Did you know that any excess of romantic violin showpieces reduces life expectancy and hearing longevity by years? The damage can occur within minutes-guard yourself against an excess of Wieniawski, Paganini, and Kreisler, or you too may become lackadaisical or even worse, deaf to the point of only hearing harmonic double stops and coloratura runs executed with mechanical precision. This is a cause that few align themselves with, but a serious disease nonetheless. Raise awareness within your community, and promote substantial nutritionally fortified music over refined artificially sweetened melodies, or lack thereof.
More importantly, I am hurt that violinists and occasionally pianists have more music than anyone else, yet they choose to play obscure fluffernutter from the Romantic era. How have we decided that we should all play everything Romantically? What a dumb idea. I feel like our responsibility, as trained musicians, is learning about all the different styles of the different periods. That doesn't have to mean (but may) that you play Beethoven on a pianoforte, or that you whip out the heckelphone every now and again for some obscure Hindemith. But more seriously, it's about the style, the time, and how you can reproduce that sound now, whether on a modern or traditional instrument. It's not just violins-it's excerpts, it's this convoluted idea of "modern performance practice" that's been the standard since the overdramatic 40's and 50's in which wobbly vibrato and Romanticism made everyone swoon. Well I'm not swooning anymore, boys and girls, and it's time to play Mozart correctly. A bit light, less vibrato, more resonance, and sure as hell not martele. Beethoven 5 is not synonymous with violence, so let's try to avoid that in the fortissimos, ok? Debussy and Ravel-more air, sweep, more bow. Some might say I'm a snob. I'm a stylistic purist. We live in a time where knowledge is abundant. Why not use that? When I hear a really great performance, in which someone plays the Ravel sonata differently from their Bach and their Lutoslawski, I'm pretty excited. To play everything the same is boring, and I don't think it's interesting for anyone. If only we could get that sort of viewpoint about excerpts and auditions, we'd all be a bit happier. But at least for today, I'd be a bit happier if I could hear less Romantic showpieces, more substance, and less slurpee music-sickly sweet, and only good for the first swig.
listening to: Takemitsu "A string around autumn"
3 comments:
Here here!!!!
all i needed to see was the title of this post in the jucispeak newsreel to burst out laughing and say, kayleigh miller, what would i do without you.
miss yous.
I like ju's comment ;-) love!
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