Skip to main content

Upcoming Concert - Mahler!

We are playing Mahler 2 in Northwest Indiana this week.  I love this kind of work.

The Resurrection Symphony is not my favorite Mahler piece, but there’s just nothing else that feels like playing Mahler.  His writing stretches both the individual musician and the ensemble to play louder, softer, more beautifully, more characterfully than any other composer.  I could spend - did spend - hours looking at the part.  Not because the notes are hard, but because he gives us so many markings and they all have meaning.  Different shaped accents, slurs over slurs, an enormous range of dynamics, and many many tempo and character words in German - everything on the page is important and needs to be studied, translated, and considered as a way to communicate. 

Music is never merely music for Mahler.  Every movement has meaning, and every phrase, and every note.  Trying to do justice to his markings and his intentions can be the work of a lifetime. 

I love the challenge.  The concert is Friday night at Bethel Church in Merrillville.  Hope to see you there!


Details HERE.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Knife Sharpening

I've gotten a lot of questions on this topic, and the most recent querent prompted me to make a video to demonstrate.  You can find that  HERE . Knife sharpening seems to strike terror into many hearts.  And it's little wonder.  Many famous oboists have gone on record as saying that a sharp knife is the most important aspect of reed making. People have entire systems of stones and strops and rods set up to sharpen their knives. And it is important, of course it is - but I don't believe that you need your knife to be razor-like, or objectively the sharpest blade of any in your home.  The reed knife has one job - scraping cane off in precision ways - and it has to be sharp enough for that, and sharpened optimally for that purpose.  More than that is overly fussy for my taste. This is not to say that I allow my knife to be dull.  A dull knife forces you to put too much pressure on the reed and can cause cracking. Obviously it can lead to terribly inc...

The Blog has MOVED

 Have you been waiting ... and waiting ... and WAITING for a new Prone Oboe post?  Don't wait here anymore!  The blog has moved to https://jennetingle.com/prone-oboe/  and will not be updated here on Blogger anymore.  Please come and check me out there!  I love you all - stay safe out there!  Jennet

How Do You WISH You Could Describe Your Reeds?

In Reed Club last Monday, we took a moment before we started scraping to set some intentions.  We each said one word - an adjective to describe what we WANTED our reeds to be.  An aspirational adjective. Efficient was a word that came up, and Consistent . Dark and Mysterious . Mellow . Predictable .  Trustworthy .  Honest .  BIGGER . Reed affirmations actually felt helpful - both in the moment and in the results we found as we worked.  I don't know why that surprises me - I set intentions at the beginning of the year, at the beginning of the month, at the beginning of a run, in the morning before I work.  I love a good affirmation.  I love WORDS.  But I'd sort of forgotten about the possibility of applying one to the mundane work of reed-making.   You don't have to know exactly how to GET to that result.  But having clarity in your mind about what that result is?  Helps you to stop going down unhelpful rabbit holes...