03-02-2019, 05:04 PM
Last night I took my daughter to a local community orchestra concert. The theme was 20th Century Russians. They played Festive Overture by Shostakovich, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Rachmaninoff, the March from The Love for Three Oranges by Prokofiev, and then Shostakovich's entire 5th Symphony.
The strings, woodwinds, and brass sections were seated in a fairly typical fashion, but I was surprised to see the percussionists seated way over to the right, directly behind the cellists and bassists, instead of in the back like I've seen in a lot of other concerts. Another surprise was that for the Rachmaninoff piece, they wheeled an enormous concert grand piano out to front and center, obscuring the conductor with its open lid. That made more sense to me as we listened to the piece, which is very piano-centric.
While listening, I tried to make observations about the sounds that I could hopefully apply to my virtual orchestrations. One thing I noticed is that being seated about two thirds of the way back in the audience, the left/right stereo effect of the players' seating was not nearly so exaggerated as sometimes heard in virtual orchestration. Sure, I could close my eyes, and the first violins section sounded like it was kind of over on the left, and the basses sounded kind of over on the right, but the whole sound was much more centered than my own virtual orchestrations.
Sometimes I would find that one of the sections was doing something interesting that I wanted to hear, only to be eclipsed by a louder instrument. This happened a few times during the Rachmaninoff piece; I wanted to hear what the woodwinds were doing, and the pianist would passionately dive into some solo that made it hard to hear the woodwind players.
Another thing I noticed is that some of the articulations have way more nuance than I generally think about when doing compositions. For example, I often think of tremolo as being a single articulation that can be used on each string section, but it seemed like the tremolo parts were played in a lot of different ways. Sometimes the bows would barely move back and forth, resulting in a sort of shimmering sound. Other times there would be longer bow strokes with a much more turbulent result.
One of the pizzicato parts was much more quiet than I thought it would be, and I don’t think that it was just because the notation dictated that it should be played softly. The violinists and violists were rapidly plucking the strings to play 16th notes, and I wondered if the soft sound was a result of the fact that they just didn’t have enough time during each note to pluck the strings very hard.
If anything, I wanted to hear more Prokofiev! That part was only two minutes! It was so short that the audience hesitated to applaud, wondering if it would continue after a short pause. They played about an hour of Shotakovich, but only two minutes of Prokofiev.
The strings, woodwinds, and brass sections were seated in a fairly typical fashion, but I was surprised to see the percussionists seated way over to the right, directly behind the cellists and bassists, instead of in the back like I've seen in a lot of other concerts. Another surprise was that for the Rachmaninoff piece, they wheeled an enormous concert grand piano out to front and center, obscuring the conductor with its open lid. That made more sense to me as we listened to the piece, which is very piano-centric.
While listening, I tried to make observations about the sounds that I could hopefully apply to my virtual orchestrations. One thing I noticed is that being seated about two thirds of the way back in the audience, the left/right stereo effect of the players' seating was not nearly so exaggerated as sometimes heard in virtual orchestration. Sure, I could close my eyes, and the first violins section sounded like it was kind of over on the left, and the basses sounded kind of over on the right, but the whole sound was much more centered than my own virtual orchestrations.
Sometimes I would find that one of the sections was doing something interesting that I wanted to hear, only to be eclipsed by a louder instrument. This happened a few times during the Rachmaninoff piece; I wanted to hear what the woodwinds were doing, and the pianist would passionately dive into some solo that made it hard to hear the woodwind players.
Another thing I noticed is that some of the articulations have way more nuance than I generally think about when doing compositions. For example, I often think of tremolo as being a single articulation that can be used on each string section, but it seemed like the tremolo parts were played in a lot of different ways. Sometimes the bows would barely move back and forth, resulting in a sort of shimmering sound. Other times there would be longer bow strokes with a much more turbulent result.
One of the pizzicato parts was much more quiet than I thought it would be, and I don’t think that it was just because the notation dictated that it should be played softly. The violinists and violists were rapidly plucking the strings to play 16th notes, and I wondered if the soft sound was a result of the fact that they just didn’t have enough time during each note to pluck the strings very hard.
If anything, I wanted to hear more Prokofiev! That part was only two minutes! It was so short that the audience hesitated to applaud, wondering if it would continue after a short pause. They played about an hour of Shotakovich, but only two minutes of Prokofiev.