San Francisco Symphony
42
and youngsters from opening throughout northeast bassoon solo’s Ohio, supported by a challenge, $75,000 grant from according the Knight Founda- to New York tion. GroundWorks’s Philharmonic artistic director, David Principal Shimotakahara, audi- Bassoon tioned more than 100 Judith LeClair, young dancers and is to “set up chose two dozen to a mood. The join his five-member whole piece contemporary-dance starts with ensemble and four ex- that sound. It’s tra professionals in the ethereal and massed sequences. For mystical.” his first encounter with Rite, he’s not sticking to the original scenario. “I just couldn’t get ahold of this harvest ritual idea with the sacrificial maiden,” says Shimotakahara. “I see her more as an exceptional person in relation to the group. She self-selects herself rather than being chosen. She emerges.” The performance will include video that melds the dance at the front of the stage with projected images on an enormous screen of the orchestra behind the dancers. Christopher Wilkins, the Akron Symphony’s music director, envisions the performance as recreating the excitement of the ballet’s early performances—without necessarily provoking a riot. “Orchestras are so obsessed that it’s about being perfectly together and in tune and pristine, and a lot of conductors and critics agree we’ve come to the point with Rite of Spring that it’s almost hard to get those original impulses,” he says. “I think that’s something an orchestra has to bring to it. But you also lose a lot when you don’t have the dance, because that relationship between the music and the movement is so built into the thing, and the dance is frightening, and that’s good. It should be.” Chris Lee
ic markings for the other wind instruments in the introduction but not at the start for the exposed soloist. “So you think the bassoon should be louder than the [second] horn, which is an accompanying line,” says McGill. “Bassoonists through the ages have decided you have to come in from nothing, and you cannot break that tradition now. So that first note requires a lot of thought, and bassoonists agonize over it. You spend two weeks before the concert making a reed to get that effect.” “I hear some For McGill, getting the contemporary solo right doesn’t mean it renditions should sound raw. “You’re by players I not a Lithuanian folk singer greatly admire, or someone actually sitting but the vibrato in a forest playing a bamboo is so even and flute in the distance. You’re beautifully playing for an audience that rendered it is sophisticated and expects a comes out certain standard. You evoke a like what you primitive quality.” would do San Francisco Symphony when singing Principal Bassoon Stephen Puccini. I try Paulson first played the to do more solo in 1971 as principal of sparing things the Pittsburgh Symphony with the Orchestra under William vibrato, maybe Steinberg, who “had trelike a Baroque mendous difficulty with the or jazz player,” mixed meters.” Years later, says Stephen Paulson recorded the piece Paulson, in San Francisco under Miprincipal chael Tilson Thomas, whose bassoon, San fascinating historical traversFrancisco al of the Rite is documented Symphony on a new Keeping Score DVD. Paulson, like McGill, believes the opening solo should be played expressively. “Let’s discount the fact that one is supposed to be struggling with the instrument
Todd Rosenberg
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Principal Bassoon Carl Nitchie, describes Rite of Spring’s famous bassoon solo as “naked and potentially treacherous.”
JD Scott
The famous and it comes out edgy,” says Paulson, who has also conducted Sacre as music director of Symphony Parnassus, based in the San Francisco Bay area. “You want to play it the best you possibly can on the bassoon. I hear some contemporary renditions by players I admire greatly and I like their performances a lot, but the vibrato to me is so even and beautifully rendered it comes out like what you would do when singing Puccini. I still try to make it a really beautiful thing but do more sparing things with the vibrato, maybe like a Baroque or jazz player.” Even after performing Sacre for four decades, Carl Nitchie, the Atlanta Symphony’s principal bassoon, still finds the opening solo terrifying. “I joke to my colleagues about The Rite of Spring that it has a bass drum accompaniment in that opening solo—my heartbeat going thump thump—it’s so Chicago Symphony naked and poten- Orchestra Principal tially treacherous,” Bassoon David McGill he says. “Basically, says the solo shouldn’t the beginning of “sound raw,” but “evoke a primitive the solo is in the quality.” middle of this long thing that’s been going on forever. I like to sneak into the attack of it as much as my reed will allow me. In terms of tone color, I like to think of it as an alto flute solo. It helps me get a darker color.” Rite in Motion
According to the Boosey & Hawkes list, more Sacres during this centenary season are collaborations between orchestras and dance companies than concert performances. The dance settings include Pina Bausch’s acclaimed 1975 production for her Tanztheater Wuppertal; Jacopo Godani’s Les Ballets Russes—Reloaded: Sacre at the Semperoper in Dresden; Glen Tetley’s version (performed both by the Colorado and Stuttgart ballets); and RIOT offspring, part of the series of “Rite of Spring” commissions dubbed “A String of Rites” at the U.K.’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre. One collaboration, in April, will team the Akron Symphony Orchestra with Cleveland’s GroundWorks DanceTheater
DONALD ROSENBERG writes about music and dance for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland. He is author of The Cleveland Orchestra Story: “Second to None” and president of the Music Critics Association of North America. In his previous life as a French horn player, he performed The Rite of Spring twice.
symphony
SPRING 2013