Lulu – performance 1
June 5th, 2009 | Published in hornplaying
Congratulations to everyone in last night’s performance of Lulu!
(I have to exclude all those I couldn’t hear from where I was sitting – celli, violas, basses, brass, singers)
Hell, no, congratulations to everyone! It really was quite something.
Antonio Pappano (conductor) is pretty frightening guy – I’ve never known anyone with such apparently limitless energy. He’s a human power station. I suspect he’s actually an opera-crazed cyborg of some sort from the future or another dimension. He even stays up late into the night with a pile of all the orchestral parts, writing helpful remarks in a threateningly dark pencil. Such things as “lyrical“, or “Fuck this bit up again, asshole, and I’ll kneecap you!“. No, I jest …but that kind of thing isn’t his most endearing feature. I’d rather he simply emailed me and asked me to write it in myself. It has to be said that he’s an impressive man, though.
The horn parts in Lulu are quite extraordinary. Their appalling difficulty never lets up. Just counting the bars between scary moments is brain-fryingly impossible, but the notes themselves are ridiculously hard – preposterously impractical. The mute never stops flying in and out – both the straight mute and the “meat” mute are used with a manic, reckless abandon. I’d like to impose a mute tax on composers. That would reduce their silly compulsion to add to the poor hornplayer’s workload. The revenue from this tax could be paid directly to some worthy hornplayers’ benevolent fund. I mean, it’s hard enough dealing with the gymnastic lurchings across nine octave and a squillion dymanic levels without having also to juggle one-handed with a traffic cone. I nearly broke my arm.
To be fair, a lot of the music is lush and rich and compelling (even without hearing those listed above) but it’s too dense, too long and tooooooooo hard by far! What’s Berg trying to do to us?
Having said that, I think my horn collleagues and I did a pretty good job – although we cunningly took care to leave ourselves room for some improvement over remaining five performances.
I have a confession to make:
It was MY phone which announced the arrival of a text message somewhere near the beginning of Act 3. Doh! Luckily for me I don’t think anyone heard it because it happened during a pretty loud section, but it shook me. I had to both read the new message and switch my mobile to silent while simultaneoulsy counting some pretty complicated bars rest and this threw me right out. Seconds later I was into a few bars of horn solo and played it two whole bars late. Pappano gave me a look which seemed to say, “What the fuck do you think you are doing? Stop playing immediately or I’m coming over there to show you what your horn looks like from the inside!”
I can’t wait for next Monday – Lulu – performance 2.