Skip to main content

Upcoming Concert

The South Bend Symphony has a concert this afternoon. We're playing Mozart, which of course is always great stuff. Don Giovanni Overture and Symphony no. 40. I have no complaints.

But the star of the show is Scott Metlicka, our piccolo player, featured in the Liebermann Concerto for Piccolo and Orchestra. It's a beautiful piece - romantic and flowing. It sounds like pastoral movie music one minute, and in the very next it becomes a virtuoso flourish for the piccolo. I'm really enjoying hearing and playing it.

The great thing about Scott's playing is that he really makes the piccolo sound like an instrument.  Far too many people play this tiny flute like an unpleasant toy, but the Liebermann Concerto is a real piece of music, and Scott gives the picc a real range of color, and a range of dynamic. He phrases on the thing. The piece is virtuosic but also rhapsodic and beautiful, and for me it's the highlight of the concert.

Come on out and see for yourself!  Sunday at 2:30, at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center at Notre Dame.  Details and tickets HERE.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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

Beauty of Sound

In our dress rehearsal Saturday afternoon, the conductor did exactly what I often do to my students - he asked the violins to play more beautifully, and they did.  He didn’t tell them how, or give them a flowery expressive speech, he just asked for more beauty of sound, and they immediately gave it to him.  To a great extent the sound we produce is set, based on our equipment and the shape of our mouths and our bodies - but it can be altered, too.  Adjustments in reeds and instruments can go a long way, but the key change we can make is in our own minds. I don’t know how to explain it physically, but if you determine the sound you want to make you can produce it.  Or at least you can lean in and approach it.  This is something I’ve been paying a lot of attention to lately in my own playing.  As I prepare the Saint-SaĆ«ns Sonata to perform on our Oboe Studio Recital (tonight at 7 - details HERE ), my approach is largely about beauty of sound and vibrato....

Yamaha Made Me Better

The Yamaha oboe has made me better.  No doubt everyone is tired of hearing me rhapsodize about this instrument, but it's revolutionized my approach. I can just play, and if I do my job right it does its job too.  Believing that my oboe will work every time makes me relax. I have always feared low attacks, but with this instrument, my new reed style, and my new articulation technique I don't any more.  The exciting revelation, though, came very recently.  My Yamaha cracked while I was playing 3rd oboe and English horn in Milwaukee several weeks ago.  I quickly sent it down to Carlos Coelho, who pinned it, sealed it, and put inserts in the tone holes. I got it back as good as new, and played it for several more concerts, including Extase this past weekend.  When I pulled it out Monday morning, the pre-existing crack had opened wide and a large new one had materialized.  My pretty oboe is on a truck now, on its way to service. So now I am in Milwaukee ag...