Hearing It Our Way

Back when this tour began, Sarah and I were discussing the various things we might want to get into on the blog during our travels, and one of the first things we thought of was using our dual video recorders to give you all a sense of how different the orchestral experience is when you're in the middle of it as opposed to listening from the audience. I've written before about the fact that moving your position on stage even a few feet is enough to place you in a totally new sound world, but I realize that it's hard to conceive of exactly what I'm talking about if you haven't experienced it.

So back in London, when the orchestra got together at the Barbican Centre a few hours before concert time to rehearse the John Adams work that's opening our programs, Sarah and I decided to take simultaneous videos of the first minute or so of this wildly complex piece from completely different perspectives. Sarah's clip (which is also available in high-def if you click through to YouTube) is from more or less the best seat in the house, dead center, about 18 rows back from the stage. You'll notice that you get a full swath of orchestral sound, with various instrument groups popping in and out of the texture at various times. (In particular, keep an ear cocked for the running melody in the strings that comes in around the 0:32 mark...)



My video (and keep in mind that this is exactly the same music, being played at exactly the same time that Sarah's video was taken) was shot from the back of the viola section, just where I'm sitting for this tour. (The scroll you can see bobbing in and out of view in the lower right corner is mine, in fact.)



Quite a contrast, isn't it? In my version, the piano and brass are hugely dominant, our connection to the front of the viola section is purely visual (you generally can't hear anyone who's sitting in front of you in an orchestra,) and the violins and cellos are essentially a rumor. Oh, and that viola explosion you hear at the 0:35 mark? That's just me and my stand partner, Ben Ullery, sitting right next to the video machine, trying our best to fit seamlessly into that rising string figure I told you to listen for in Sarah's clip. We can't hear anyone else's part in that figure, of course, so we're just counting furiously and watching our principal like a hawk to be sure that if we have to be wrong, at least all the violas will be wrong together. (This is a treasured principal of orchestral playing, one which takes a long time to get used to: it is far, far better to be together than to be right.)

This is quite literally how we experience every piece of music we play as an orchestra. Even for those sitting near the front of the band, the aural experience is limited by the sound that reaches you - my principal, for instance, has an excellent idea of what the rest of the string principals are doing, and he gets a good blend of wind sound, but there could be an utter train wreck going on in the back of our section, and he likely wouldn't hear a thing.

You do get used to working like this, but it never actually becomes easy. And tonight, here in Cologne, we'll be testing our ensemble skills again, as we haul out Nielsen's 5th symphony for the first time in two weeks, and attempt to sound like we know exactly what we're doing...