In the last episode I talked about singing vs speaking - in this episode of Ask Augustin, I talk about gestures that are not speaking or singing, but actually dancing -- depicting movement. When we hear this kind of music, we understand these gestures instinctively, because we know what it's like to feel gravity, what it feels like to jump or to walk, or to dance. We should try to bring out these musical movements, and in order to do so, it's actually important not to sing too much! The best example I could think of are the lifts that are found all over the place in the first movement of the Tchaikovsky concerto - these gestures are very ballet-like. When you vibrate and sing too much on the note that is lifting, then it will stay on the ground and you don't get any lift at all. In the Tchaikovsky concerto lifts and other dance gestures alternate with very lyrical, passionate passages, so it's important to know what exactly you are trying to do in each phrase, where the music is dancing and where it is singing. (In Tchaikovsky's first movement, the material of the first theme has ballet-like lifts and rococo dancing gestures, whereas the second theme is the more passionate, more romantic one. It's so tempting to sing all the time, that the two themes can sound exactly the same!)
If you bring out movement in music, then the listener can really feel the jumps and the landings, the turns and the whirls. And it's not about how much you move yourself while you play -- it's about the direction you give the notes during the lifts, the motion you put into the phrase.
25 авг 2024
