Keeping Score | Piotr Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 (FULL DOCUMENTARY AND CONCERT)

these are the opening notes of a great symphony it's a breathtaking moment and the culmination of years of hard work but how is a performance of a great piece of music created I think some of this may surprise him in this film we'll discover how classical music is brought to life and we'll also discover why why do a hundred people devote themselves anew to recreating dreams and visions that may go back hundreds of years what's the secret of classical music classical music is big it's huge in fact the halls where we hear it the orchestras that play it the size of the pieces themselves have got bigger and bigger over the centuries because the message has gotten bigger the message of classical music is nothing less than how is life and not just the cool parts of life are happy parts of life are even the sad parts but every part the confusing parts the desperate parts the tender parts the understandable parts they're all there in classical music which like no other art unflinchingly looks at life as it actually is and as we actually feel it and every musicians message every musicians mission is exactly that to play in a way that says this is how life feels where does music come from well it's been around for thousands of years and if you listen it's everywhere as we drive through a city were surrounded by sounds of life of course most of those sounds are quite frankly noise but some of them are almost music like maybe church bells tolling or perhaps a creatively rung warning bell on a cable car are there other sounds too we might hear music coming out of the open doors of churches or any place of people gather because that's where they're still singing and performing some of this music that goes back to the early days of what music was in our civilization we have music that's designed to help us plant the crops and then to harvest them then to march up mountains and to praise the gods or mourn the dead or serenade our sweethearts all really important basic activities of life as music's first made in any society for the purpose of accompanying life and this music that expresses how we feel me go about these activities of life is what I like to call musics primal moves and it's those primal moves that underlie all music and that symphonic music uses as the raw material to tell its enormous stories classical music concentrates the experience of life into notes and symbols that are musics written language in my house I've got thousands of musical scores which are code books packed with the messages from the great composers about their experience of life very few people have captured life's rollercoaster ride of emotions better than the great Russian composer Tchaikovsky that's one of the reasons I've chosen his fourth symphony for the final program of our season as a conductor is my job to interpret Tchaikovsky's codebook it's something I have to do all by myself I rediscovered the music by singing it or playing it I'm looking for the little things inflections or changes of mood over my life I worked out this Tchaikovsky voice this sounds dangerously close to la couple but there is a Tchaikovsky who speaks to me through his music Tchaikovsky 4 is a very old friend perhaps almost too familiar a friend it's so huge and everyone has so many assumptions about it it's what's affectionately known as a warhorse in a way it's the ultimate challenge for a performer to bring out one of these old things because it has to come to life in a way that transcends routine it can take days even weeks to work my way through the score you think you know the piece and then some little detail can lead you to a concept that's completely new I worked my way through the entire score until I'm satisfied I've understood what's being said and every movement every passage every note when I'm satisfied I've got the composer's message I carefully marked the score to clarify how I'd like it to be played then my notations will be sent over to the music library at the Symphony Hall down in the catacombs of our Symphony building is a music archive of more than 3,600 pieces virtually the entire classical repertoire is here including of course - cuffs keys fourth Margot Kaiser and the other music librarians will transfer the notations I made in my score to the dozens of different instrumental parts for the 100 musicians that we need to play this Symphony the whole point of marking the parts to reflect what Michael has in his score is to make it a unique performance and a lot of that comes from what Michael does on the podium obviously he can you know change tempos or you know do lots of things different and he does a lot of it comes from us as well because we of course mark the parts to coincide with what he wants to happen on stage when my notations have been transferred the musicians can pick up the parts and get a head start on the rehearsal process nearly all of them have perform Tchaikovsky's fourth at some point in their careers so for most it doesn't take long to get reacquainted but those who have solos or other parts that stand out have to live through their own journey of rediscovery only then can they make the piece their own and bring it to life once more the rehearsal process lasts only a few days that's not much time for us to get our act together to unite in making Tchaikovsky s fourth all it can be in this Symphony the most important movement is the first in fact the first movement is almost as long as all the others put together so it's really important that we get the mood right in the very beginning good morning everybody so grace great to see you okay so here we are Tchaikovsky for again get this old favorite to fly yet again basically on the lyrical nice sounding thing you know I think the main thing this piece has gone down down so many times and it's people just bash the hell out of it so much let's start from the beginning with the idea that the Forte's noble and this underlying kind of lyrical Italian at thing kind of more in the matter of like Verdi took up seas understanding of musics primal moves makes his work incredibly emotional the fourth symphonies full of drama and pathos elation despair they're huge themes read across an enormous canvas Tchaikovsky's fourth is one of those big pieces like the book of Job or like King Lear or like the bhagavad-gita or any great classics of literature that come throughout history that says why do things happen as they do how can it be that we humans with all of our good intentions and our desires to be happy our again and again ported by the all-powerful and incomprehensible force of fate Tchaikovsky leads off his symphony with one of those primal moves of music this one called the fanfare the fanfare really is a kind of call played on a brass instrument they go back thousands and thousands of years the Roman army used them to signal various maneuvers and we still hear them at sporting events like we need charge charge chowtime but the message of Tchaikovsky's fanfare is far more powerful and frightening it is you there listen and obey fate decrees you must follow the road down to the place you have never imagined yet secretly always feared the beginning of the piece is a fanfare which represents fate so it's our job in the horn section to make it strong aggressive heavy sustained we're the guys who step up and get it done at the beginning of the Tchaikovsky after the horns have started their fanfare and then we come in and finish off the lion go take it right down to the bottom and give it really a lot of force and a lot of I think maybe drama be it soft be it loud that we often are responsible for bringing drama next Tchaikovsky the sonic cinematographer moves us to a new scene and it's a scene based on another primal move of music the waltz he says in the movement of a waltz so of course we're expecting but here curiously all we have is this a few leftover lonely chords separated by silences where we have to fill in all the missing happy music now as a serious breath he does this to create a lonely dispossessed alienated feeling now and the hemiola cross stay on it this waltz tune is so famous and I think one of the reasons it grabs us is that we sense underlying it an even more primal musical move the moan or the sigh now it's your turn horns lovely why am I so sad why am I so alone that's the message that stretched over all of these waltz bars and that's when I work with the orchestra what I have to find this force is like somebody having high fever and that melody is coming back and back and back again to your mind and you are sick and you are tired and it's feverish Alexander boron chick is our concert master and leader of the violence section sasha is a vital link in communicating my conception of every piece we play to the rest of the orchestra so we usually meet long before the rehearsal process begins what I've been thinking about this is that you know that underlying the whole beginning is this sort of almost it's just like a kind of moan but you know you can come look over myself yeah sure you can see all through all my marks or since I've been about 15 so as always ridiculous myself before the rehearsal we usually get together and look at this corner look at just my part he makes a lot of suggestions every time about the bones about the dynamics phrasing and then we just find each other what I think what is the way that you did most often we have done you have done this or we have done it I think it Sasha and I need to share an overall vision of the piece but often that comes through obsessing about very specific details we experiment try different approaches and techniques to achieve the sound and the feeling we want and agree upon what would it sound like to start down Bo and then something here I don't know and now I started down but today Tchaikovsky said that the waltz and the first woman came to him in a dream and we have to communicate that we have to create that dreamy feeling of something coming slowly into focus and this dream eNOS must be created by something as specific as just how intensely the fiddles left hands will vibrate and how quickly or slowly how lightly their bows will move it's good well good I don't know but it's too early to tell I to get but but try it what's more and how will that magic happen how will a hundred people make something as individual as one person's dream come to life so in this mighty first movement so many things have happened and yet two very powerful forces have right the way through been contending with each other the power of the fanfare and the mighty sweep of the waltz tune which sweeps onward to an ending of an absolute noisy power the climax of the first movement depends on the power of the temp aney David Herbert our principal timpanist is always pursuing the ideal sound the sound he wants to bring out all the drama and emotion that Tchaikovsky's forth requires doubt of a locker room David prepares natural skins imported from Ireland they produce a rich sound of modern plastic just cap match WellPoint Tiffany is a lot of fun because you you can feel like you're sort of the heartbeat of the orchestra sometimes and even though it's not the most melodic that's probably those when the least melodic instruments in the orchestra you you feel dynamically wise that you have a lot of input and how the end of phrases are shaped and when to take the orchestra to the next level so that the end all that is left is that enormous growl it's total burnout psychologically emotionally acoustically and yet it's just the end of the first movement Tchaikovsky will now shift the scene still again to a more inner and effecting revelation of his true story here's a picture of Tchaikovsky it's astonishing really because he's so conservative looking he looks like a banker or a postal inspector it's hard to imagine that someone who self-consciously presented himself so conservatively in real life could write this extravagant music but the music was of course about his inner life his emotional life he doesn't look away when it gets too tough or too sentimental or too bitter on the contrary he's able to understand the exact nature of the experience and rather than put it into words amazingly he's able to put it into notes and the notes have such a wonderful inner truth they're chosen so well that it resonates with all of us and we seem to recognize our own life story in the notes he's written about his own life Tchaikovsky felt emotions so deeply and you can really hear that when you listen to the music and I don't know how you couldn't be touched by it and Tchaikovsky's music is a symbol of love and passion he can speak to us from 150 years ago about what it felt like to be human this Symphony is about a certain moment in Tchaikovsky 'he's life and his terror about being found out that he suddenly realized he is gay he can't hide it his marriages failed how will society react to this the scandal of it the shame of it where can he go how can he run away from it and yet at the same time the drama he's writing about is a much larger story than that it's the story of any soul in any condition who's experienced that fear of being an outcast for one reason or another and who is seeking desperately to understand why he should be singled out to be in that role and where he can possibly escape to to find solace relief joy he was a tremendously conflicted and complex emotional person and we all are Bill Bennett is our principal oboist mr. bill how are you in the second movement of Tchaikovsky's fourth he introduces a beautiful and very famous melody it sets the emotional tone for the entire movement so before the orchestra's second rehearsal bill and I get together in my office to try it out so now Tchaikovsky takes us from the frenzied drama of the first movement from which we've just recovered and wander into a quieter more reflective place a kind of pastoral Russian village scene where we can find refuge and healing and the oboist who's going to play this tune gets two very specific instructions from Tchaikovsky on how he must play it it says play very simply and gracefully how kind of performer living right now and knowing all of the countless performances that have been given find a freshness and spontaneity so it can seem as if the music is happening for the first time I mean you got to understand that I've heard this solo my whole life I practiced it for many years I took auditions playing a solo and that now I've performed it a number of times and still it yields surprises from the first note you're in a new situation and you're trying to express yourself you're trying to make the solo your own even though there's all these ghosts hovering over you Tchaikovsky writes for the solo winds of the orchestra as if they are singers with different voices here the oboe is like a young mess of soprano who wistfully wonders whether love will ever come to her and the bassoon is a deeper more experienced voice that seems to remember with melancholy all that's gone before remarkably both of these distinctive voices are created by the same primitive materials vibrating slivers of cane that's what's used to make the reeds that give the oboe and bassoon their distinctive sound each reed is unique and varies constantly with every shift in the weather they're a reflection of the skill and frustrations of their makers reeds are the bane of our existence making reeds and acquiring all of the weird medieval tools that go along with that production and we spend so much of our time at our desks scraping and trying to get the right sound at the right pitch we hardly have any time to practice and we can't work on our finger technique as hard as all the other instrumentalists one of the greatest qualities of Tchaikovsky's music is its song fulness he is after all one of the great melody riders of all time and he wants to use the instruments of the orchestra in the same way that we would use singers in an opera juicier than that now singing is an essential part of Russian musical experience especially the singing of folk songs or religious songs and although this tune is original digital husky he wants to write it in a way that will evoke the folk tradition and in this day this was a somewhat revolutionary thing to do as a child in my parents house I heard a lot of Russian and Russian singing songs accompanied by guitar or singing together in choral groups there was a kind of mixture of Russian and Jewish tradition in our house that melded together in a kind of inflection a kind of amused melancholy spirit that pervaded everything when I listened to a piece by Tchaikovsky it's as if I can hear all those voices of my family and their friends from the theatre still singing late into the night as I was falling asleep making music with an orchestra is a mysterious process it's hard to know sometimes exactly who's leading or following its constant give-and-take and having some great Russian musicians in our Orchestra somehow brings to all of us a larger understanding what the soul of the music really is about I grew up in Russia and Petersburg I hear this music and I see my childhood I see my parents my City musical memory it's like a smell you don't have it for years and then you smell something which reminds you about your childhood or about you home you left years and years ago music it's like smell like Sasha Baron chick Isaiah Laban learned to play the violin in Russia during over 20 years with our symphony she's maintained her passion for both her instrument and for the music of her homeland violin is very similar to children the violin have to feel your heartbeat the violin have to have your warm hands and the respond of the instrument is very similar and very warm and very loving music is a voice of Russian soul Tchaikovsky's music is a mirror of that soul his own feelings towards Russia and that love to the country brought his music so close to the Russian soul some people said Tchaikovsky goes too far and trying to express all of this that it's totally over the top but that's his real genius his genius is that he will dare to be over the top he will dare to seem ridiculous mawkish and sentimental for the sake of getting down on the paper and into the hands of musicians those notes that really have that searing intensity of what at the scariest and most delightful moments of our life we really do feel the Tchaikovsky himself knew that there were some weaknesses in his music that sometimes there was some a bit of overstatement and everything like but in spite of all that there's just tremendous strength to the work and I just love playing it the music is emotionally extravagant but it's also incredibly elegant and requires the most sophisticated and beautiful plane to make it really what it should be this is what we have to find when we come together as enough people to make this piece live again beautiful beautiful let's take a break Jana come up at this point Tchaikovsky brings us to an entirely new landscape of sound he explores the realm of playfulness he uses the orchestra as clever little teams passing a theme back and forth one to the other and really enjoying the sheer virtuosity of the sound when we talk about instrumental music we always talk about somebody playing an instrument I find that so suggestive because it applies it there's this wonderful darting diverting frivolous and exciting dialogue and the way the instrument bounces around and Tchaikovsky is really aware of that when he comes to write the third movement of his symphony which he calls a scherzo and a very special kind of scare so he calls it as scared so ostinato Pitts ceccato now scared so simply means a joke an ostinato just means that something is going on obsessively continuously a continuous rhythm like just at Pitt ceccato means that most of the argument is going to be played with this very quick finger motion where the fingers pluck the strings it needs precision elegance and endurance to make this work you get to you know play really fast and you get to play really soft really loud and it jumps around and you and you know you pick up the line from one section and then you throw it back to them and it's a lot fun Steve trauma note C plays bass for the San Francisco Symphony when he's not at home playing dad to his four children including six-year-old triplets when I'm at home I have the energy of four children and each one is it vying for my time and energy and love and when I get to work it's it's my it's my time to focus on one thing and one thing only and that is the music I want to play the cello but is that why'd you try the bass I said that's great it's bigger you know that means it's children are very important to us at the San Francisco Symphony at our family concerts we give them access to live music and the musicians who make the music it's ninety seven notes is the longest series of continuous bass Pizza Cotto's in the repertoire and maybe as they're playing it you can just try and keep up with them even without you know just just try and pluck along this clapping game illustrates another of those primal moves used by Tchaikovsky in the third movement different musicians must work precisely together to play a single theme but it only works if the players are absolutely in sync that's kind of the way Tchaikovsky is organizing this piece the second violins and the first violins alternate the second violins play one note and it fits in it interlocks with what the first violins do listen to that here's the second violins now we come to one of the most famous passages ever written for the piccolo and to tell us a little bit about that is our fabulous solo piccolo player Cathy Payne this pickle is so low that Tchaikovsky wrote in his for Symphony is the most technically challenging solo that I have to play as the piccolo player of the San Francisco Symphony what he probably didn't realize was that what he wrote was so challenging for piccolo players that we would spend nights just anguishing physical and mental anguish over the over the solo we would lose sleep we would our we would sprout gray hair so for 125 years piccolo players all over the world generations of us have have had trouble with this solo well in the first and second movement here's what I do I don't do anything I except get nervous anyway the solo is is only twenty-one notes long and I know that you're sitting in the audience saying Cathy it's only twenty-one notes how bad could it be well it's pretty bad I'm here to tell you that it's pretty bad the reason it's bad is because those 21 notes have to be played in three seconds and it's sort of like an Olympic event for piccolo player I need to come in and just play that solo and really nail it and it needs all the notes need to speak and I need to hit the run and it needs to be really brilliant and just perfect so now we're going to play this whole movement for you remember listen to the way the strings past the voices back in the pits of conto part to listen to all the little games of passing the theme back and forth in the winds of course for the staccato brass and timpani and most of all for Cathy's solo oh and don't forget those bases 97 marathon notes alright here we go Tchaikovsky divides the orchestra into many separate teams who throw bursts of eighth notes back and forth in an ever-changing design full of delight and surprise the third movements playful games whimsically fade away nothing prepares us for the shock of the finale the biggest bang is yet to come you know the last time that the theme comes back you know in the last movement of Tchaikovsky s fourth the percussion takes center stage I don't think so Tchaikovsky full percussion is kind of a boom crash composer Tom we're gonna love the triangles we don't really deal with the harmonic or the melodic part of the music that's mainly the rhythmical and then the colouring what's really fun is finding the right instrument and getting the right sound of color this beautiful music that on hearing playing the drum set and playing Latin drums and playing jazz that keeps my hands Limor and strong but it also keeps the feel going inside keeps the pulse strong I'm sort of grooving already and I get to work and it just makes it much easier let's go opening night is always opening night anything can go wrong but even more especially things can go especially right and those are the moments you sort of live for on the day of the performance I'm I'm usually the first person here I tune the instruments and I get mentally prepared for the concert with the natural skins I have to get the covers off the instruments at least an hour before the concert starts because the weather may be very dry or it could be humid and I have to make the adjustments the hall that we play in is part of the instrument and it's important for people to realize when you see somebody sitting in the middle of the stage before a concert scraping on a reed they're adjusting that Reed not only to themselves and to their instrument but to the hall so that they can get the right kind of feedback in the heat of battle ladies and gentlemen of the orchestra this visual first Calder Hall on stage the first concert is always exciting because you never know what's gonna happen I get nervous all the time for performances but I'm also feel like I'm prepared I always get a rush of adrenaline when a performance of Tchaikovsky fourth is first beginning it's really scary it makes me very nervous it's hard to play your best in performance but when you do it feels incredible Orchestra please the most difficult moment is the moment before the piece begins in your backstage yourself and I have a specific thing that I do you know backstage just before I go on I do this little process in my mind where I just blank out everything say a few words and completely remove all other distractions so that I only am at that moment in in the piece you have to walk onto the stage still greet the public as yourself or who they imagined you to be anyway and you then have to turn around and make eye contact with your colleagues and suddenly become something else become the sort of spirit of the piece and that moment of transition is in many ways the most difficult I think the Fourth Movement is the wildest movement of awe and it's the most obvious in a way it's the straightforward huge kind of out-of-control March just starts full-out right in the middle of the tumult so you have to imagine that whole sound in your mind it is a right and now it starts thinking about the presence of the percussion they're there to introduce this kind of ecstatic noise crash crash crash just these elemental forces you're contending with one another the piece is about being out of control and about being in a wild crowd situation where you can't be in charge of what's happening and I've pushed the orchestra right to the limit of how fast they can play but we've gotten there step by step so that the excitement is building and building there is no more exhilarating thing than to be in the middle of a brass section in the middle of a Tchaikovsky Symphony just letting it rip you are part of the sound people's idea of classical music as being something terribly intellectual is really off base it's a hugely emotional art it examines every possible emotion with greater fidelity than any other music that there is as we're playing the music the most important thing going on between us is happening in our eyes we look at each other and something completely mystical is exchanged between us sometimes cautioning sometimes encouraging looking round to the edges and even those who are geographically far on the edges being brought toward the center so that we feel their energy above all animating the onward thrusts of the music he conducts the orchestra as if he's playing an instrument it's all body language he does it with facial expressions gestures with tension in the body with his stance in the performance of everything in some sense I'm a motivator in that I'm saying okay ready set go but in other ways I made a shaper and modulator of what's happening you know a little extra flick here a little cautionary sign there a little encouragement there what exactly is necessary making the music itself come alive as a kind of sacred thing for me we look at these little dots and dashes on the paper we begin to play them and as if this spirit comes off of the page and envelops us and somehow draws us together as one spirit channeling these great composers is truly one of the most amazing things that any musician can do and doing it with the orchestra and a and a hundred other people is miraculous you don't know what the piece is really about until you're actually playing it and at that moment the boundaries are all gone you're not sure if you're yourself or your Tchaikovsky or your the you know the the last sound of the first violins or or the the cymbals or who you are it's just it's it's just all this one enormous testimony that's happening and you feel so grateful to be part of it at the end of the symphony people do feel joyous it's just too exuberant too over-the-top wonderful to resist what a guy go pyotr ilyich what a great guy you are to write this whole thing down and give us lots to think about but also really let us enjoy ourselves and kind of take us out into the streets with a kind of sense of rua de vivre who we otherwise would never have in the pocket itself great growl worthy performance carnivorous Wolfpack working with a great Orchestra like this means by imagination is turned completely loose I can think how wonderful could it be how quiet how seductive how overwhelmingly powerful how whatever I can come off the stage after a performance as sensational as these performances and still another part of my mind is thinking there is a way that it could all be still more meaningful I'm always thinking yes yes yes and and and and and and how better how better how clearer how more sincere how more devoted last Vienna last week was spectacular working with a great Orchestra like this there's absolutely no limit it can be as the piece has never been before it's the ultimate challenge to my imagination and my inspiration I pray for that always so many beautiful things to know what to choose from don't just so great oh I was really fun there was not one sound hello everybody I'm Michael Tilson Thomas welcome to Davies Symphony Hall right here in San Francisco in a few moments the members of the San Francisco Symphony will be joining me in a performance of Tchaikovsky's mighty fourth symphony it's a colossal piece Tchaikovsky was writing it quietly at his piano at his work table even then he was imagining the drama of a piece played by hundred musicians or soul for a very very big audience today's audience here in Davies Hall will be about 2700 people they give us so much energy so much focus so much commitment to take an old piece like this and make it come alive again it's exciting for us to know that amongst the audience there will be those who've heard it countless times before and have a million reference points and also very exciting that there will be some who have never heard it before that we can hope to inspire for the very first time very important at all this to us is that you are joining us today and that you will be listening and watching our performance as we together go back to the pleasure of listening to a great masterpiece of music reaffirming this wonderful tradition of which it is part and perhaps most of all enjoying the pleasure of one another's company and ensuring that this wonderful tradition of great music will go forward into a strong future thank you for joining us you you you you you you you

Channel: San Francisco Symphony

Views: 96,177

Keywords: sf symphony, San Francisco Symphony, classical music performance, classical music recordings, sf symphony recordings, sfs media, full length classical music, concert recordings, Michael Tilson Thomas, MTT, classical music, music education, songs of comfort, music speaks, music connects, Russian music, Russian composers, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Tchaikovsky, #Stayhome#withme

Id: 9tABgYM0Gsw

Length: 102min 43sec (6163 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020