Coming To Terms With Mozart

There's a moment - a few weeks before the event - in which it seems like you might really surpass yourself. That your Mozart concerto, say, could be something really special. You have a good reed. You're working on small sections, or you're doing slow run-throughs, or you're tossing a single movement onto a CD Release recital, and you feel pretty unstoppable. But the closer you come to the actual performance date, the more it becomes clear that THIS is the you you are going to be, that THESE are the reeds you are going to have in your case, that miracles are not going to happen and thus THIS is how it's going to go. And it's a sort of a disappointment, you know?

I'm not actually disappointing, I know that. I'm playing well, and I love Mozart, and this concert will be tremendous fun. But it probably won't be transcendent. It probably won't live up to the potential that I sensed a month ago. It probably won't herald the dawn of a whole new me. It will be good and I will enjoy it but it will not be life-changing.

And it's ridiculous that this is even a conversation that I'm having with myself, right? OBVIOUSLY, that's too much baggage to attach to 22 minutes of music. Of COURSE this concerto, composed 240 years ago, isn't going to change anyone's life when I perform it Friday night.

I know that I am a better player - a better musician - a better colleague than I was years ago. And I'm always trying to improve. I will never get tired of trying to play better than I play, teach better than I teach, write better than I write.

I think the real problem is that I want this performance to be something it cannot be. The Mozart Oboe Concerto is marvelous, fantastic music, but it's not meant to represent all of lived experience. It's fluffy, exquisite fun, and my job is to present that and to present it well.

If my job is to let Mozart be Mozart - which it is - the perhaps my other job is to let Jennet be Jennet. It's OK to perform well and to love the experience of it without hating myself for not being better than I am.

Right?

I'm performing Mozart Friday night with the Northwest Indiana Symphony Details HERE.

Comments

Zoe's Musical Beginnings

I've mentioned before that I started out on the piano by figuring out melodies. Connecting notes and trying to learn how they worked. I'm fascinated to observe that Zoe's initial approach to the instrument is totally different from mine. She sits at our new piano and plays random notes, and tells us what to feel. If she is playing slowly then the music is sad, and we should cry. When we are "crying" she either gets up and hugs us so we feel better (so awesome!) or bangs faster, to indicate that the music is now happy and we should dance. Her other piano game is accompanying herself - she plays "chords" in alternating hands while she "sings" the ABC song or Camptown Races or Sesame Street. She makes us sing along. She loves it when we clap at the end. When I was little I wanted to know how music worked. Although I make my living as a performer now, I learned about the interpersonal aspects of music later. Her immediate interest is in ...

Cleaning Your Reeds

Updated: I've posted a video of my plaque cleaning technique HERE ! Oboe reeds are made from organic material, and over time it is inevitable that they will age and change. The first few days of change are usually quite welcome, as you break the reed in by playing and the opening gradually settles down to something you can be comfortable with and the response becomes more and more predictable. You might even hit a plateau where it appears to be perfectly consistent and reliable for several days! But after that, the reed seems to be on a constant gradually accelerating downslope, until it eventually collapses into a sharp, non-responsive, mushy mess. We can rejuvenate the reed during this time by cleaning it, and can often extend its life as well! There are three good ways to do this. First, least invasively, you can just run some fresh water through and over the reed AFTER you play each time. Go ahead and rinse that reed in the sink, shake it as dry as possible, a...

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

We took a vacation this summer. This is not news to anyone in my life - anyone who knows me or especially Steve on Facebook followed along with all of our pictures. We took our travel trailer out to Arizona - via St Louis, Tulsa, Amarillo, Roswell, Santa Fe - and then stayed a week in Clarksdale and Flagstaff and visited some ancient pueblo ruins, Sedona, Jerome, the Lowell Observatory, the Grand Canyon. We swam in swimming pools, lakes, and icy mountain streams. We hiked. Eventually we came home again, via Albuquerque, Amarillo, Tulsa, and St Louis. (our inventiveness had somewhat worn out). After a week at home we took another trip, and drove to Vermont via western NY and the Adirondack Park (stayed an extra day to hike a mountain), lived four days in East Franklin VT, and came home via Catskill and eastern Ohio. This vacation felt different from all of our previous ones. In the 21 years we’ve been married, I can name on...

ProneOboe

Search This Blog