Pushing The Limits

Last week, the Minnesota Orchestra played what will probably stand as the most difficult and exhausting program we'll perform in this entire season. There were four major works to be gotten through, each one hugely challenging in its own way, and for a lot of us, it was our first time playing three of the four.

One of the dirty little secrets of professional orchestras is that the reason we're able to crank out reasonably good performances of an ever-changing array of repertoire (think about it - do you know of a theater company or string quartet that mounts 50-70 completely different programs every year, with just three or four rehearsals for each?) is that we already know most of it pretty well. Sure, it might take a few minutes for the particular intricacies of Brahms or Stravinsky to slip back under your fingers, but it's the same notes you played the last time that particular piece crossed your stand, and after a few years in the profession, you've got a pretty good handle on 75-80% of the core repertoire you'll be playing for the rest of your career.

So if muscle memory and simple musical recall are an orchestra musician's best friends, then a program full of world premieres and obscure works from the past would seem to be our worst enemy. But for most of us, that's not the case at all. Yes, there are musicians who would rather just slog through the same old familiar warhorses and pick up their paycheck while putting in as little effort as possible, but for most of us, new challenges keep the work fresh, and the chance to attack a score we've never seen before is deeply satisfying, assuming that the music in question is quality stuff.

The world premiere we played last week was by a composer we've gotten to know well during Osmo's time in Minnesota, and whenever we see his name on the schedule, we know we'll all need to sign out our parts weeks in advance of the first rehearsal. Kalevi Aho's music is rich and distinctive, well-constructed and obviously composed with a deep understanding of the orchestra and its various components, but it is also invariably at the absolute outer edge of playability for nearly every instrument. In the days leading up to an Aho week, musicians are constantly wandering up to each other backstage, saying things like, "I mean, have you looked at page 14? The hell am I supposed to do with that?"

Still, the satisfaction I get from practicing new music that pushes me to my limits has always been one of the things that thrills me most about playing music for a living. Back in my college days, the Contemporary Music Ensemble was the group that all the best players wanted to be in, not because most of us believed that the music was somehow better than Beethoven or Brahms, but because once you can play Stockhausen, or Carter, or Wuorinen, you know you can play anything. And that's a powerful realization.

Last Friday night, I was asked to speak to a group of the orchestra's most loyal supporters before the concert, and give a bit of a preview of the music they'd be hearing that evening. Mr. Aho was present for this event, and in the course of describing the piece we'd been working on, I took the chance to address the composer directly. I told him that the first piece of his I'd ever played was his Insect Symphony, and that, at the time, it was the most difficult thing I'd ever played in an orchestra. "That was four years ago," I said. "Now, that symphony isn't even in my top five, and those other five are also all yours."

The incredible thing about Aho, though, is that music that is so fiendishly difficult for those of us on stage can sound so natural and comprehensible out in the audience. There are a lot of composers today writing music that's so difficult that it can barely be played. Most of them do it on purpose, hoping that, by stressing out the performers, they'll create a sense of urgency and chaotic panic in the music that the audience will instantly be able to sense.

Aho, on the other hand, reminds me more of Stravinsky - he must know that the music he's writing will fall beyond the capabilities of all but the finest musicians of his era, but he's not necessarily writing just for us. The musicians who first played some of Stravinsky's now-famous ballet scores called them unplayable, but I've been playing them with no great discomfort or stress since my college days. I fully expect (and I'm guessing Aho does, too) that the musicians of the late 21st century will find Aho's symphonies no more challenging than I find The Rite of Spring. I only wish I could be around to hear them...