Gustavo Dudamel

[chris]

Has anyone heard him conduct?  Any thoughts?   I know he won a "Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition" a few years back, but don't know a whole lot else.   

[barry guerrero]

He's only done one recording so far:  Beethoven 5 & 7. It's a very energetic and enthusiastic performance from a rather large youth orchestra from Caracas, Venezuela. Many of the players are pretty young. It's a decent effort, all the remarkable given who the player's are, and the kind of poverty they're surrounded by. I expect Mahler 5 to also have lots of energy.

[Trio]

I will be seeing Dudamel conduct M1 with the CSO on Saturday night (7-April).  Will report back after.

Trio

[chris]

Trio - part of the reason I ask is to see if heading to the concert that night is worth the $100+ (for two tickets, that is).   The cheap main floor seats are gone and I will not sit in the Gallery anymore....way too high up there.

[barry guerrero]

That's always such a difficult question. Much of that has to do just how much, or how little, losing a C-note sets you back. If you have some dough to burn; no problem! Right now, I wouldn't pay $100 to see the Vienna Phil. play Mahler, even if Bernstein came back from the grave. Maybe if Mahler were conducting, I might pay that much. I just can't afford it! - that's the problem. Then there's getting there. Then there's dealing with the people who are seated around you. Sometimes you can have an intelligent conversation with the people next to you. Most of the time, though, their complete musical morons, and are only there because they think they should be. Then they make noise! I can't stand hearing people cough, and fidget with their candy wrappers during quiet passages. That s__t drives me insane! And what is it with old men who can't sit still? They have no energy; yet, they can't sit still in a chair for a couple of hours? Go figure! I really think that symphony concerts ought to be amplified, like rock concerts, and just let everybody mill about and make tons of noise. Like baseball games, they should have beer and peanut vendors going through the aisles. You should be able to "booo" when something sucks. The cymbal players gets paid close to 100,000 dollars a year, and then he miscounts and places a cymbal crash in the wrong place. That's inexcusable. I remember that the CSO used to have a cymbal player who used about 15 different pairs of cymbals, and sounded awful with all of them - as though he always picked the wrong pair to use. I think he's gone now, thank goodness! And what is it with timpani players using about 500 different pairs of sticks? I can't tell the difference in sound between most of them, and I'm an amateur percussionist! Then there's the clown covering the tam-tam part - usually the wimpiest looking person on the staff. They're playing this huge Wuhan tam-tam that weighs 30 or 40 pounds, but they tap the thing so lightly that you don't hear a thing. Why do they think the composer bothered to write a note for them? - just to give them something to do? And why do they always shove harp players in the back? Put them up front, where you can hear the d__n things! Either that, or amplify them. All this stuff drives me nuts. That's why I like sitting behind the orchestra, because I can the give the percussion section intimidating looks, and give them cues if they lose track of where they are. Believe me, I've actually done that.

I can't watch the Berlin Phil. (same with the Lucerne Festival people). The string and woodwind players all whirl their torsos about while they're playing, and the whole orchestra looks like some kind of giant fan going berserk. It's the most annoying thing to see. Just sit their and play your instrument - how hard is that? I don't care how much they feel the music or not - I just want them to play it. I usually find that the most bored looking orchestras are the ones that sound the best. I really think there's such a thing as loving the music to death. Just play it.

[Leo K]

One of the best rants I've read in long time Barry...it really lightened up my evening to laugh out loud...thanks! 

[david johnson]

barry:

yikes!  chill, man!  just close your eyes.
if the venue dodn't provide what i consider a comfy chair for a $100 seat, i'd fidget as much as i damn well wanted.

peace
dj

[Damfino]

I can't watch the Berlin Phil. (same with the Lucerne Festival people). The string and woodwind players all whirl their torsos about while they're playing, and the whole orchestra looks like some kind of giant fan going berserk. It's the most annoying thing to see. Just sit their and play your instrument - how hard is that? I don't care how much they feel the music or not.

LOL.  Excess "emoting" from soloists is something I find annoying as well.  If I find I don't want to watch, then I may as well listen to a reccording.  I think the BPO and Lucerne group share many of the same solosits, hence the similarity.  One might also add that, for some reason, the Lucerne wind players look as if the air that are blowing is building up and causing their eyes to almost pop out.

[barry guerrero]

.   .    .    all this is why I stay home and listen to recordings. I'll go see MTT do Mahler 8 one last time in 2008. I'd like to go to Philly to see Eschenbach do M8 as well. At least M8 is loud enough to cover up the coughing and the candy wrappers. This is also why I like *live* jazz:  you can talk, or you can just listen.

[Damfino]

My live music experiences are almost exclusively opera.  There's usually enough going on so I do not get distracted by the audience.  I usually do not go to symphony performances unless it is something as you say- loud, with large forces.  I think the last Houson Symphony concert I attended was Mahler 2 with Eschenbach about 10 years ago.

[barry guerrero]

David,

You're welcome to tell me to chill, but let me give you two absolutely outstanding examples of what I'm talking about. Once, I went to see/hear Mahler 9 conducted by Edo De Waart (S.F.). I sat next to this young yuppie couple that kept snuggling and giggling, as well as just plain-old talking. I actually told them they were ruining the entire experience for me. The audience was totally noisy during the softest passages. I was so bummed out - Mahler 9, of all pieces!! Today, John Kim has a pirate recording of that concert, and says that it's one of his best M9's. I couldn't tell, because the audience was so friggin' noisy, and that just ruined it for me. Years later, John Kim and I went to see Ozawa/Saito Kinen Orchestra do M9 at Davies Hall, and it was a wonderful experience - not only because it was a really great performance, but because the mostly Asian audience was absolutely dead silent. That made ALL the difference in the world.  Example #2   .     .     . 

There are basically two different versions of Bruckner 7. They're both nearly identical, except that one has a cymbal crash at the climax of the slow movement, and the other one doesn't. So, I go see the SFSO do Bruckner 7, and it's the version with the cymbal crash. Naturally, during the slow movement, I'm totally distracted by watching the cymbal player trying to keep count and place his cymbal crash in the right spot. Lo and behold, he got off count, stood there with the cymbals in his hand, and completely missed his entrance! Then, he very slowly sat back down in his chair, showing no expression at all. Probably the only people who noticed any of this, were other folks who were aware of this difference in the two versions - just like myself. Here, this clown gets paid nearly $100,000 a year - maybe more, based on seniority - and they can't hear the climax to the slow movement of B7? That's just incredible! I never got paid a dime for playing in the Redwood Symphony for over 10 years - in fact, I think they wanted to charge us dues - and I never once came close to making a major goof like that. You might find the following to be be amsuing:

Especially during Mahler symphonies (we played a lot of modern music in the Redwood Symphony), other percussionists would get ticked off at me because I wouldn't count my parts (we were often times covering several different written-out parts). I didn't need to - I knew how the pieces went. They would be covering several different parts as well, so they might ask me, "where are we?". I'd say, "I don't know", and they'd be really upset. I'd end up just cueing them to play the right instrument at the right time. Then one of them would try to tell me, "you have to count your part!"; and I'd say, "no I don't. I'm not getting paid for this, so as long as I get the job done, it's nobody's business how I do it". If it became a problem, I'd threatent to quit, and they'd back off. I never once missed a single entrance. This is why it bugs the daylights out of me, to see pro's miss entrances. It happens very rarely, as you know. But it does happen from time to time.

So, you're welcome to tell me to chill, but this sort of stuff truly drives me insane, and is why I just stay home with recordings for the most part.

[david johnson]

i doubt asians have the market on silence.   why don't you go audition for a percussion section opening?  you might make it!

dj

[chris]

I was trying to figure out what I said to set you off Barry, but I'm glad I was only the catalyst.

The eruption of coughing between movements - not "real" coughing, but a "eck eck" noise people has really begun to bother me.

I've had a few mind boggling incidents in the past few months - people picking up their cell phones in the middle of a concert, the guy behind me singing along, loud snoring, etc.   To me, they're still worth attending, but I rarely am willing to drop the money for the pricier seats anymore because of the constant thoughts of "I paid $120 to listen to this jerk snore?"

[barry guerrero]

I wasn't set off - I was just trying to be amusing for everybody   .

And David, I may be able to play utility percussion parts without missing a beat, but that would never land me a position in a professional symphony orchestra. You have to be extremely good at all of the snare drum rudiments and rolls; and you have to be able to cover all the mallet instruments flawlessly. Young people spend thousands of hours in practice rooms, learning to do just those things. I can't begin to do that with any great proficiency. The toughest part I've ever played was the tambales part in Bernstein's "Chichester Psalms". That was quit challenging for me. I can do simple xylophone and glockenspiel parts, but nothing terribly difficult. Thanks for the vote of confidence though.

Mahler's percussion parts are extremely well written. But the way those parts are divided up on the separate sheets of paper can be quite challenging from a logistical standpoint. For example, some tam-tam (large gong) notes may be one person's part, while some of the other gong strokes will be on somebody else's part. It can make things very awkward, as players are trying to pass each other in very narrow quarters. Or, sometimes, they try to pass the actual parts back and forth. With the Mahler symphonies that have tons of percussion - such as symphonies 2, 3, and 6 - it's usually best if the section leader designs the layout of the section, and then reassigns the various parts in a way that minimizes players having to move all about. Sometimes that means having to completely recopy the parts for some of the players. It can get rather complicated, and that's why many players who don't know these pieces really well, have trouble keeping track of where they are. I found that trying to count my part just made things more precarious, so I just learned to memorize where everything goes. It's not like you're trying to memorize the violin part to the Sibelius violin concerto, or some such thing.

[Ivor]

  Dudamel is,or is to be,the new conductor of the Los Angeles Phil. O. (I was going to write LAPO,and thought that might look too much like LAPD !!)

  Well Barry,I for one was entertained by your stuff. An English comedian,Charley Drake,did a sketch about being the players in an orchestra. I think it included a triangle player who counts from first to last without being required to play. Bless!




     Ivor