Lutoslawski (R): Garden party guests never tired of Witold's jokes about limited aletoricism and Soviet repression.
Alright so this post isn't actually about Lutoslawski's piece Mi Parti but I had to make use of that pun at some point - it was rapidly burning a hole in my blog-post-pun-title-pocket.
Instead you can watch a documentary imaginatively entitled 'Open Rehearsals With Witold Lutoslawski'. It was produced in 1984 for the USC School of Music.
I wasn't aware this existed until I spotted it in Ádám Kondor's FB news feed today (thanks to him then). Interesting to see him rehearse and conduct various bits and pieces of his repertoire and to hear him discuss some of his ideas (no new insights really, you'll find the same arguments in Conversations With Witold Lutoslawski and The Music of Lutoslawski for instance. Nice to hear it from him directly though, perhaps).
Below is the first part, you'll need to find the other three yourself. Good luck, we're all counting on you (ad libitum, natürlich).
TinyURL for this post: http://tinyurl.com/6y3m6bn
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4 comments:
I was fortunate enough to attend some of those rehearsals as part of a masters class, and even sat onstage while he rehearsed his Third Symphony. He autographed my score for the Third, which we were allowed to photocopy for the class. Still have it!
He was quite polite, soft-spoken, and had a surprising energy for his age, no doubt from hearing his new piece being played.
Thanks John. Were you at USC?
Big Witold fan myself. Sometimes I'm somewhat irked by his tune-like gestures (3rd Symphony, String Quartet etc) and some of the forms but overall I think he's great.
I don't feel that many composers have followed up on his ad libitum techniques either, at least not as artistically.
It is a good solution in terms of enabling players to perform complex textures without masses of rehearsal or specialisation.
He blatantly only wrote the tune-like gestures to piss you off, Ted.
He did Steve. Even though I wasn't even born when he wrote his String Quartet :-)
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