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Orchestral Players -- 2 Questions

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Posted on April 19, 2015 at 17:06:31
goldenthal
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 As a mere pianist, I seek your expertise re the following 2 questions:

1. When approaching live performance of a familiar orchestral piece (not to say "war horse"), how much do modern (i.e., current) and, let's say, top-drawer orchestras and visiting (again, highly regarded) conductor rehearse? Remember, they've both been through the piece many times before though not, for my purposes, together. In the modern age, how close does rehearsal come to "minimal"?

2. Altogether different: I have seen, on a number of occasions, orchestral musicians rise to applaud a particularly gifted soloist (though I'll concede that such a response may be limited to that performance of that piece -- still, imagine Schnabel, or Fleisher, or Grumiaux, or Bjoerling). Is there any hint of consensus among you folks regarding Arkady Volodos and whether he'd be likely to provoke such a response (and what's he doing these days, or is that worth knowing)?


Thanks,


Jeremy

 

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RE: Orchestral Players -- 2 Questions, posted on April 20, 2015 at 04:06:28
pbarach
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 I'm not an orchestral player, but in 40 years of attending concerts with major orchestras (e.g, those listed below), I have never seen orchestra memebrs stand to applaud a soloist (although they will sometimes applaud while seated).

Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, Philadephia, Concertgebouw, Vienna Philharmonic, London Symphony, Royal Philharmonic.

 

RE: Orchestral Players -- 2 Questions, posted on April 20, 2015 at 09:15:09
andy evans
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 Rehearsal quantity varies with countries - more in USA and Germany, less in the UK as far as I know. Anecdotally UK musicians claim this makes them hot sight readers.

Volodos was a bit of a "sensation" many years ago. We're past that now. I thought he mostly did solo recitals anyway.

 

RE: Orchestral Players -- 2 Questions, posted on April 20, 2015 at 10:42:04
hesson11
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 More often, shuffling their feet or refusing to stand when asked to is a sign of the musicians' respect for soloists and conductors. Though rare, I've seen it done a few times.
-Bob

 

RE: Orchestral Players -- 2 Questions, posted on April 20, 2015 at 17:16:37
Todd Krieger
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 In just about all cases I've seen, if the orchestral musicians aren't standing (as directed by the conductor), they applaud the soloist.... The string players by gently "waving their bows" in applause. The remaining musicians will also applaud if they have a means to do so without risking damage to their respective instruments.

 

RE: Orchestral Players -- 2 Questions, posted on April 21, 2015 at 20:46:54
learsfool
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 Hi Goldenthal - the number of rehearsals in a professional orchestra will vary quite a bit, depending on what kind of program it is. For most pops shows, most big orchestras will have only one rehearsal 90% of the time. Two at most, if it is particularly difficult.

For a normal classical subscription series concert, most major orchestras will have four or perhaps five rehearsals, earlier in the same week as the performances. The soloist on such programs are usually only there for one rehearsal in addition to the dress (which is normally on the morning of the first performance), and generally those two rehearsals would be the only times the concerto would be rehearsed, unless it was a particularly difficult accompaniment. The rest of the rehearsal time would be spent on the rest of the program. Different music directors/guest conductors will apportion their rehearsal time VERY differently. Some of them are much better with time management than others....generally the average rehearsal length of one rehearsal in a major orchestra is two and a half hours, including a fifteen minute break somewhere around the middle of the time period.

For a runout concert, or free neighborhood concert, where an orchestra performs say in a local church, there would probably be only one rehearsal.

Many major orchestras have a few different children's concert programs that they rotate per season, which are each rehearsed once at the beginning of the season, maybe over two rehearsals, and then performed many times throughout the season.

Operas usually have a couple of orchestra only reading rehearsals, followed by a couple of reading rehearsals with the singers, followed by a couple of full dress rehearsals.

Ballets usually have again two orchestra only rehearsals, and then probably just one dress with the dancers.

So it depends on what type of program is being performed, and to some extent also on how difficult the program is. As someone else said, there are slight differences between not only different countries, but different orchestras within that country. No two will be exactly the same, but the above amounts would be average here in the US.

 

RE: Orchestral Players -- 2 Questions, posted on April 21, 2015 at 21:16:52
goldenthal
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 Many thanks, learsfool (though perhaps I may call you Hutt after William Hutt, the best Lear's fool I ever saw live).

The reason for my question is that I sometimes listen to streams from the Concertgebouwe, and this past week I heard several commonly played works, various conductors, with sloppy mistakes. Not just wrong notes, but also musicians out of synch. I was surprised at that even though I know that these performances are recorded (though not, from my source, broadcast) live and thus always susceptible. I have also heard soloists make mistakes, but rarely a great orchestra with works it has played many times. What I heard sounded like insufficient rehearsal.

On the other hand, I am generally aware that rehearsal time has decreased during my starting-to-be many decades. Also, though I heard all the performances during the last week or 10 days, they certainly did not all occur during that time. Still, given an orchestra of such quality, I was surprised.


Jeremy

 

RE: Orchestral Players -- 2 Questions, posted on April 21, 2015 at 21:35:35
goldenthal
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Location: Ontario
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 Thanks, Andy.

I heard Volodos play 2 things years ago, over fm which used to be worth something up here in the frozen north. One was the "Rach 3" and the other was the Schubert G+ (op. 78?). I thought those performances were very musical. I've heard nothing of his (over internet radio now) since then except for stuff on youtube where he appeared maybe a bit unhinged. Still, a great technique. I've wondered if it was just me, or whether he really was a very promising young talent.

That sort of thing has happened to be before: in 1962, I heard a very young Richard Goode perform the Schubert D+ (op. 52?). That performance was unforgettable, yet afterwards, at least in my neck of the woods, Goode sank from sight, not to be heard of again for almost 20 years. Retrospectively, I find his playing since I rediscovered him in about 1980 to amply confirm my initial assessment. Will Volodos likely do the same in years to come, or was he just a "flash in the pan"?


Jeremy

 

Not precisely an answer to your questions., posted on April 22, 2015 at 16:28:01
mwhitmore
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 But I understand that, in London, union rules permit a full-time player in an orchestra to send a qualified substitute to a rehearsal if he has a higher-paying performance elsewhere. This sometimes results in a conductor facing a quite different group of musicians at the performance than those he rehearsed with!

 

RE: Not precisely an answer to your questions., posted on April 22, 2015 at 17:14:42
goldenthal
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 Thank you, mwhitmore! You remind me that in the late 1950s, the American Federation of Musicians threatened to blackball my mother unless she confided to them whether she had "any communist leanings". She thought it funny until she realized that they really meant it!


Jeremy

 

RE: Orchestral Players -- 2 Questions, posted on April 22, 2015 at 19:20:12
pbarach
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 Last year the Cleveland Orchestra performed Britten's Spring Symphony for the first time in several decades with only one (open to subscribers) rehearsal because their instruments hadn't made it back in time for the only other rehearsal scheduled before the performance (the chorus had plenty of rehearasal time). I heard the open rehearsal, and it was already a fine performance with tight ensemble. I went the following night to the first performance, and it was even better. That's what a great orchestra can do under good leadership (Welser-Moest in this case).

 

RE: Orchestral Players -- 2 Questions, posted on April 22, 2015 at 21:58:07
goldenthal
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Location: Ontario
Joined: March 28, 2003
 Thanks; that's sort of what I thought. Hence my surprise at the Concertgebouwe. On the other hand, there is a time-compression in recorded-but-not-broadcast-live streaming, so I suppose I may have experienced a coincidental conflation.


Jeremy

 

RE: Not precisely an answer to your questions., posted on April 22, 2015 at 23:00:39
learsfool
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 Hi - this is almost certainly untrue. The London orchestras may have slightly more liberal rules regarding missing one rehearsal than many orchestras here in the states, but I would think that if a player had to miss more than one, he would have to take off the production entirely, and then someone else is hired to play the entire thing, and this would be worked out in advance - there is always a time limit on when you have to notify them that you are taking leave. The only time someone is sight-reading a performance is if someone else had to call in sick, which musicians do very rarely, much less often than they should, honestly. I know I have been guilty of playing when I should not have.

If anyone is really curious, I can very easily check. And by the way, that would not be a "union rule" per se, it would have to do with the policies of each individual orchestra. Every orchestra has a master agreement with the union, but each master agreement would be different. It is the same here. I am actually an executive board member of my local, which has a large jurisdiction involving many different CBAs. Every one of them is different. There are of course many things which are the same in all of them, conforming to industry standards. But rarely are any two orchestra's leave policies exactly the same.

The main difference between England and the US, as far as the work rules go, is that England is pretty much what is called a closed shop. They will always hire a national if there is a qualified one, which there pretty much always is. That is not the case here in the US. For instance, there is only one horn player in all of the major orchestras in London right now, though there are one or two others trying to make a living free-lancing there. Some American horn players have gone to London for some of their schooling, but they pretty much all have to come back here to make a living.

 

RE: Orchestral Players -- 2 Questions, posted on April 22, 2015 at 23:27:27
learsfool
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 Hi goldenthal - one very important thing to remember is that all musicians are human. No matter how good anyone is, they WILL make mistakes. There is almost never any such thing as a perfect performance. It would be extremely unusual if you heard a live stream that was "perfect." This is what recordings, especially with modern digital editing, have done - created very unrealistic expectations for live performances. The average classical recording nowadays has a minimum of 1,000 edits!

Familiarity with the works of course helps, and yes, we practice the standard repertoire at home all of the time. But this does not mean we will not make mistakes. Some people don't like such analogies, but there really are quite a lot of very valid analogies between musicians and athletes. The work schedules are very similar, for one. And no athlete, no matter how great, is ever perfect any more than a musician is. And we use much weaker muscle groups that have to last us for much longer careers. Just about all musicians at some point in their careers suffer significant over-use related injuries, some of which can be career ending, or have significant long term effects. A professional orchestral musician's schedule is very grueling physically and mentally. The human body is not really designed to do what we do for the extended periods of time that we do them. It is quite rare that any orchestral musician, or soloist, for that matter, gets through a piece with 100% accuracy, and no one does it all the time.

As to specific mistakes, another thing to keep in mind if you hear poor ensemble - this is almost certainly at least part, if not wholly, the conductor's fault. Perhaps their rehearsal time was apportioned poorly. Perhaps they do not know the score as well as they should. Perhaps they made a mistake - and they do make them frequently. They are human as well, and often their beat patterns are very unclear. Certainly just about everyone in the audience, even the professional reviewers, give the conductor's far too much credit for the great performances, and nowhere near enough for the mishaps. You would be surprised just how easily a conductor can really screw up an orchestra. That said, every orchestra, even the greatest, have their bad days, too.

When you listen to the radio/internet broadcasts, by the way, unless they are very specifically saying that it is being streamed live in real time, what you are actually listening to is almost always a compilation of the best of the three or four performances from that weekend (for instance, your favorite orchestra's regular radio broadcast). I am on the committee in my orchestra that helps decide which parts of which performances are put together for the radio broadcasts. There is no editing done to them, but the selections are chosen from all of the performances, so you might be hearing two movements of a symphony from Saturday, and two from Sunday, etc. It is still all from live performances, but the best ones from that weekend are chosen, and rarely is it all from exactly the same performance. So again, even here, you are not hearing some of the mistakes that actually did happen that weekend.

 

"The average classical recording nowadays has a minimum of 1,000 edits!", posted on April 23, 2015 at 09:26:05
Chris from Lafayette
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 I remember when I posted similar information here about five or so years ago, there was quite a bit of disbelief expressed on this board. As Jon Nakamatsu mentioned to me at about that same time though, if you can't play the piece, then no amount of editing is going to convince listeners that you can! ;-)

BTW, great post, Lf!

 

Thanks., posted on April 23, 2015 at 11:13:07
mwhitmore
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 You are no doubt more knowledgeable than I am. I read what I posted, but can't recall the source. And it may not have been union rules but accepted practice among the London classical community. It may well be a case of not letting facts get in the way of a good story.

 

RE: Orchestral Players -- 2 Questions, posted on April 23, 2015 at 12:18:39
goldenthal
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 Yes, learsfool, I fully understand and agree with your paras 1, 2, and 4 (except that re para 4, I had not considered that cutting and pasting movements would be simple and thus frequently resorted to). I agree with para 3 too, except the result -- as mentioned elsewhere, perhaps a coincidence of the concert performances the Concertgebouwe selected for streaming during the past 2 weeks -- was such as to suggest sloppy conductors (there were at least 3 different conductors -- Haitink, Janssons, and Fischer) or a poorly prepared orchestra; hence my question about rehearsal time.

By the way, I did not intend my enquiry to be an attack; merely, I was surprised. Though I am used to soloists making errors, I guess I have learned to expect less of that, over the decades, from polished orchestras led by polished conductors playing well or even over-polished pieces.

Many thanks for your help.


Jeremy

 

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