Double Bass 1812 Overture

[bopeuph]

I'm looking at this piece for an upcoming audition. Listening to orchestral recordings is difficult, as it's just too muddy. So I'd just like an aural example that's clean enough to glean some information on it.

Are there any recordings of a pro bassist playing this excerpt? Looking at A to C, of course.

 

[samshreves]

If I can't find a good enough recording, I usually take the music and transcribe it into NoteFlight and just listen to the MIDI. NoteFlight is free, which is a big plus. It's not ideal, but it works in a pinch.

 

[robobass]

+1. 1812 is not really a standard audition piece, so you won't find Hal Robinson playing it on YouTube. Midi/Notation software is a good way to go.

 

[bopeuph]

Got it. Thanks for the help.

 

[robobass]

OTOH, You sometimes have to ask yourself where your resources are best exploited. Learning to use (and using) notation software is time consuming and often frustrating. You need to balance that with the time you have to simply shed in front of the printed part

 

[bopeuph]

I just listened to some classic recordings. And I'm a pro copyist on Finale, so engraving the excerpt would take ten minutes.

 

[LouisF]

This is just a tale from my youth re the 1812 - when I was kid I played in the Greater Boston Youth Symphony (co-principal). Every year the orchestra would split in half over two weeks and play a concert with the Boston Pops. Harry Ellison Dickson was conducting and we got chewed out six ways to Sunday over the chromatic runs. So I called sectionals and we all busted our butts and nailed it. We get to Symphony Hall and, because I'm first chair, I'm partnered with Georges Molieux, whom Koussevitsky brought from the Paris Opera to be principal (no pressure or nothing). Molieux grunts something, but there's no conversation and we get down to it.

When we get to the runs, my little fingers are flying up the fingerboard and Molieux whacks me, I mean WHACKS with his, what, Satory bow!

I look at him and he gives me this Gallic shrug and SLIDES his finger up the fingerboard, shrugs again, and taps my hand with the tip of his bow as if to say "ready...and...."

I slide. He smiles. We slide. Cannon go off.
Louis

 

[bejoyous]

Good story LouisF. I was watching a lecture series from the 1970's where Len Bernstein explains Beethoven's Sixth then has the BSO perform it. I was really looking forward to watching the basses nail the thunder runs. Nah, they just gliss-ed it.

 

[Dbass926]

I can't speak to 1970's era Boston Symphony, but Ed Barker played the Storm scene from Beethoven 6 in our bass class one day and played every single note with a glorious clear off the string stroke. In all fairness, he played the extension passages up an octave, but that in no way detracts from the incredible skill required to execute at that level.

 

[LouisF]

Ah but those were the good old days! They had all kinds of short cuts back then. The other video like that is the London Philharmonic (I think- maybe LSO) doing the Verdi Requiem and sliding right up the string

In those days, and remember I'm talking fifty years ago! - I think a lot of stuff was considered unplayable and it was a question (on gut strings or Spirocore Starks) of how close you could get. I think the string height on my first orchestra bass must have been two inches!
Louis