A violinist who travels the globe playing concerts all the while trying to maintain the difficult balance between practicing and uploading content for his fans.
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I just subscribed & clicked the notification bell - GREAT VIDEO. No matter which one you played, they both sounded good relative to what it was so it proves there’s a quality instrument for everyone’s budget and they can maximize the output if they maximize the input. Keep up the great work as I enjoy the rest of your videos.
Just stop pretending to be completely spontaneous and I won’t downvote those videos. Flash mobs are fun to watch. Pretending it wasn’t staged is cringe.
4:41 i think musicians should be allowed to play their music everywhere. As long as the music fits the environment etc. Not just hiding behind studio recordings and paid concerts.
Dude!! First thanks for making this explainer about this performance practice. Second, personally, I strongly agree with the idea of bringing performance and art to people, in whatever form feels right. The classic idea of concert hall performances, with all the vintage trappings, as the only legit space for "classical" is being overtaken by new ideas about what makes for a performance space -- a living room, a street corner, RU-vid, TTok, a park, whatever -- and new ideas for stagings. RayC (and 2Set) are doing inspiring work in this area of expanding what makes for compelling performance, as are many other current performers. I deeply appreciate and enjoy how Ray C (and 2Set) are throwing open the doors to artistic ideas and artists who bring fresh air into a room that had started to feel stale. Ray C is among a cohort of world class musical artists who are making this a wonderfully exciting time to be a musician.
Ray you are great 👍 👍👍 What does it matter whether it’s staged or spontaneous? The aim is to entertain the public and bring classical music to the wider audience. Twoset is just jealous and nasty!
Hi Ray, I really love all your videos and I am your biggest fan. I to play the violin but I’m nowhere as good as you are. I really look up to you and even David Garrot played this Tchaikovsky violin Concerto but I really wish you featured him more in your videos
Thank you so much Ray, and your colleagues, you are without a doubt the most amazing and wonderful person in the whole musical industry. You give the music life, and you bring it to life for all of us. Please stay safe and well too xxxx Mags ❤❤❤❤❤
Nice one. Hard to make a piece played so often sound fresh. Never understood why they make musicians wear suits though. Suits are a businessman’s uniform. Musicians are too divergent for uniforms lol
No they are NOT "a businesman's uniform" where have you been for a few centuries? Or do you prefer your musicians to look like they just rolled in off the street? "lol".
Yes I can see tsv's point that these seemingly "clickbait" videos shouldn't dominate the internet and there are of course better ways to promote classical music, but let's not forget clickbaits are not totally bad and we may not want to remain purists given the general decline of the entire genre -- if these videos succeed in introducing classical music to more people (even in a somehow "distorted" manner) we shall not completely diss them. Speaking of tsv's videos, they are to a certain extent more "serious" than these staged encounters, but they still make me upset when they unjustly make fun of 20th century music (especially avant-garde stuff), for instance they repeatedly refer to Berg Violin Concerto as "tuning" -- and Berg to me is interesting, even romantic! -- and mock the works of Ligeti, Stockhausen (I remember in some old sight-reading challenge?) and even Mahler (his unfinished tenth, which reaches the limits of tonality), which seems to reinforce the stereotype that contemporary classical music is intimidating and technical and anti-human which is simply not true. Yet I still like most of their content and it will be nice if both of them (tsv and Ray) continue to bring music to a wider audience.
All good, I just don't understand the need to fake the set-up, when 2 world class musicians would draw a crowd regardless. What's the point? And then of course, it becomes ludicrous because the piano guy (and others) do it over & over again, do they really think people buy it?
Don’t be so judgmental. Given appreciation to this whole team who all contributed to their best effort of this beautiful performance. Simply just enjoy it.
You guys did a great job recording this performance. It sounds so good on my tower speakers. Mr. Chen's violin sounds amazing. Like you had all the mics in just the right place with excellent levels for each one.
I keep coming back to this video. I got a lot of good out of my $67 violin outfit but I did upgrade the chinrest, bridge, strings, and bow, so the total cost was much higher. You can really draw tone out of yours but I needed a better instrument to want to practice daily. Using Tonic I see that I’m on day 72 of my practice streak. I think you are doing a great job of raising the interest of people to start and continue to play an instrument.
The videos are great. The music is great. Why not just frame it as "hey ... I'm in the mall" ... "I'm going to meet someone" - make it a mystery ... but the various performers setting up meetings and pretending it is spontaneous is not telling the truth and totally unnecessary. Twoset is right here. Their flash mob is perfect. And you can see the joy in that one too. Let's just frame it as "Hey nice to meet you in reality after chatting on Viber. Let's play together and see how it goes." And let it happen. Honest - but still a nice back story. Same joy. But real story. The real story is just as nice. We are lucky - great music from Ray in Public And a great public Flash Mob from Twoset which wouldn't have happened without Ray's piece. Double the joy. But even more important - more attention for classical music.
I don't think this answers the main issue people have about your video. Yeah we know you were the one who played it and all, no question about it, but the video was showing it like the whole thing was SPONTANEOUS. Like two STRANGERS met and just belting it out perfectly. Which is a lie. Can it be done? Maybe, like you said, professional musicians can certainly do it. Then why not do it like that? Actually record yourself spontaneously join in someone playing in the piano somewhere, record the take 2 you mentioned actually happening. (But you didn't because it wouldn't look impressive). And not this clean perfect playing that is so... scripted and fake. Like those trending Karen videos but they're actually scripted. And that's what Twoset were pointing out. If it was really a spontaneous recording and not scripted, the sound will not be clean like that, or that you can play it in one go without discussing beforehand what part to skip and all. Does your playing music bring joy? Yeah. You're a great violinist. What about those fake musicians who airbows but the music actually comes from a speaker. Yeah. People who hear that music enjoy it as well. So let's just do anything that let's people enjoy music right?
It is nice to spread the music. But these videos 多少有点哗众取宠的味道. Why not be fully true instead of making it like a coincidence which I personally also don't like? And the world needs more REAL stuff. I believe people will still like it even if they knew it was a planned performance because they would still like the music and the performance would still be an interesting surprise for them.
I think nobody criticizes the spread of classical music. We are all aware of that. the problem actually is the lying aspect of these videos! I think if you go to a station and say OK we are going to play for you, it would be much more honest.
There are moments that as non-professional players - like TwoSet - they can not image but it actually could happen. As a professional players like Ray, he can play Vivaldi and Pagnini certain pieces ANYTIME without rehearsing in advance because he has played hundreds of hundreds hours.
