SPEAKER: So there's a kind of teamwork involved.
And there's relay work, and there's rehearsal,
and there's getting everything right, and there's reading music,
but various people lead various sections of the orchestra.
So, there's a head cello.
Ju Hyun here is the head of all these cello people.
Fred back there is the head in the way of the double basses.
George is the head of the violas.
Emma's the head of the second violins.
And Sumira here is the head of the first violins,
and therefore, the head of the orchestra.
The Concertmaster.
She's playing the role of Ignaz Schuppanzigh in tonight's concert.
So, your job as a member of the orchestra
is to be together with the other people in your section.
And what you do is you have to watch the music.
You have to be with your stand partner.
You watch the person who is the head of your section for things
like when the bow changes direction, how fast the bow goes,
and all those kinds of things, so that we can be together.
At the same time, you keep an eye on the conductor, and on your section leader,
and on the Concertmaster, and on the music.
So there's an awful lot to be doing.
And Maestro Cortese, good as he is, is not in charge of everything.
He's just a kind of traffic cop and a person whose ideas for the music
get transmitted to all these people through intermediaries.
So, string players.
Woodwinds-- so you see the woodwinds back there.
Flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and then, as far away as possible,
the brass instruments.
There are-- Beethoven calls for four horns.
There are four horns and two trumpets, and a pair of kettle drums
that always play along with the trumpets.
In Beethoven's days, you may know, the horns were all natural horns.
They were just a length of tubing with a funnel on one
end, and a mouthpiece on the other end, and you had to make all of your notes
using the notes of the overtone series.
And with a horn, you can use your hand in the bell
to change-- to bend some of the pitches and get some extra notes.
They also had crooks that you could take out and make
a different crook in the horn, so you could have a different length of horn.
So, Beethoven, expecting natural horns, calls
for horns in two different keys in this movement,
and the horns change key between movements,
and sometimes within movements, by taking out one crook
and putting in another crook.
These people don't do that.
They have these wonderful modern horns where, instead of having crooks,
you have a valve that adds a length of tubing,
so it turns into a horn of a different length.
The trumpets don't have that.
I mean, the trumpets in Beethoven's time were also
natural instruments-- sort of 8 feet long with a mouthpiece here
and a bell down there, curled up a little bit so that you can hold it
and it's not-- nobody trips over it.
But you can't shove your hand in the bell.
And so the trumpets play just the notes the trumpets can play.
Anyhow, let's listen to the different sections of the orchestra.
Here's the main theme of this first movement.
Here's that part, but where everybody plays.
This is what happens when only the strings play.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And that same passage-- here's what the woodwind instruments
play at the same time.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And then here's what the brass instruments play-- the horns
and trumpets.
You'll probably notice that the horns are playing the tune
and the trumpets are not.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Trumpets in Beethoven, and also in Mozart and Haydn,
and all through this period, are essentially rhythm instruments.
They go along with the kettle drums and it makes a wonderful effect.
They play only the notes of the overtone series.
Somehow, the wonderful techniques of earlier times,
like the trumpets in Handel's Messiah, are not used in this period.
And trumpets actually have a much easier job in Beethoven
than they do in Handel and Bach.
Some composers and conductors have had the temerity
to change Beethoven's trumpet parts because they say, nowadays,
with our modern valve trumpets, the trumpets can play anything we want to.
So let's have them play the tune, too.
I'm glad Maestro Cortese is not doing that, because Beethoven
knows exactly what he's doing.
He writes for the trumpets things that give punch and emphasis
and rhythm to the sound of the orchestra,
and I'm very glad we're leaving them just the way Beethoven wrote them,
even though we could-- these trumpeters can play anything
in the world you want nowadays.
Anyhow, put that together.
The strings, and woodwinds, and the brass all together, and this
is the sound that they make.