Here’s a fun little story that one of my more senior colleagues recently passed along to me:
Many years ago, the conductor Hans Werner Henze was rehearsing Stauss’ tone poem “Till Eugenspiegel” with the Chicago Symphony. There is a particularly snarly passage for the bassoons and violas in this piece–it’s the sort of thing that regularly appears on auditions for those instruments, yet it is almost impossible to play in context.
Singled Out
When the orchestra got to this passage during one of the rehearsals, Henze stopped the orchestra.
“Violas and bassoons, may I hear you from letter E?”
The members of these sections collectively gulped, took a deep breath, and plowed through the aforementioned passage.”
After they finished, Henze smiled. Addressing the rest of the orchestra, he said,
“My dear colleagues… this is what we must cover up!”
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Hi,
I read your blog every now and then. I’m a violist in Texas (I also teach middle school orchestra). I may sound like a typical violist, but I love your posts about the violas! I started out as a violin player and I did think that the viola was a bit weird. Later in high school, my private instructor made a passing remark about how he’d thought I’d make a great violist. I swear I nearly got sick! I did end up switching after some thought.
Thanks for the viola stories.
Great story. Reminds me of this:
Years ago I was playing viola in a semipro production of Madama Butterfly. We didn’t rehearse with the singers until fairly late in the process, but from the beginning, the conductor kept harping on how we mustn’t cover up the singers.
That, is, until we got to the spot near the end of Act I where the Commissioner (bit part) announces Pinkerton’s imminent marriage to Butterfly. As we’re reading through the Commissioner’s brief solo, the conductor says “OK, now *this* singer we *want* to cover up…he’s not that good…”