08-27-2005, 11:40 PM
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#5 (permalink)
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| Mezzo Piano User
Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Tempe, Arizona
Posts: 616
| These were David Krauss's ideas about the opening to Parsifal (which I summarized) during his presentation at the ITG conference in Denver... Quote:
His selection of the opening to the opera Parsifal to demonstrate this concept of releasing the sound will always be with me in the future.
He said the way they do this opera at the Met, the house lights are down, the conductor sneaks into the pit, and there’s about a minute of just silence when nothing is happening. Then they bring the lights up very slowly and it starts. He chose words like tranquil, transparent, and beautiful to describe this opening, with the strings and the horns in the beginning, and an arcing melody with the solo trumpet merely as a part of the overall texture of the musical line. But then he said, “it’s terrifying and notoriously hard!” Those words really got my attention. The one thing that got him though this opening the first time he played it at the Met was the concept of releasing the sound instead of pushing the sound.
Before he played this excerpt he reviewed everything that he had already talked about. He said, “Observe your Superhero posture and the slow intake breath, the developing of resistance in your chest, and then let go of the sound.” Then with his charming sense of humor while talking to a room full of trumpet players he said, “Incidentally, this is a little more frightening than actually playing the opera.” We all laughed and then he went on to play the two phrases from Parsifal with such tremendous ring in his sound, from the softest opening dynamic to the sparkling resonant forte on the high C, that we all broke into applause after his fantastic interpretation.
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Derek Reaban
Tempe, Arizona |
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