emotional precision and Fauré's Requiem

Rehearsing Fauré's Requiem for this weekend's CPO program, guest conductor Joseph Flummerfelt repeatedly asked for more emotional precision: "You're just giving me a generic forte sound, folks. That's not enough -- you need to breathe with intention, and sing out the meaning of those words. You need to be crying out to the heavens -- you're begging for rest, begging for peace. That's what this music is about, and it's never been more relevant." (I'm paraphrasing, of course -- I don't actually memorize a whole speech by a conductor!)

It got me thinking about the nature of our profession, and how a large part of our job description is to invest those seemingly generic markings -- forte, allegro, legato, decrescendo -- with a very specific, emotional meaning. We have to do more than just data entry -- reading off those instructions and plunking down our fingers at the right moments -- we have to form a purpose and an intention behind every mark on the page, and re-enact those gestures in space and sound.

Whereas a stock analyst's job is to separate emotion from information, to parse out longing, panic, hope and disappointment and determine the objective value of a holding, ours is perhaps the opposite. We need to imagine the fear, joy, or disillusionment that inspired someone to compose these precise sounds, and then play them as though we felt those same emotions just as strongly.

Then again, perhaps a stock analyst needs some emotional insight as well; and I'm sure that as musicians we often need to step away from our emotions. Especially when those emotions override our ability to listen receptively and adjust appropriately to those around us. It's an incredible challenge to play with passion and sensitivity at the same time. In a piece like Fauré's Requiem, and the songs by Mahler and Strauss which make up the rest of tonight's program, that emotional sophistication is what separates a great performance from an average one.

pointing out the obvious

Rehearsing the "Flying Music" from E.T. last Friday, conductor Richard Kaufman stopped the orchestra at one point and turned to the bass section. "This is a bass soli," he told us, which was rather surprising since we weren't playing much more than pizzicato downbeats. He went on, "For John Williams, the bass section is the engine of the orchestra!"

This is always nice to hear, though from the bass section's perspective we're pretty much always the engine of the orchestra. If a conductor makes a point of it, we'll play louder and more assertively, and maybe further to the front side of the beat. As in most things a conductor asks for, there's no major transformation -- just a shift in emphasis, a heightened sense of importance. Maybe that will project to the audience, maybe not; in any case, the other sections of the orchestra will probably be more attentive to what we're doing, and so we'll be better able to contribute.

An analogy in last week's New Yorker caught my attention on a similar subject:

In his acceptance speech at the Convention and in the first debate -- his two big-audience occasions on foreign policy -- Obama mentioned cooperation but emphasized aggressive action much more strongly. In that way, the Obama campaign is like a symphony orchestra, with the need for international cooperation as the string section and the necessity for aggressive action as the horns. Both sections are always playing, but usually one or the other is playing louder. During the fall campaign, the horns have dominated the strings.

- "Worlds Apart," by Nicholas Lemann, October 13, 2008 issue of The New Yorker

As an orchestra musician, a lot of things about this analogy bother me -- the strings and horns are always playing? why is it just "louder", what about differences of articulation, tone quality, expression, etc.? and how about the different voices within the strings, not to mention the brass and percussion and woodwinds, what do they represent?

All that is just nit-picking, though, since I think it's a very effective analogy for what the point Lemann is making. We do balance our messages, and we'll change our focus, wording, and content for different settings and audiences. It's one of the most basic elements of human communication, so essential that we might not give it much thought. And it's also a good explanation for what a conductor does in balancing the orchestra -- he or she draws our attention to certain things, or minimizes certain others. Within any musical score, be it John Williams or Beethoven, there are countless details and possibilities for what might happen -- the conductor gets to imagine those possibilities and, with the cooperation of the orchestra, bring out the details that make the imagined real.

musical couches

I recently had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Chris Wuerscher, the psychologist, choir member, and CPO board member who offered his services to orchestra members in January -- inspiring conductor Bill Eddins to write about "Calgary's Brilliant Move":

It's a widely known fact - musicians are a little "different." Actually most of us are bloody nuts, and that has consequences for both orchestras and musician's families. So what's going to happen when an orchestra actually does something about it?

I've said for years that the best move any orchestra could ever make is to hire a staff psychiatrist...

It was a cold, blustery Friday afternoon when I took the train to Dr. Wuerscher's office. His secretary poured me a cup of tea to warm up, but Chris seemed eager to start right away. His questions sort of poured out in mighty clumps -- I'd start to answer one of them, and realize I'd left all the rest hanging. Still, they were all intriguing questions -- about where music takes us, emotionally and intellectually, and how as professional musicians we experience and sometimes insulate ourselves from music's effects.

It turns out Dr. Chris isn't primarily interested in treating musicians' neuroses -- though he's not opposed to it -- but more in talking about music and how it functions in our lives. We talked about the ephemeral qualities that make for a great performance, the ways music can take us out of ourselves and bring a higher awareness, and the joys and frustrations of working with a large, diverse group of people. Some of those neurotic tendencies may have come up, but that really isn't Chris' focus in these conversations.

He's actually trying to figure out how musicians might be able to help people in other fields to work in more inspired, harmonious ways. His working theory is that the intuitive abilities and non-verbal communication we need to play well in an orchestra aren't unique to musicians, but could have great benefits in a business meeting or negotiation, for example. His approach reminds me a lot of conductor Ben Zander, who has written a very spirited and inspiring book with Rosamund Stone Zander, The Art of Possibility.

It's a rare enough thing to find a musician who can really convey what music-making is all about -- Ben Zander does this very well in his book, but so well as he can in person. It seems like the whole magic of what music does for us, and what we do for music, is that it can't really be described in words. "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture," someone wrote. That's never stopped people from writing and talking exhaustively about music, and I had a great time talking about it with Chris. Even if we didn't reach any major breakthroughs, he still made me want to come back soon and talk some more -- which I guess is what a good psychologist does.

nu!

Our program this week is conducted by Bill Eddins, music director of the Edmonton Symphony:

Mozart, Overture from The Abduction from the Seraglio
Kelly Marie Murphy, Colour of My Dreams
Saint-Saëns, Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 33
Rachmaninoff, Symphonic Dances, Op. 45

Bill Eddins has been co-writing a blog, Sticks and Drones, with lots of cute topics like "Butts in the Seats" and "Does this 4/4 pattern make me look fat?" It's been fun reading his contributions to the blog, especially in the last couple days. He's written about getting to Calgary, the first rehearsals, and the CPO's new staff psychologist -- which he describes as "the best move any orchestra could ever make." Read his posts here:

On the Calgary Trail
Calgary's Brilliant Move...

Surprisingly, this is Bill Eddins' first time conducting the Calgary Philharmonic. A few of us got to work with him in the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and already have an appreciation for his charismatic and hyper-energetic style, and his bizarre pop-cultural references. He rotates through 4 or 5 different languages to count off, and he'll point out rehearsal letters using characters from Lord of the Rings - "Let's start at B for Bilbo!"

He had a special request for the bass section today - in the second movement of Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, where we have a pianissimo downbeat, he asked for a very particular kind of gesture. "Is anyone in the section Yiddish? It's like the way they say, 'nu!'" - and he made this odd little sound, something between a grunt and a groan, and gave our principal a little nudge in the arm to demonstrate

The Bourne Ictus

I just watched The Bourne Identity, which is the first part in the three-movie Bourne series. Thriller movies like this are a lot of fun, but they always seem to challenge my excuses about how I'm too busy and stressed to have a relationship. This is what I tell myself a lot of the time: "Being an orchestral musician is a time-consuming career, it takes a long time to get settled and established, you have to practice endlessly and travel quite a bit..." Then I watch Jason Bourne, who at the beginning of the film washes up on a boat in the Mediterranean with no clue as to who he is - then he has to dodge police forces, fight off thugs and goons, hitch, steal, and lie his way around Europe, finally take down a whole CIA operation - and he still has time to meet someone, get to know her, fall in love, etc.

It all seems a bit unfair. Of course I don't have amnesia, but I do have some liabilities that Jason Bourne didn't need to face. He's played by Matt Damon, for one. He's able to take the wheel of love-interest Marie's Mini-Cooper, pursued by droves of Paris police, and swerve through sidewalks, down staircases, and up a busy highway in the wrong direction - I get squeamish if I have to ask to use a girl's bathroom. I get nervous calling a friend to ask her out for coffee - Jason Bourne picks up the cell phone of a guy he's just shot to death, calls up a CIA director in Langley, Virginia, and demands a meeting the next afternoon on a bridge in Paris. Then he hangs up before hearing an answer, so they can't trace the call and send more goons. That would be a problem for me, but maybe I need to develop that sort of dashing self-confidence.

Jason Bourne must have gone through some serious training to gain all those skills though. I wonder what if, instead of a top-secret CIA agent, he had waken up in his amnesiac state to slowly discover that he was an international guest conductor. Here's a character-explication scene from Identity with Jason and Marie that I've adapted:

Jason and Marie have just sat down at an orchestra concert in Switzerland. Marie speaks first.

Marie: So what's the deal, Jason? What are you doing here?

Jason: (agitated, tired of all the questions he can't answer) Listen, here's how it is. I walk into this concert hall and I'm immediately checking out the sight lines, locating all the brass and percussion players, so I can put up my hands and discourage them from playing too loud. I know that the third trombone is a little tipsy, the second oboist hasn't had a good reed in weeks, and both second stand violinists think they can play the solos better than the concertmaster, but only the inside one is right. I can read opera librettos in 5 languages, then schmooze potential donors in 8 languages. I know that the guy three rows down is humming La Traviata, but he's 5 cents flat. And I know that I can beat the first 50 bars of the Danse Infernale before my hands start to shake. So you tell me, how can I know all this, and still not know who I am?

It probably wouldn't work too well, though I think it would be great if someone made an action movie about a conductor or orchestral musician. He (or she) could race through exotic city streets to get to the gig on time - subdue angry audience members tired of long introductory speeches - wield a music stand or a viola bow as an improvised weapon. It would be thrilling stuff, I'm telling you.

Calgary audition odyssey, part VII

...this is a continuation of Calgary audition odyssey, part VI...

Audition flashback: May 2003, the morning after the Chicago Civic Orchestra's last concert, I fly down to Naples, Florida for the Naples Philharmonic section bass audition. I catch a 7 am flight, and I am scheduled to play at 1 pm the same day - unfortunately, my bass doesn't arrive! I find out it was left behind in Chicago's Midway airport.

Having nothing else to do, I rent a car, drive to the audition, and explain the situation. The orchestra staff is unbelievably nice, they tell the committee and one of the bass players offers to let me use his bass. He'll go and get it at the lunch break, so I'll have an hour or so to practice on it before I play. In the meantime, I study my excerpts, trying to imagine how I can possibly bring them off on some unfamiliar bass. I borrow a German bow from a friend at the audition, go in without expecting anything, and just let it fly. They advance me to the semifinals, and then later to the finals.

I'm one of four finalists, and each of us plays through the Beethoven 9 recitatives with music director Christopher Seaman conducting. It's the farthest I've ever gotten in an audition, and this bass and I have barely met eachother - somehow though, I'm pulling out all the stops and playing beyond myself.

Not far enough, though - the position goes to Matt Medlock, who has been subbing in Naples for most of the season, and they name me runner-up. The next morning I drive back to the airport and take home my unopened bass trunk, which has just arrived for its first brief visit to Florida...

As I unpack my bass in the warm-up room, I'm trying to remember all the positive aspects of that audition four years ago - and not the disappointment of being runner-up. It's a fantastic accomplishment, making the finals and all; but I spent months afterwards trying to figure out how it went so well, and why it just wasn't good enough. The conclusion I reached was that my instrument couldn't make or break me - without it, I had to focus more on the musical qualities I wanted to project, and that was liberating. But how to recreate that experience, to depend entirely on your ear and intuition without worrying over technique? It seemed as though I would have to let it go as a freak occurrence, the discovery of a great potential I could never really tap into again.

But now I'm in a strikingly similar situation, about to play the same recitatives conducted by the Calgary Phil music director, Roberto Minczuk (shown here). Can I summon up the freedom, let go of all the technical nuts and bolts, and be in the music as I was back then? There is a certain amount of baggage handling that goes with playing the same instrument every day - this string needs extra tweaking, this note speaks funny, or that stroke won't start without a certain nudge... We become like tinkerers rather than artists. Without sacrificing my sound and facility, I want to let all that tinkering go, to become a vessel or instrument myself, so I can follow every nuance that Minczuk wants.

First, though, I have to play Mozart 40 - some of the most technically tricky excerpts in the literature. It's the main theme of the movement, but now transfigured into a call and response between the basses and the violins, interspersed with driving eighth note passages. My NWS colleague Matt Way came back from his Rotterdam audition (where he was also - yikes! - runner-up) raving about how they play Mozart in Europe - all of the passagework so active, full of dynamics and life and direction, even when the only marking is a simple f. I don't want to be over-the-top, but I try to bring out the direction and shape, leaving some room to develop the rising scales all the way to the peak, and then phrasing with the violin theme through all those repeated A's.

The last movement excerpts are even faster, and just as thorny technically. My fingering was a gift from Paul Ellison, one of those fancy thumb maneuvers that I never would have thought of on my own, but it actually works wonderfully. It saves me some nasty string crossings as well! Paul talks about achieving such fluidity in these licks that he actually dared the conductor to go faster - wave your stick as fast as you can, I'll still nail it. I wouldn't go that far, but I do play them both pretty damn fast, so that when I finish I'm wound up and a little breathless.

And now comes Beethoven 5, the Trio only - which was in the prelim, and I felt good about. Could there be some twist, something they're looking for that didn't come across the first time around? I don't want to second guess the committee, though. I play it around the same tempo, the same articulation and try to emphasize the direction in all those quarter notes, and the bounding 3-1 quality of the time. And they don't say anything - Maestro Minczuk rises from his seat, and joins me onstage.

This is one of the strangest moments. As an orchestral bass player, I'm most comfortable at a distance of 20 feet or so from the conductor - I've almost never sat closer than 10. And yet, now he's about 5 to 7 feet away, off to my right, and I'm turned towards him so the committee is watching both of us in profile. I briefly consider where to put my music, and decide I'm not going to look at it anyway, so the less obtrusive, the better.

He raises his baton, and gives me two quick preparatory beats - here we go! His beat is very clear and incisive - sitting so close, I feel like my sound is almost dragging behind, but I try to keep the singing quality and fill out all the notes. After the first recitative, he puts his hands down and gives me some directions: a longer quarter-note upbeat, more sound and direction to the low G, longer quarter-notes at the end of the phrase. Almost before I have time to process it all, he raises his hands again and gives me another chance.

I'm glad I can play these from memory, because keeping up with his hands and directions is taking all of my focus. Each statement is the same pattern, a run-through, a series of instructions, and another try - and as much as I try to anticipate what he wants, there's always something more. Smoother connected eighth notes, a more soaring line, longer quarter-notes - always the quarter-notes longer, until I almost feel I'm hanging over into the rests. MTT often talks about how we musicians tend to make tiny corrections, whereas an actor will grossly exaggerate, take things to an extreme, before bringing it back. I want to be tasteful, but still show a range and flexibility, a willingness to accomodate to his unfamiliar interpretation.

I finish with two very long quarter notes - they sound with a nice resonance in the hall though. After playing alone all day, trying to show my personality and intentions without a guide, it's a completely different experience following a conductor. It feels good, if a bit mentally draining - Minczuk asks for a lot, focusing on details of articulation, shape, and phrasing, and I think I could really enjoy working with him.

As I pick up my things and prepare to leave the stage, a member of the committee asks me a question: why didn't I play those low octaves in the Ein Heldenleben excerpt? I try to formulate the least damning answer possible, but it still comes out sounding bad. I didn't realize until the moment I was on stage that the excerpt continued through 13, so I wasn't really prepared to play those extra lines, and I sure wasn't going to attempt any extension-opening stealth maneuvers! Maybe admitting "I wasn't prepared" was not the best way to end my audition performance, but I still leave the stage feeling satisfied, happy to have survived and made the most of this day.

Now comes the moment of truth, time to wait for the final verdict. Or else they still might want to hear some more - it's fairly common to hold several final rounds, bringing the same two or three candidates back until they're completely worn down. Some orchestras will even bring all the finalists onstage at once, and have a sort of excerpt shoot-off, or hold an interview round.

Today though, I have a feeling the last note has been played. I shake Theodore's hand and we introduce ourselves. He goes to school at USC, and I tell him that my twin brother Dan also works there. Dan does graphic design work for the various schools, as well as the website - I try to explain all this, and how until recently Dan worked in the undergraduate library, but very rarely left his cubicle or met any students! He still does play the bassoon though, and occasionally goes to concerts at the school of music.

I'm still babbling about my brother when Tim emerges - the committee has reached a decision. He brings us both just off stage, where the committee members are all gathering. I can see now that they aren't so many, maybe 6 or 7 people. One of them winks at me, I think I notice... could it be?

Like all orchestra personnel managers and TV reality hosts, Tim begins his announcement with a series of polite remarks - thank you for coming, the committee was impressed and appreciative of the high standard of playing, etc., etc. We're both standing there uncertain when to breathe, when the news is going to break. Then Tim turns to me and says, "They have decided to offer you the position," and shakes my hand.

I'm overjoyed, but I don't know what to do or say. Looking over at Theodore, I can feel all the disappointment of coming so close. We shake hands and hug - whatever the outcome, even if we've never heard each other play, we've shared a whole lot today, and gone through the same experiences, hopes and challenges.

The other members of the committee crowd around: Charles Garrett, the principal bassist who asked me about my Heldenleben transpositions; Sheila Garrett, the assistant principal and wife of Charles; Donovan Seidle, the assistant concertmaster who I played with in Chicago Civic; bassist Graeme Mudd; and bassist Trish Bereti-Reid, possibly the one who winked. There may have been more as well - but I'm not really counting, just shaking hands and beaming.

(One more installment to come, thank you for reading and please visit again! - MH)

jungle rules of orchestral playing

The other day in rehearsal, guest conductor Robert Spano made some interesting comments about the relationship of an orchestra and its conductor, and the need to play firmly with the beat. Great orchestras don't rush - in fact, if you listen closely, they often seem to be deliberately playing at the back of the beat, filling out the rhythms as slowly as possible within the tempo. This gives a conductor something to work with - he can propel and drive the orchestra, when he wants to create added excitement, and trust that we won't all fly off the handle. That inner pulse, which we establish as an orchestra, can accomodate the conductor's excitement without getting swept up and losing its integrity.

He talked about how this dynamic gets screwed up when the orchestra tends to rush. Then the conductor has to take a restraining role, holding us back and doing his best to avoid train wrecks. The message he projects becomes cautionary, rather than motivating - which is why an orchestra that rushes can actually sound less exciting, more boring, than one that plays behind the beat but allows the conductor to propel forward.

Spano put it best when he said that the orchestra's job is to always say, "We're not going to rush." The conductor's role, on the other hand, is to say, "We're not going to be boring." It often puts the two in conflict, but that tension is itself a source of excitement for the audience and the performers. It's the will of the one against the will of the many, and ultimately the conductor's will prevails - assuming we all respect and trust him enough to respond to his ideas - but only as the result of an intensely powerful struggle.


I'll write more tomorrow on this weekend's program, which includes Jennifer Higdon's Concerto for Orchestra and Michael Gandolfi's Impressions from the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. The latter piece is inspired by an actual place, a garden designed by the philosopher Charles Jencks. You can check out some pictures of the real thing at Charles Jencks' website.

In the meantime, here are a few pictures from the Fairchild Tropical Gardens, which our orchestra visited last Sunday. I don't think the gorilla in the top picture is meant to be conducting an orchestra, but that was my first thought. I wonder if gorilla conductors ever have problems with rushing...?

Rosenkavalier with Jarvi

Tonight at the Lincoln Theatre the New World Symphony plays a free "Community Appreciation Concert", conducted by Steven Jarvi. I talked with Steven the other day about Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier Suite, one of the pieces on the program - he described it as one of those "life-changing pieces."

We each could remember clearly the first time we had heard excerpts from the opera; oddly enough, we both heard it on the same recording, Renée Fleming's "Strauss Heroines" (shown here). Jarvi went on to study the opera, conduct it at the Washington National Opera, and even arrange his own version of the concert suite; whereas I just bought the cd, and started listening to it all the time!

Even if my life didn't seem to change quite as dramatically as Jarvi's after I heard Der Rosenkavalier, it definitely changed me internally! Both the opera and the suite begin with some of the most famously risque music ever written - played before a closed curtain in staged versions, the music quickly reaches an ecstatic, thrusting pitch of excitement, and it's easy to imagine the post-coital bliss of Marie-Therese (the Marschallin) and Octavian when the music subsides and the curtain opens. The opera's real climax, though, is the Trio in the final act - for three female voices, since Octavian is a trouser role, all intertwining and upward towards a place more emotional, more moving, more ecstatic even than those first-act orgasms.

The text is talking about the vicissitudes of love - how we need to find a love so pure, it can even accept the loss of the beloved. The scene is a typical operatic love triangle, and yet the music and the sentiments are anything but typical, reaching for a kind of spiritual solace and forgiveness.

Marschallin
I chose to love him in the right way, so that I would love even his love for another! I truly didn't believe that I would have to bear it so soon! (sighing) Most things in this world are unbelievable when you hear about them. But when they happen to you, you believe them and don't know why - there stands the boy and here I stand, and with that strange girl he will be as happy as any man knows how to be.

Sophie
I feel as if I were in church, holy and awed. And yet unholy too! I do not know how I feel. I would like to kneel there before that lady, and yet I would also do something to her, for I know she gives me him and yet she keeps something of him at the same time. I do not know how I feel! I want to understand, yet not understand. I want to ask, yet not ask - it makes me hot and cold. (looking into Octavian's eyes) I see only you and know only this: I love you!

Octavian
Something has come, something has happened. I want to ask her: can it be? And I know just that question is forbidden me. I want to ask her: why do I tremble inside? Has anything so wrong occurred? And yet I dare not ask her! - And then I look at you, Sophie, see only you, feel only you, Sophie, and know nothing but that I love you.

Marschallin
So be it.

The words won't be sung tonight, but I think the music brings across all the emotions perfectly - it really does have the feeling of a ritual, unfolding over long phrases and beautiful expanses of time. Let's hope some more life-changing moments happen tonight!

symphonies ahoy

It must be the Miami Beach Boat Show this weekend, because there is definitely a nautical vibe in the air around here. These enormous yachts have been filling the streets and parking lots, as well as the waterways, and this morning I saw a guy walking around in his life jacket. Maybe he just wanted an extra layer, since it's been cold by Florida standards - mid-50s this morning.

We haven't launched into any sea chanties yet at the symphony, but we have been lining up big symphonic warhorses, sort of like those behemoth yachts on the intracoastal waterway. MTT is around, and we've had some conducting workshops with young conductors. They take turns on the podium to read through big standard repertoire pieces like Brahms 1st, Beethoven 3rd, and Tchaikovsky's 5th, with coaching and advice from MTT. The conductors taking part this week are all very talented: Philip Mann, Jonathan Yates, NWS conducting fellow Steven Jarvi, and Daniel Stewart, a member of our viola section.

Playing the first movement of Tchaik 5 yesterday, MTT asked us to sound more like pirates, making all those 6/8 rhythms more "swashbuckling". It's actually been a lot of fun, playing through all these big pillars of symphonic literature, and though there's not the pressure of actually performing them, MTT gets into a lot of interesting details and ideas. And the young conductors get the orchestra on its best behavior, since MTT is walking around and looking over all of our shoulders.

Eine Kleine Vibratomusik

All this week I've been rehearsing Mozart's Serenade in G, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in a string quintet for a chamber music concert this Sunday. I guess it's fitting that in this year of overplayed Mozart, we should finish with one of the most overplayed Mozart pieces of all time. It's quite probable that, should a cell phone go off during the performance, it will play a ring tone from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. It's one of those pieces you can hear so much you stop recognizing it as music. That's not to say it's a bad piece - like any Mozart work, there seem to be endless little surprises and miracles. It's up to us to make them seem that way, not overly familiar drudgery.

One of the things we've been talking about is vibrato. Apparently Sir Roger Norrington left a lot of us thinking about this subject; and while we're not ready to abandon it entirely, we're all trying to use it in a more thoughtful way. Probably this is something musicians alone obsess about - I've been trying to think of a similar conundrum in another profession, but haven't really come up with anything. Are there postal workers who feel a need to shake all the packages, or lawyers who can't stop palpitating their briefcases?

For musicians, the problem of vibrato is sort of the same as the problem of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik: they can both be so great and wonderful, as long as they are not done to death, or done in a perfunctory and boring way. One of the most interesting moments is near the end of the second movement, when the coda begins with a series of surprising modulating chords. We decided that we would make these chords most striking by using no vibrato at all, just playing them with a very fast and emphatic bow stroke. However, the danger is that they could still sound dead and dreadfully out of tune.

At our rehearsal today, coach Scott Nickrenz suggested that we "give those chords some life in the left hand" - which might sound like a euphemism for vibrato, but somehow thinking of it in this way helped. The sound had that shimmering resonant life, without the wobbly preciousness of a wide vibrato. Scott described this kind of active left hand as "salt and pepper", which conveys the size of the movement as well as its effect on the sound - a little can go a long way.

I think maybe semantics is a big part of the problem, since the word vibrato has gotten so loaded with sappy romantic connotations. Obviously we need in an infinite gradation of different vibrato sounds, from the slightest shimmer to the garish cafe vibrato that Sir Roger likes to joke about. Actually in his essay on orchestral vibrato, Sir Roger mentions Fritz Kreisler and the advent of continuous vibrato, writing that "listening to his recordings today one is struck by the delicacy of his vibrato. It is much more a gentle shimmer than the forced pitch-change one often hears today."

So maybe we need a thousand different words for vibrato, as the Eskimos allegedly have for snow. Next time Sir Roger comes around, we can say, "That's not vibrato, that's my vifructo!" And while we're tweaking our semantics, maybe we can call the piece tomorrow "Eine Kleine Nachmittagmusik", since we are playing it in the afternoon (the concert begins at 3 pm). Is there really anything nocturnal about this music? Who knows, it might make people sit up and listen with fresh ears - or at least silence the cell phone jingles!