want to talk percussion for a moment?


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Posted by Barry Guerrero on June 20, 2000 at 01:44:58:

I just went up to Seattle to go hear their Symphony do Mahler 3 with Gerard Schwartz conducting. The performance was mostly very good, and Ewa Podles is possibly the greatest Contralto of recent times. However, the percussion section chose to play the entire tambourine part on a military field drum (or perhaps Maestro Shwartz made that decision). It sounded positively horrible, particularly in the SECOND and THIRD movements! I've yet to encounter any performance or recording of M3 where the tambourine was substituted for a field drum. What gives here? I don't see how there could be any misunderstanding of what Mahler wanted since there's a completely separate snare drum part as well. In fact, he asks for the snare drum to be doubled during the short development section of the first movement known as "the southern storm" or "rabble" (this comes just before the recap. of the opening 8 horn unison fanfare). Rather than use the field drum to double the snare part, they had it strictly on the tambourine part there. Most weird! Also, why would you drag out a 100 or 110 centimeter Wuhan gong, and play ultra timidly with an undersized mallet - even on the forte and fortissimo smashes? Anyone care to comment on this? Did anyone else who might have also been at those concerts, notice how strange the field drum sounded? What's that? . . . the tuba? Oh, yes - sounded great. They had the tuba right at the edge of the stage, with the bell pointing out in the hall. It was some sort of ubiquitous York-monster, and it sounded just fine.
Barry "I love Mahler too much" Guerrero


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