cat out of the bag with that but it seems to me that what we've got here is an individual or an an experience in which we are stand we have the same frame of reference the same context in other words the theme but we're going to engage it in six or seven really different ways and think of all the times in your life where you may go into the same context uh you may go into your dorm room and you've had a terrible day and you're Furious and you're storming around or you've had a very pleasant day or it's it's been a a rather Revenue neutral day in terms of your emotional content so maybe it's not particularly uh moving one way or the other you can have the same item in that you engage intellectually or psychologically in radically different ways so this is the same item played out in rather radically different ways musically in this theme and variation set and we'll say more about that later but generally oddly you don't write about the these kinds of things when you write a review what you're writing about again is how well they played the piece only if they play it in a way that seems to subvert the meaning as you perceive it the meaning of the piece is does the performance uh really impact on the meaning of the piece then you might say well this performance was not successful because as I say it countermanded or subverted what is the meaning of this this particular piece as you The Listener um perceive that to be oddly also you don't talk about the form in the pieces we've we've been spending all this time on form form is a way of getting in there so we can follow along intelligently what's happening in these compositions but we don't write a review in said in which we say the orchestra started out and we engaged the First theme and then we had a fine transition that went to the second theme and I really liked that closing theme at had a lot of harmonic bang to it we don't want to sort of be led uh by the nose if you will uh through the form of the piece but we'll be saying a lot more about this in section and as I say we'll have another yet another sheet uh to to hand to you it helps when you go to a concert to know a little something about the composer right what do you know about Beethoven what do you think of when you think of Beethoven yes the Pinnacle of all music The Pinnacle of all music okay good that's that's an interesting way of putting it and actually even if you look at this textbook that you're using there you've got this you've got um an entire long chapter devoted just to Beethoven there and when people write history books Beethoven is kind of the Lynch pin you work up to Beethoven and then you work away from Beethoven so Beethoven for the 19th century was um an was an icon it was um the the Pinnacle of what the artist was supposed to be like but it's not just the musical artist Beethoven represented more than that uh was he a neat and tidy guy was he sort of uptight guy did he wear a necktie and look look sort of constrained in the appropriate system of the day I'm the ultimate corporate guy right was Beethoven the ultimate corporate guy no what did he look like he looked like the Prototype of the genius and on the basis of how Beethoven looked and how Beethoven acted people then began to build this concept of the genius in the 19th century Beethoven was the building block for this whole idea about what a genius was how he was supposed to behave how he was not necessarily um to be held to the same standards as the rest of humanity in terms of his behavior to other people if it necessary to be dishonest be dishonest he bethoven wasn't necessarily dishonest sometimes rard Vagner was but it was excused because he was a genius well this sort of idea begins with Beethoven here in the 19th century what did Beethoven write well as you can see on your sheet there everybody pick up your sheet I think I've got uh find it useful to do this from time to time just sort of the basic Beethoven if you will um and a list of things if you want to buy particular pieces or you want to explore a particular repertoire of Beethoven well you can do it in this fashion so um there is what we need to know about Beethoven on that particular sheet ROMs we talked about we talked about his pieces Mozart we will be talking a lot more about um as time goes on now we have let's turn to our big sheet here what are you going to do with this big sheet isn't that you could do a couple of things with that big sheet an energetic student might want to go out and go to iTunes and do what and and before the concert yeah uh down get the pieces ahead of time um for 99 cents except with the with the Beethoven why would the Beethoven cost more yeah you got to pay for each of the movements that's the way they sell the stuff stuff to you and once again they'll call them songs right each B pardon and you can go to the music library because Linda has been kind enough to put all of these on reserve for all these pieces on reserve for us also so you have this big sheet and uh you can take this you can engage this U material ahead of time with the pieces we don't have any of these pieces on our CDs there are thousands of zillions of classical pieces of music we can't put them all on our CDs we have Beethoven's all of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony for example but we don't have the six Symphony but you can get it there on iTunes if you want to and then you can follow along and ask yourself um these questions as you're listening to a recording before the concert that would be that would be a really um uh serious type of preparation for this uh failing that you could uh simply bring this to the concert simply bring this to the concert and then um uh uh follow along discreetly as uh the concert is going on and ask yourself these questions and maybe write on it probably be good if we didn't have 100 people going like this during the middle of the concert and we get on a change of piece or some change of movement so so try to keep the I've seen also students sit there with computers sort of taking notes during that's that's a bit over the top it's see it seems to me so it'd be really neat uh somehow what I do actually what do I do when this is going on because I have to read these reviews right I got to read them so I got to know and the T have to know what happened what I do is I take my program and I do have a pencil that there and I take my program and I'll write little notes on my program so that I can remember what the orchestra did at a particular spot and generally speaking the sooner you write your review after a performance uh the better um so do you have questions about that and we'll be talking more a lot about about that in section uh starting again this evening yes Daniel how long do the reviews be 500 100 words two pages very good question we're going to hold you to that hold you to that so they're not long but it forces you to think about what's important and what's not important when you write U Roger um basically you're writing about how well they performed um at the end of it you could throw in a sentence or two to the effect that they met your expectations as to the meaning of this um composition as the composer intended it or they did not but I would not spend a lot of time engaging in the review uh the meaning of the piece no so we we've got the five pieces here and we'll be going over some more of them uh in section and getting you up to speed in terms of of the repertoire as as time goes on any other question before we introduce our first guest yes if we have comment on the tempo to too slow is that our own interpretation that's that's to be encouraged in other words if you hear this opening Overture going that's way too slow I'm not feeling compressed I'm not feeling excited I'm not feeling energized by that Tempo so you should say there then I think the tempo was too slow yeah it didn't the music didn't have energy it didn't excite The Listener because the initial Tempo was too slow anything else well if not let's go on to introduce our first guest then Bradley Naylor here's Bradley's name up there Bradley is the prince of come on up Bradley Bradley is the principal conductor for tomorrow night and we will be listening to the sa Brook Orchestra and the rest of our discussion today is uh basically between you and Bradley with me feeding Bradley questions I'm trying to think about the kinds of things that you might want to ask but don't hesitate to jump right raise your hand and ask Bradley a question at any point so Bradley you're a student at the school of music right uh so tell us about your musical training how didd you get started here h i sang inquires gosh I was probably eight when I started in choirs but it wasn't until middle school that I started getting serious my Middle School music teacher said hey Brad why don't you try out for this region choir thing I thought well okay I'll I'll submit a tape and I got there and here I was in this room of 25 15-year-old teners and they were all singing the same notes at the same time and I thought well that's just a miracle and so I I felt at that point I really found what I wanted to do um went to high school went to undergrad where I majored in music just down the road in Providence and I got a master degree in Coral conducting at Indiana University out in the cornfields and now I'm back in New England getting an MMA master of musical arts in Coral conducting at The Institute of Sacred Music so your your preparation for this is a little bit unusual for most conductors because I think uh rarely or only exceptionally do you have people beginning in music through vocal music that come around now you're you're leading an orchestra here so doesn't that put you at something of a disadvantage I would think to be an orchestral conductor be really good to have started with the violin or maybe the French horns so you're listening to intonation issues and things like that yeah I I would agree with that um I can't well with the exception of maybe robbert Shaw I can't think of a single bigname conductor who started as a coral conductor and now is in charge of a major Symphony Orchestra the vast majority of them are either string players keyboard players a few wind or brass players here and there but um I've done a few few things to try and supplement that that perceived lack of knowledge um when I was an undergrad I took an orchestration class to try and get a sense of uh what the capabilities and limitations of all the instruments were a couple of summers ago I spent a month at Bard College in New York at a an instrumental conducting Workshop where I worked with various conductors so I tried to supplement that uh that initial Coral leaning um but what about piano now I mean I'm always surprised how good uh pianists these conductors are um so you must have had to practice piano take piano do I've studied piano um I wouldn't say extensively but but consistently throughout my young career um because you have to in order to to engage the music and we'll talk about this you have to be able to do what with the score I think you have to be able to to play or realize the full score right so so we it might be the kind of thing we would put a score with maybe 20 lines up there on the on the keyboard here and Bradley would be able to read through this and digest all these 20 lines at once which doesn't sound all that difficult except except a lot of these lines are not actually written the notes that are written there are not the ones you play because they're transposing instruments such as the B flat clarinet and the B flat trumpet so it's really complicated and in fact in this bronze piece there are horn Parts in E flat B flat and C all at the same time ooh o that hurts that would be like reading a text uh in four languages at once you know one word is in cilic alphabet and next Latin alphabet next Hebrew alphabet so your mind is got very quickly to change all it's really hard it takes years and years years and years of preparation well what do you what's your goal here what do you want to do with this where do you want to be 15 years from now oh gosh well I don't know if there's a white pick of fence but um I would like to be teaching at a university directing choruses working on Coral orchestral works like maybe heiden's creation or something like that a great piece from the same period as this beom and Symphony so uh working at at a university or college level as well as maybe a professional chorus or orchestra okay now here's a question for it might seem like a rude one but I I get it's my class I get to be rude if I want to um what makes you think you can do this better than anybody else who says that you get to be the boss here the leader here uh isn't that a bit of hubis on on your part I I think that any conductor has a bit of humorous in him or her um I guess the the short answer to that is that whenever I sit in a rehearsal I'm using my ears whenever I sit in a rehearsal and I'm not conducting I'm using my ears to try and evaluate what's coming back and I always find myself forming an opinion you know this could be louder this could be softer I want to hear that more than I want to hear this other thing so the only place you can achieve that goal is if you're in front of the Ensemble yeah oddly that's what they will be doing though when they go to this concert you guys will be listening and say GE I why didn't I love that flute line there uh why wasn't that flute line louder so he's kind of a critic but he wants to apply his critical facility here to interpretation so that's a to impose his concept of the music um on others for the benefit of others I suppose next week one of you condu well what do they have to have to conduct what's it take to be what's it take to be a good conductor you think just just that you you've got a good insights into the music um well I have I think just as good insights into the mic music as you do Bradley but but I don't think I would be any good as a conductor and I kind of know why so what do you have to do what do you have to have to be a good conductor I think I think it's a a varied skill set I think and don't tell my colleagues I'm saying this but I think at its basis the conductor is really just a glorified traffic cop in certain ways you have to make sure that there are no accidents you don't want the to crash into the bassoons nobody wants that um you have to make sure that people yield when they need to if you need to hear the viola line you got to have the violins yield um and you just have to make sure that everyone gets to their locations without incident and uh in as fluid way as possible yeah okay good now um here's here's another component of this though I've heard people talk about in terms well I have absolute rhythmic um sort of an absolute sense of Rhythm I can tell what a particular pulse is I can identify that for you and I can keep that and that's why I'm interested in in becoming conductor or let's say you're conducting and this is where I would always I have done some conducting you used to conduct the collegium here at y but where I got in trouble was when something was Out Of Tune I could hear Hey that doesn't sound good but I couldn't tell them why or what to do to make it sound right my ear wasn't good enough so uh how good an ear do you have to be to be a conductor how good how good good of an ear do you have to have I think you have to have an ear not just for pitch particularly with an orchestra but also for tamber uh which is the the property that distinguishes maybe an OBO sound from a Claret sound of course if you're playing a piano then you can't change the tamber of a single piano note but if you're playing it on a clarinet it's going to sound very different than if you play it on a trumpet so you have to be able to balanced tambers and I think before the downbeat of the first rehearsal a conductor really has to have the sound of the piece in his or her ear so so so I know what needs to be pulled out you know maybe the third clarinet is a little bit sharp so I say third clarinet your be flat make sure it doesn't sit too high so I think you have to have the piece in your in your head there's a an old conductor's Mantra always have the score in your head and not your head in the score well okay there are all kinds of things I could ask you about there uh what are you going to do now you're you're the principal conductor you're doing two of the three pieces you're doing the first half you're doing the Mozart and the brumms and then uh Lauren Quigley will come out she couldn't be with us today but Lauren Quigley will come out and lead the lead the Beethoven are you going to try to conduct any of this without a score and what advantages and disadvantage sometimes you go to concerts and a reviewer might notice that um generally speaking if you see a conductor conducting without of score what does that indicate well I think it's always impressive to The Ensemble when a conductor is able to conduct without a score uh last year helmet ring who's a famous German conductor came and worked with uh some of the ensembles and did mendon's Elijah which is a huge romantic oratorio about 2 and a half hours long the dress rehearsal he came to the dress rehearsal put a score down on a music stand conducted for 3 hours never opened it we were like wow this guy knows the score so my task is to try to get 4 and A2 minutes of Mozart into my head so I don't have to open that score we'll see tomor if I'm able to do it um but that's my goal yeah so that's sort of talent that's a kind of combination of a photographic memory and a phonographic memory that you've got to you've got locked in there you can hear something just once and it's locked in there that's the kind of thing Mozart could do and we'll talk more about that uh later on um and so your your or orchestra will respect you more if you've got this all memorized uh what does it what does it sort of free you up to do then obviously if you've got if you're conducting without a score well I think I think at its at its Essence conducting is communicating to the people in front of you and anything that you can get out of the way uh between you and the people who are playing the music is is an advantage so I think getting the music stand out of the way getting the score out of the way making sure that at all times you can actually see the people who are making this music I think anything you can do to do that is an advantage yeah great um I want to go back to this question though of ear because I think it's so critical you were talking about the Third clar don't play too sharp well once again I'd be sitting there who's playing what that's wrong and wondering all right is it the OBO maybe said the clarinet being sharp the OBO is flat all I hear is a problem I don't know what where where the problem is so um uh but so you you would have to have a pretty Keen sense of pitch do you have what we call absolute pitch I don't have absolute pitch I have pretty I have pretty good relative pitch okay so um I always enjoy playing this particular game with with musicians and people generally where we do an ear training drill and I need somebody uh Is It Michael I just need somebody to come up and play the piano just Bank some notes on the piano around who who uh Daniel you know you know your way around a keyboard you're you're a guitar player so anybody play uh uh gentleman here come on up yeah okay come on up you know yeah so we're gonna be over here um and um Adam come play this game also um Linda you want to play this H down you go in terms of of pitch your name is Rahul yeah um so um and and Jacob come on come on out here also um play start around Middle Sea and we'll see if anybody can identify any Linda you don't want to play I'd like to have some ladies up here too Santana you come on up and play the name that pitch game gosh and and we'll talk about absolute pitch and we'll talk about relative pitch so so play a note and we'll see how we do oh it's up can we play a note that's a little lower okay does anyone think they know what the note is but but don't how anybody up here think they know what it is I would guess but I don't right here um Bradley you think you know what it is yeah but I have two guesses and whichever one I say it's going to be wrong I think it's either a g or G Shar uh what do you guys think I would have said a flat okay okay um notice how kg I am here I haven't committed um yeah uh but but just at the outset he played that initial pitch and then what he did do he dropped it down an octave okay so we think that that's a that probably is an A flat or a G sharp is that correct okay now uh knowing that play another pitch go ahead [Music] Rob anybody know what that is uh so so then the question is why is this this guy teaching this course right why is he in this profession to begin with because because he's wrestled with this issues and all his life said why me why can't I do this and tried to figure it out try to try to use other tricks to to get around this to overcome this handicap and to to hang around with musicians sort of explain things that they do that they take in sort of quickly and intuitively that and ex sort of break them down and explain what it is that they're doing so at this point Bradley seems not to be having a trouble with that pitch I don't know what it is to be I could I could G no all right all right so I'm out down down I go um but what was that pitch c c okay um all right so let's see now knowing that that's a c Shar let's see how let's go and we'll go a little faster here so we don't so we don't take up too much time another pit who knows that Bradley Jacob okay we should have them write it on the who doesn't know what it is Santana [Music] again anybody know who what do you think it is G what do you think it is I'll go with G okay all right so I what what what was it was it a g okay so it seems to me that actually Bradley seems to be winning here he's he this is interesting uh uh so maybe there is a reason that he's the conductor here the rest of I'm out the rest of us are they're kind of negotiating with each other and maybe pegging off of what Bradley was saying there so we'll stop this but well and maybe I I can just add okay thanks for a person that doesn't have absolute fish like myself whenever I do hear a note I I I think well what song does that start or is there a a chord or sority with which I'm familiar that that I know for instance so so you mind if I just do a little B sure thanks very much so for instance that first note was a g Shar so I know that the first uh the first ARA in handles Messiah starts with a really prominent G sharp in the Melody and I kind of I kind of know how that sounds so that's how I figured that was a g Shar that the second note he played was a c Shar or d flat and there's this great for piece it starts with this great d flat so I kind of find a piece that I that I can latch on to that's very interesting in all the years I've been doing that I haven't I haven't heard that particular explanation for it you know most people that have absolute pitch boom they hear it instantaneously there is someone in this room also who has absolute pitch but I don't want to go go into that instances of absolute pitch about one in 10,000 one in 10,000 sort of instantaneous recognition he's getting that but in a different way he must have some kind of absolute Rec recollection of particular pieces that are intensely um impressed on his oral memory somehow and he then plays off of those that that's an interesting way of doing it but as I say it's not something I've encountered before uh okay well so that's kind of important though you got to have a good ear like that to be able to tell these people you're sharp or flat now let's say you're in the middle of things and something goes wrong you you have a sense that you're you you know that your clarinet is a little bit flat what what you can't just hold up a sign or an arrow going like this can you or maybe maybe you can how do you get in real time as the pieces you're conducting in the pieces unfolding how do you get somebody to correct something in terms of intonation I think that there's a difference between what you do in a rehearsal and what you do in a performance in a rehearsal you'd say n hold up the grand pause and say Claret 3 fix that in a performance you hope that you have inculcated in your performers a sense of of pitch and a sense of what what their function is in accord so that if something's going wrong you just look at them and say yes you know you're wrong fix it cuz you can't stop you know the traffic cop if you don't look at the Subaru over here he's going to crash into a tree so you have to take care of everybody but the guy who's running the stop sign you have to take care of that person first okay so um let me ask this often times you go to a concert particular L um nonprofessional concerts at the end of a movement they will stop and tune if we hear in the Beethoven the tuning between movements does is that a sign that the intonation of the previous movement wasn't all that it might have been H um I think it's a bigger problem with early instruments that that are a little bit more temperamental but certainly if we stop in the middle and you hear Gabriel Ellsworth give us a and we retune then yes so that that would be does he really does have a p i knew the G from earlier and it's a half step up no [Laughter] problem okay um uh so there are some things that you can can do in real time and uh uh things that uh uh uh that you just hope that you prepared for pro properly but keep an eye on that whether they whether they actually tune between between movements now now I think we have some other folks that are going to demonstrate some things here I think we have Katie uh dren the a viola player the principal okay Katie come on up and I don't know if if Alana Kagan is here or not is she here flutist oh my oh my maybe she's sleeping in oh too bad I said I doubt it knowing her what I don't think she I don't know I guess it I guess it's only maybe maybe it's only 5 after so we do have let's let's talk about the motar we've got this opening piece um uh first of all which piece of the two frightens you the most you're the conductor what are you worried about what what scares you when you step out there mhm well what's easy about the Mozart okay no Tempo changes fine so the whole piece is in this in the same tempo problem if you don't set the right Tempo you're screwed for four and a half minutes so when I do I have to get that dead on so that the whole ensom knows exactly what the tempo is well okay but look say mess it up in the first couple of Beats can't you correct it I I think a a good critic as you will all be would say well this is classical music Mr Naylor and there's nothing in the score that says RIT or AEL so actually you should keep whatever Tempo is established at the beginning yeah so you're not tempted to get out there and go one two like that another I'm always impressed when conductors they come out kind of look at the orchestra and they go and they just start without much in the way of preliminary beats but that's that's kind of risky isn't it isn't that dangerous but but uh I one of my conducting teachers told me you know there's no part in the score that's labeled conductor so you shouldn't do anything other than what's going to get the people in front of you to play so there's no point in the beginning going 1 2 3 4 because then you have a conductor solo for two bars and it's not in the score okay so um so uh let's see Katie come on up do we have a stand for you did we not bring well I'm sure we got one inside here somewhere Linda maybe oh no no um one oh you brought one okay well get your stand out because uh we've got the beginning of the Overture to um uh the marriage of figuro here shall we should we play a CD of it or you or maybe we could let's talk about Lyn well um I tell you what well um Katie's getting her stand let's talk about Linda she's got a bassoon part here what happens at the beginning of this uh uh Bradley in terms of of the texture monophonic homophonic polyphonic it's monophonic why because all of the instrument there are many instruments playing but they're all playing the same line at the same time okay so but isn't that a little bit awkward because some of these instruments sort of speak a lot faster than other instruments uh fast what would the fast speaking instruments be that could play very agile what would they be I think the violins probably have the EAS easiest time of this whereas the the Chell and the bassoon probably have the toughest time of this because it takes lower instruments longer for them to speak and make make their sounds uhhuh so um so the cellos and bases and the low part of the woodwinds it might have a difficult time here so we uh Linda has been good enough to be a sacrificial lamb for today and bring in her bassoon and she sent me an email last night saying oh disaster I cracked my only good read and and I'm not going to I'm not going to bring in I can't bring in my bassoon it just won't work so I said come on I was really counting on this please bring in your bassoon so here is here is uh Linda with a broken read and um hi are you aena okay come on up come on up great um but so um just come on up and and take out your your flute and we'll get out the the music here in just a second so let's can we have the beginning of of the of the figure do you want to conduct this or or no oh heavens this is chamber music at this point I see okay how about I give you a Tempo and then you guys go to town okay I'll give and again and again uh I thank I thank Linda for for doing this because it's not it's not an ideal situation all right so here's a safe conservative Tempo about not that fast one two [Music] cool wonderful Bravo this is great the music 112 Orchestra um now you said well here's a concer conservative safe Tempo safe Tempo but what what happens if you don't take a safe Tempo uh what kind of disasters might befall us well I I think in this case there wouldn't be a disaster it just wouldn't go as fast as I had said up so uh I have a recording of um I think it's James Levine in the Metropolitan Opera Opera Orchestra highest paid Orchestra in the country and they take this at a blistering tempo really fast let's see how close we can get no yeah uh how fast you can take something sometimes is um conditioned by the acoustical environment that you're in MH and maybe we'll come back to that about the Acoustics of battel a little bit a little bit later on um now uh let's see Katie you're a violist and um you're the principal violist and I wanted to ask you your job is to kind of ride Ruff shod over the rest of the violas here um and and how do you do that isn't that like hurting rattlesnakes or something like that H supposing you you want to get your section to be really precise and really exact and all those bows going up and down at the same time the articulation exactly exactly the way they should be uh how do you go you lead by example but in actual performance how do you keep your your the rest of those violists with you the principle um well you have to be very confident about what you're playing and you can't um change your mind so you need to know what you when you need to come in what you need to be playing which direction your B is moving um and show that when you're playing um not by exaggerating but just by being confident and so then the rest of the people who know their parts very well um but well it can follow you if they get off and we'll have that little bit of assurance when you come in great how do we know that they know their parts really well what would would you imagine might be a tip off and you're you're at a concert and you're watching looking what's going on what would be a tip off that maybe they don't know their parts really well they're sitting there with their nose in the music rather than watching the conductor the more the orchestra is watching the conductor for the cues and the interpretation the more that says hey they've really got this almost committed to memory uh and they can get in they can get beyond the notes into the question of inter interpretation there another thing just a very basic thing that that Katie has mentioned here is watch you she wants to have very prominent BR B Strokes I guess so that everybody the whole section will be in sync if you see see this kind of thing in terms of the bow movement maybe the articulation really isn't all together there they should all each of these sections should be going pretty much the same way is that right yeah and and particularly with string instruments there's a a different sound with a with an upbow as in term as opposed to to a down bow so an up bow will start very small a down bow you can start very gruffly so it does make a difference so um uh Katie let me ask you this um generally speaking vist don't have solos in the repertoire so what's the hardest thing for you to play their Saturday night what scares you um what scares me well um like you said we don't have solos but we are very important that we kind of hold the upper and the lower strings other parts of the or together um and I think other sections get used to hearing us play in certain parts and when we're not there yeah yeah I mean that's not only true for Mu it's true for pretty much every yeah that's a good point you're kind of like the glue and particularly I would imagine rhythmically is that if you you might be setting really setting the tempo in these other extremes high and low or playing off of the rhythmic Tempo that you're setting setting there in the middle um what's the most diff is there any moment that you sort of get to soar with some music that you like particular what what's your favorite moment the most beautiful moment for you can you play a little of that moment um in theen there's a part in the last movement where we have the melody finally uhuh um [Music] and that's kind of fun we play people yeah well I guess it's like a maybe the Right Guard or the left guard on a football team nobody ever notices but they're abely crucial to the overall running of this operation um okay now we have also with us thank you Katie we also have with us the principal flutist right Elena Kagan and um you've got some uh heavy duty exposure particularly in the Beethoven second movement with all of those solos there uh so here's a question for Katie with Excuse me Elena with with these solos that you have to play do you ever get nervous of course definitely I mean when you really have a solo under your fingers and um you you don't have to be nervous it makes it even more fun and you can and always play better when you're not so focused on that so I certainly try to get Beyond being nervous but there that's definitely there and the trickier it is the more nervous I get well what happens to the play when you get nervous how how can we recognize that you're nervous hopefully you can't um but I mean um a lot of times messing up is a sign of being nervous because there are a lot of players who will get it right every time in rehearsal and then just the nerves at the concert will me yeah that was me I always said I was the world's greatest warm-up pianist and then you get to the moment you have to play and nerves kick in and the you know just these little fractions of inches on these instruments a question of life and death so if your if your hand is at all quivering you can imagine on a violin you start you got this huge vbr or where did this come from um okay so let's uh let's um uh uh here if we if we may Alana some of the um the lovely lovely imitations of bird calls there in the second movement of of the Beethoven um what would what would be good for you to um to play choose anything that you like so this is Beethoven second movement theme and variations and well there's there's one part at the end that definitely sounds like oh well you have an interesting I guess uh duet with the clarinet that that sort of thing or is that what you're talking about to the end the Claret and the OBO there's a lot of intricacies between the wind instruments of having conversations um so I can play a couple of those parts e [Music] [Music] and then you you'll hear lots of cascading other Woodwinds as K excuse me as Elena said with the OBO and the Claret sort of dialoguing against this um intonation here do you guys practice this individually do you have what we would call sectionals where you get together and work this out or you only do this with the full Orchestra well we actually haven't had seels um that's certainly very common in orestas um to to have SE to to work it out but this semester we mostly just worked on it on our own and and as a full Orchestra uhuh um one the one thing if if instruments are Out Of Tune is it Bradley what do you think is it often the woodwinds that Get Out Of Tune um I think that um you know I don't want to lay blame or it's not due but I think that sometimes it's easier for instruments that you can press down a key and know more or less with the right support What notes going to come out but if you have a string instrument with No Frets like a guitar has Frets on its fingerboard but violins and all the String family don't so that's a little bit more guess work so it's really difficult especially in fast passage work like Katie was playing earlier to get a uniform intonation across the section so we have really only about two more minutes left and I I'd like to make the following point one of the things you should be on the lookout for is balance over there and what the french horns are doing because this is a really exposed instrument and they're probably going to be up there on risers and that sound tends to Blair forth and in battel so keep an eye out for the French horns they would really really be exposed um I have one other line of development here but I want before we go does anybody out there have a question that you would like to ask Bradley or Katie or Alana all right let me uh ask ask them this question where should we sit what are the acoustical issues involved in battel do we want to sit so we can see and that's not bad you might say hey well get way up in that front as far as I can and watch this in this intricate Orchestra this great grand machine firing on all C cylinders here or do I want to go all the way to the back and maybe just push away the visual and just enjoy the sound because often times in concert Halls the best sound is not up front sound sailing right over your head it's coalescing in the back of the hall so where should we sit well my favorite place to sit in concerts is somewhere where I can see that interaction between the the different I guess gears in the machine as you put it um so uh I I would sit somewhere not directly behind the conductor so somewhere where you can see the players cuz they're the ones actually making the music yeah so if you want to go second balcony all the way down as far as you can go you can actually get up in front of the conductor you can be almost be in the orchestra that way now what about the Acoustics last issue here the Acoustics in Batel are they are they pretty good favorable well doesn't matter um do you have trouble hearing well they're certainly different than the room we practice in um which is why we have a dress rehearsal so that we can adjust our sound according to the Acoustics of the room that we're playing in um but I think uh Batel is a lot more live meaning that um the sound sort of it like lives longer after it's resonant it has a very long reverberation cycle how do we cut down how can you help the orchestra what would you guess what would be the best way you could help the orchestra to bring Clarity to their sound and actually allow them to play faster get that tempo of the Mozart to go faster if you've got a long reverberation cycle in a hall your Tempo will go slower what can you do to help out here now what do you think what would you do you wear a sweater bring a teddy bear bring your friend bring your mother grandmother bring as many people get as many sound absorbing bodies in there as you possibly can so we'll see you then Saturday night 8:00 and thanks to our guests thank you [Applause]