Letter from Paxson (11/3)

Hello Philharmonic,

Thank you for a wonderfully focused and productive rehearsal this week! I thought this was perhaps our best work yet – you all showed up ready to dig into the fine details of the music, and we got a lot done on both Copland and Schumann. I commend each and every one of you for your level of artistry and focus as we close in on our first performance.

We have one more Tuesday night rehearsal until Fall Festival! I am so excited for us to have the chance to showcase at Orchestra Hall all the hard work we have put into the Schumann so far. We are in good shape, but we need next week’s rehearsal to be at the same standard you all set for yourselves last week. In your practice this week, focus on the first movement of Schumann, on the passages which are still giving you trouble. We are close to really owning this music, but we can’t let up now.

Next Tuesday’s rehearsal will be all Schumann. 

We will have a brief soundcheck onstage at Orchestra Hall the day of our Fall Festival performance, but I want you all to be thinking in advance about how the listening environment onstage will be vastly different from that of our rehearsal room. You will hear things you had not previously heard – and you will also not hear things you previously could rely on. This is why we have spent so much effort discussing what we listen to and how we listen to it in rehearsals. Sophisticated, intentional listening is one of the most important aspects of being a great ensemble musician. I can’t predict what exactly you will or will not be able to hear onstage, which is exactly why we all need to be on high alert in our short time in the hall before we perform.

Last week’s rehearsal had two recurrent themes:

1. Filling the beats: It’s tempting, when we see passages of sixteenth notes, to try and play them as fast as we can (especially if we are insecure in our mastery of our parts) – but in Romantic music, it is absolutely imperative that we fill the beats. The most dangerous thing we can do in a piece like Schumann is to start rushing. When we all lock the fast passages into the bigger picture of the meter, the music can really sing.
2. Lightening up: Perhaps this is the flipside of filling the beats – a lot of our non-melodic material tends to be too heavy, e.g. mm.59 flute, oboe, and violin II or rehearsal B flute, oboe, and viola. We have to feel the big beat and think of our music at the multiple measure-level rather than at the beat level. This will allow the music to move forward without each note being so fussed-over.

These themes will come up next week as well – here’s a practice-room recommendation for working on them: Put the metronome on multiple subdivisions: eighth notes, quarter notes, half notes, and whole notes. In other words, play a difficult passage with the metronome clicking four times a bar, twice a bar, once a bar, and once every other bar. This will help align your feeling of the underlying pulse with a concept of the big picture. As a reminder, our target tempos are quarter note = 84 at the Lebhaft and quarter note = 92 at the Coda (mm.297).

Keep up the great work! It’s an absolute joy to get to make music with you all and to share it with our community at Orchestra Hall. See you Tuesday!