What's the difference?

[Ames0325]

I have recently had the opportunity to attended several very good concerts and recitals. I have noticed that although most or all of the performers have excellent technique and musicallity(phrasing, dynamics etc) however one or two performances stand out as being outstanding. The music flowed through the hall you couldn't just hear it you could feel it. I was wondering what you guys feel makes that difference?
Amy

[Paul S]

I have recently had the opportunity to attended several very good concerts and recitals. I have noticed that although most or all of the performers have excellent technique and musicallity(phrasing, dynamics etc) however one or two performances stand out as being outstanding. The music flowed through the hall you couldn't just hear it you could feel it. I was wondering what you guys feel makes that difference?
Amy

Passion!!
If the performer does not make love to the piece and make it dance for him/her alone on the stage, no one in the audience will feel it, no matter how technically perfect it is performed.

I had a well known teacher tell me that a robot is stronger, more efficient, more predictably perfect but it can not caress, can not colour, can not adapt to the moment nor feel and exude the range of emotions that make us who we are. Music is passion shared.

[CJ Krause]

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[Paul S]

One of the things that I do not like about some of the orchestral tuba players of Today irs they think they do not blend with the rest of the brass and strings.

I did not go to hear the symphony to hear the tuba player. How many of the orchestral excerpts do tuba players have solos in the pieces. Not as often as we would think we have.

I went to a frineds symphony concert a while back and he asked me after what I thought and I told him that i really thought he needed to blend more with the brass and strings and be strong, solid and felt and not heard as a soloist from the back of the orchestra.

[/b]

AMEN!
Although perhaps diverting from the original topic a bit, I would add that we need to keep battling the "arms race" of having tubas the size of howitzers in the back rows of orchestras trying to overpower the rest of the group for our own ego trips. Great performances come from the right feeling, in the right amount, at the right time, in the proper blend. Finesse and delicacy as well as being an understated, yet essential, background base will add more to a performance than forcing a part to the foreground.

[Kevin Hendrick]

The difference to me seems to be between whom plays notes and whom plays music.

Passion!!
If the performer does not make love to the piece and make it dance for him/her alone on the stage, no one in the audience will feel it, no matter how technically perfect it is performed.

I had a well known teacher tell me that a robot is stronger, more efficient, more predictably perfect but it can not caress, can not colour, can not adapt to the moment nor feel and exude the range of emotions that make us who we are. Music is passion shared.

Well said! Notes are to music what canvas is to painting -- both the notes and the canvas (the substrate, if you will), when properly prepared, permit the expression of great artistry and feeling ... but the art is not *in* the canvas or the notes, rather in what you do with them.

[Kevin Hendrick]

... if you are a tubaist who believes your section is playing too loudly, is it better to play with them anways, or is it better to play at what you believe is a more appropriate volume?

Ahh yes, the ever-popular "lemming dilemma" ...