On February 12th, 2013, was a concert I never want to forget. This year, the Utah Philharmonia and the USU Symphony Orchestra combined together to perform Igor Stravinky's Rite of Spring, in honor of it's 100th birthday!
Synopsis
The Rite of Spring was originally a ballet, premiered in 1913. This piece was very much ahead of it's time, and caused a near riot! Imagine a aristocratic audience who are accustomed to the beauty and elegance of ballets such as The Nutcracker and Swan Lake. The opening of the piece was enough to cause confusion. It begins with a bassoon solo, in the top of it's range--way out of the range any composer had dared to write for the bassoon. People would lean over and ask each other, "What instrument is that?" The savage, ritualistic nature is revealed quickly with the strange orchestration, voo-doo sounding rhythms, accents on strange beats, constantly changing meters, and provocative choreography. The setting of the ballet is in ancient pagan Russia, about a tribe and the various rituals that take place in preparation for spring. The ballet ultimately ends with a young female sacrifice who dances herself to death. Compared to a ballet about love and swans, this might be a little bit shocking.
Though it was originally a ballet, the orchestral music of Rite of Spring is most often performed alone (In fact, the choreography was lost for many years). The music in itself is enough to keep you on your toes! It is a fascinating piece, one that I had heard growing up (I am glad for classical music parents), but never fully appreciated until I got to perform the piece!
Combining Orchestras
The reason we combined orchestras was because of the vast orchestration of this piece. It calls for about double the instruments of a typical orchestral ensemble! Rehearsing was pretty interesting, because we could only rehearse all together a couple of times before the concert. Before we combined, we just rehearsed without all of the other parts. We actually had a few players at the U who weren't members of the orchestra (but amazing players) sit in and cover some of the parts. Since our school covered most of the first parts, I kept wondering what their rehearsal must be like having the 2nd and 3rd parts but no first parts...I asked one of the other flute players and she said her conductor did a lot of singing! Ours did too, actually, because every part is important. Even 2nd and 3rd wind players have a few solos in this piece, which makes it a lot of fun.
I played the piccolo 1 part. There are 5 flute parts for this orchestra! 1st, 2nd, 3rd/doubles on 2nd piccolo, piccolo 1, and alto flute. Our orchestra covered the 1st, 3rd/2nd pic, and pic parts, and the USU Symphony doubled the 3rd fl/2nd pic part, and covered 2nd flute and alto. What I love about the flute and piccolo parts in this piece is that every part is important--it was never the sole role of a part to play an octave under the high parts, there was a lot of switching off. The alto flute has a lot of long solos in this piece. For the piccolo parts, the function of the 2 parts was usually to switch off, play 2 different lines or whatever, but they were written in unison a few times. I was worried since we had two people on the 2nd piccolo (3rd flute part), but with the piece being as loud as it was, and us being good players able to play in tune, it turned out great.
I loved playing the piccolo part, it was a lot of fun, and very challenging. There really isn't anyone who doesn't have a challenging part in this piece. I was listening to professional recordings quite often while I was learning this piece, because there were some extremely challenging sections. Counting was so essential in this piece, but sometimes that wasn't purely enough--I really had to "feel" where the beats and off beats were to fit my part in. On some sections the piccolo part often had it a little tougher than the flutes because while they were playing an entire line, the piccolo would play on the accented beats, which were usually weird off beats and stuff. It took some time, and some embarrassing moments playing high notes in completely wrong places, but I got the feel of it, and it was enjoyable!
The piece is impossible to sight read, but once it is put together and everyone knows how their parts fit in, you start to hear the true genius of this piece of music.
The Performances
We had 2 performances: the first was February 12th, at Kingsbury Hall at the U. The 2nd was on February 23rd at Utah State University in Logan. Each conductor got to be the conductor at the other's school.
The first performance, February 12th: After rehearsing all day together on Saturday, and a few hours on the 12th before the concert, it was performance time! Rehearsing was a little scary, I must admit. There was some getting lost, but overall it came together great.
But, when we were on stage, I have never felt the atmosphere transform so much from rehearsal to the concert. There was something in the air, everyone was completely focused, and listening to each other, and the performance was absolutely outstanding. Even I had finally got this one little section I had never gotten quite right before...it was great. I will post the recording soon!
The second performance, this was really really sad for me....I got very ill starting a few days before the concert. And I didn't make it. I had a substitute.
My throat was so sore, I felt like someone had went inside and banged a hammer all over the inside of me or something. Apparently it wasn't strep throat, the doc said it was just a stupid virus I had to wait out. Not good....
Okay, so before you judge, you need to understand, I have been a performer for many years. 6 years in the Army Band, I performed through many physical ailments--viruses, allergies, near heat exhaustion, 8 and 1/2 months pregnant. I also performed in every weather condition you can think of. Rain, snow and ice, temperatures from below 0 to above 115.
So when I got this dumb throat thing that made it so I could not even blow a note on my piccolo....it was beyond ridiculous, but I couldn't. Two days before the concert, I realized how bad of shape I was in and I was trying all different kinds of medicines and home ailments but nothing would help. Pain meds helped some, but no amount of decogestants or cough medicine would help me.
We had a rehearsal on Thursday, and I decided to sit it out in hope extra rest would help me recover. There was a flute player at our school who had been sitting in playing 2nd flute in our rehearsals, and he is an amazing player who has been section leader of the Philharmonia and Wind Ensemble several times before, and also played piccolo a lot, so I knew he could do it. I called him and he sat in rehearsal that day with no problems, and said he would cover for me on Saturday if I needed him to. Which I did, sadly. But he did a fantastic job. Thank goodness. If it weren't for him, I would have showed up, and I would have played the best I could, but I would have been coughing and stopping in the middle of playing and it would have been bad. Me playing in that concert would not do the rest of the group justice.
Why am I ending on such a sad note? Wahhh, Wo is me.
Rite of Spring = AWESOME! Recording coming soon!
Check out the blog post written by Dr. Robert Baldwin, conductor of the Philharmonia at the U:
http://beforethedownbeat.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/the-rite-stuff/
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