Tuesday, May 15, 2012

A staging of L'après-midi d'une faune



The students of U Maryland, in one of the most inventive stagings of a classical music work that I've seen. Odd to even use the word "staging," rather than performance. In the groups I'm in no more thought goes into stage presence than a reminder to stand up when so directed, and quickly, before the audience stops clapping. ("Sometimes the window is short!" we were told by a conductor recently.) But here, the work has been turned into a performance of dance as well as sound. And yeah, you have to be able to play while walking and moving. And have the music memorized. Marching bands do this routinely, of course, but you never see it in the concert hall. It's a lot more work for the orchestra, but I think it's really effective for the audience. It is, after all, a show.

1 comment:

  1. I love this. All orchestras should do this. Every performance should be a show, really (although there are different ways to make it into one). I'm starting to feel that very strongly. Shows are respectful of the audience in some very fundamental sense.

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