Week 33

Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds
-the Bhagavad-Gita

RAVEL Menuet antique
LIEBERSON Neruda Songs
INTERMISSION
MAHLER Symphony No. 1

Bach Week Program

Concerto in D Minor for two violins, BWV 1043
Cantata: Non sa che sia dolore , BWV 209
Motet: Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied , BWV 225
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G, BWV 1048
Richard Webster, conductor

Monday
off

Tuesday
10-12:30 rehearsal
7:30 concert (Wagner, Chin, Berlioz)

Wednesday
12-2:30 3:30-6 rehearsals

Thursday
10-12:30 rehearsal

Friday
10-1 Bach Week rehearsal

Saturday
1-3 Bach Week rehearsal

Sunday
7:30 Bach Week concert

The lack of concerts in my schedule is no mistake. Even though it was not my turn, I volunteered to be on call this week to avoid the Mahler 1st Symphony. Over the years I’ve come to loathe the piece and so take advantage of every opportunity to get out of playing it. Unfortunately for me it is one of those things that comes up at least once a year. If I’m not mistaken, the orchestra played it at subscription concerts less than 12 months ago. What is the deal with that? I wonder if listeners get as tired of it as I do. Anyway, the frequency of programming makes for some tricky maneuvering in order to avoid it. Nevertheless, I think I’ve missed four out of the last five. This week came as something of a mixed blessing however. Since the Mahler will be played in New York in two weeks I had to attend ‘tour rehearsals’ so I am prepared step in should any colleague become unavailable. I’ve got to say, having to play four tour rehearsals for such a warhorse was ridiculous. So, in spite of my best efforts, I ended up playing through the piece three or four more times.

One interesting feature of this iteration of the Mahler is the conversion of the famous (or infamous) passage at the beginning of the third movement from one bass solo to all basses, tutti. According to Haitink, a bassist in the London Symphony (?) had some proof the passage was originally intended to be played by the group, but due to very poor results at the first performances Mahler cut his losses and figured he would be better off letting one guy go it alone. I’m curious to know if the bassist who brought this up to Haitink was a principal or section player.

The Mahler solo has always been something of an oddity in my mind anyway, a perfect time for the section player to clean off strings or apply an extra swipe of rosin. When played poorly, the solo is an obvious embarrassment. But even when played ‘well’ it often comes across as overly expressive, an odd little flourish by an attention starved prima ballerina, out of place at the outset of a solemn piece of music. It is a bit sad to think the standard of bass playing has taken more than a hundred years to match the composer’s original intention, but there it is.

Bach Week is always a pleasant gig, the perfect after dinner mint after a week of (at least rehearsing) Mahler 1.

The Ars Viva program had a few unfamiliar works on it – the Diamond and the Schuman, although during the first rehearsal, when we got to the slow movement of the Schuman I realized I had played it before – at the 1975 Congress of Strings in Seattle. Why the slow movement triggered such a distant memory, I have no idea.

Anyhow, between the Diamond, Schumann and Bartok it was the kind of concert where every piece is faster, more aggressive and thornier than the one before. The Diamond was mostly counting. Here are a couple passages from the Schuman.

1st movement theme

Finale opening

The Bartok is better known, I think. This passage always gets me

The above passage got a bit frantic at the concerts. By the time the basses entered the tempo heading off the scale – probably around 120 to the dotted quarter note, way too fast!

Some Lame Notes

The Trout Quintet bass part isn’t the most challenging thing ever written for double bass. The passage I always need to look at is the d minor variation. The ‘A’ major arpeggio has always posed a bit of a challenge. It is never nice to play that note out of tune or to end the phrase with an awful squawk.

Over the years I have often been obsessed with arpeggios and their fingerings – I have an unfinished book on the subject buried beneath piles of other projects that will probably never be completed either. Anyhow, here are a few different fingerings for that arpeggio.

And here are the fingerings for the variation I used at the concert on Sunday.

The astute observer might have noticed that an obvious fingering choice was not presented. Namely:

or any other of that ilk, meaning those using the ‘A’ harmonic on the ‘D’ string.

And so I come to the secret (perhaps diabolical) reason for this post. I have always had disdain for the ‘A’ harmonic substituting for the closed note. To me it usually comes across as some sort of copout – the crutch used to prop up an inadequate technique.

The Trout Quintet doesn’t come up very often, so the aforementioned harmonic isn’t on my list of the worst offenders. Here are a couple:

Strauss, Ein Heldenleben, #9


where the dulcet, flutelike tone of the harmonic in the middle of the line sounds out of place, dare I say even a bit comic.

Bach, Bouree from the 3rd cello suite (in the G major edition)

where similarly, the apex of the phrase suddenly changes color, demonstrating the player lacks the technique (or courage) to reach the high note.


I know my views are probably in the extreme. Perhaps my dedication to arpeggios makes me unduly biased against this one note, but there you have it. And now I brace myself for the slings and arrows of the harmonic apologists.

It’s only Miraculous when it is together

The challenges in the Miraculous Mandarin are all rhythmic – there isn’t much passagework to play. This got a smile out of Mr. Boulez on the first run-through – which isn’t to say it went well.




Practicing something like that with a regular metronome is difficult to say the least. I don’t own a Dr. Beat or anything similar, but from what I have seen it wouldn’t be of much help due to the fast tempo and changing meters. To practice this, I created a couple of rhythm tracks in Finale. One with the steady eight notes, the other with the subdivisions Boulez is conducting. Muting the top staff, I practiced first with the other two and then muted the steady eighth notes to see if my own subdividing added up. Once I could play it arco up to speed, I switched to pizz – just for the heck of it. A rude awakening to say the least so I had to back down the tempo and start over.

Mahler 7

My biggest fear starting this blog was that I wouldn’t have time to keep it up. Last week had a lot of music in it but I was too busy working to blog. Likewise, Mahler 7, although not the most difficult, interesting or challenging bass part of the Mahler Symphonies, has a lot of stuff in it worth of attention. The piece is almost an hour and a half after all.

I’ve picked a few interesting tidbits from here and there. By no means and exhaustive list of the difficult passages. I have on the shelf, so to speak, an edition of the complete bass parts to the later Mahler Symphonies I would like to publish with Discordia. So in staying my hand now, I hope that someday when that edition is available, those interested in the rest of the story will buy it.

Here is a passage from the first movement. This down and dirty fingering does not yield the most beautiful tone, but is a good ‘safe’ fingering or intonation in that it stays in tewo positions, more or less.

An exposed passage in the 2nd movement. There is another similar one near the end of the movement. I get obsessed with trying not to use the same finger twice in a row, or to leave any note in a position all by itself, hence the somewhat odd looking penultimate measure. The mordents are the main note, followed by its upper neighbor.

A couple of nifty fingerings from the Scherzo.

and

Here is an example of an unfortunate CSO ‘tradition’ – use of ricochet when it really isn’t called for. This is what Mahler wrote, essentially a little bass soli at the same fast tempo:

Here is the bowing:

The ‘throw the bow at the notes and hope for the best’ approach often yields unsatisfactory results. That is to say it usually comes out a jumble rather than together.

Kodály Concerto for Orchestra

The Kodály Concerto for Orchestra was the biggest surprise this week. Nobody seemed to know it. Evidently it was written for the CSO and first performed here in 1941. Somebody quipped that this was probably the second performance. A bit unfair since it isn’t such a bad piece. There were a number of tricky passages that came up – and went by – quickly when we read through it. Here is a typical example of an exposed passage for cellos and basses, along with the emergency fingering I came up with. The tempo is about quarter = 120.

And this was a rude awakening. The pizzicato indication is not a typo. My stand partner was trying to use ‘banjo’ technique – pizzicato with the thumb and middle finger. I wondered if the slurs were supposed to indicate some sort of ‘strumming’ technique, so that is what I tried – alternating fingers and strumming from the top down. Later in the piece a similar pizzicato passage came up without the slurs, so I have no idea what they really mean.

I saw most players trying fingerings something like this:

I used the fingering I showed above just to be different. Staying on the G string has is advantages.

The last page had another surprise. The bowings we used are shown by the little slurs below the staff. The fingering had to be more or less a stopgap measure.