Last-minute touches

Well, our final set of "Inside the Classics" concerts start tomorrow evening, and Sam and I are obsessively putting the final touches on the script, timing out sections, rehearsing a complicated mixed-meter schtick and generally getting ready for what promises to be a great show (if I may say so myself!). It's a gratifying process to finally see the result of individual work coming together into a coherent whole that is, we hope, as moving as it is illuminating.

I've been toying for a couple of weeks with the idea of conducting "Appalachian Spring" from memory. I'd mentioned in a previous post that this is one of those pieces that I know well enough to have done memorized in the past, and am theoretically prepared to do so now. In fact, this morning, mid-plane ride, I checked my memory by going through it a couple of times in my mind sans score, making sure I knew every entrance, every tempo shift, every metric change, every dynamic, etc. While I feel pretty confident in my knowledge of this score, I've decided to go the safer route and keep the music on the stand for the shows.

Going scoreless during a concert, although it does have it's nerve-racking qualities, is actually quite liberating. As musicians we constantly refer back to the written note to make sure that we are accurately executing the intention of the composer. Even when I know a piece backwards and forwards, I'll catch myself glancing down at the score more than I need to because I don't want to miss a single detail. When the score is removed, in a way I feel untethered. But by the same token, sometimes it forces me to be more engaged in what's happening in the moment because my focus has been shifted away from what I feel I should be accomplishing.

My final decision to use a score for the concerts stemmed from the fact that we have a single rehearsal to prepare this show. That's just a little over 2 hours to rehearse "Appalachian Spring" in its entirety, as well as the over 20 minutes of musical excerpts we'll be presenting in the first half. It's really not a lot of time to get the work done, and not an optimal amount of time for myself (and the orchestra) to be utterly comfortable with our take on this piece. If we had several hours over the course of a few days (as would happen in preparation for, say, a subscription concert), I think it would make much more sense.

So, for tomorrow, I'll start the second half with an open score on my stand. I do wonder, however, if I'll be turning all of the pages, or going for large swatches without referring to the score.