This week is getting busier and busier. We’re rehearsing our program for this coming weekend, which has higher stakes than usual as we’re recording part of the program to complete our second CD of British music – Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes. Add to that the Passacaglia (also from Grimes), and Sibelius’ Seventh Symphony, Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, and Dvorak’s Scherzo capriccioso, and it’s a full program.
On top of all this, it’s my week to practice what we’ll be rehearsing next week (starting Monday, in fact!): capped by two gigantic and challenging works – John Adams’ City Noir and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. This is my third or fourth set of performances of the Stravinsky, and that will just take a bit of touch up work.
The Adams, on the other hand, is a completely different animal. It will be a lot of fun to play, once I’ve got it up to tempo and hear what others are doing around me, I’m sure. When you look at one of Adams’ orchestral parts (I know that there are some exceptions to this, woodwinds!), it really never looks that intimidating. In fact, it’s the pages that aren’t so black with fast notes that are often the most tricky. You see, Adams has a way of putting you into a nice groove, and then he pulls out the rug from under you, and you’re doing the same groove, but a sixteenth note off, sort of like having a record skip (look it up on wikipedia, young ‘uns) and then jogging the needle back into the groove. It’s a great effect, but it is often hard to internalize without a good deal of quality time with the metronome. Here’s one of the trickier passages in the first movement, entitled The City and its Double:
