You know "those moments"?
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@trumpetb No one so far has mentioned current politics; as far as my knowledge of the Ukrainian music scene goes - and it is pretty good, seeing that I am in daily contact with quite a number of professional and non-professional musicians in Ukraine - the actual instruments they are using are from pretty decent to absolutely stunning. The days of the old Soviet bloc instruments are gone. Their main problem nowadays:
a) many musicians have volunteered for the armed forces, territorial defence or emergency services
b) frequent interruptions of rehearsals
c) unavailability of venues due to either destruction or repurposing (Lviv Philharmony was converted into a storage for medical supplies).Still, they continue playing wherever and however they can.
Example: A video of a concert played yesterday in Lviv by drummer Dmitrij Myloslavsky and his band. https://www.facebook.com/dmitriy.myloslavsky/videos/655678329587434
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My response was following a member questioning why I spoke of the political system in relation to the soviet citizens and musicians in the past and the possible restrictions that were placed upon them.
I drew a similarity with a modern soviet issue that is causing issues to musicians in ukraine today.
In doing this am I breaking rules here.
Not knowing what is allowed to be posted is very confusing and may ultimately lead to members preferring to post nothing for fear of censure.
If you keep punishing people when they do anything, pretty soon nobody does anything.
In my opinion that is not healthy for a forum.
Unless of course I have offended members with my words, in which case I apologise.
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@barliman2001 said in You know "those moments"?:
@seth-of-lagos Mravinsky certainly let the brass do their thing , as you said, "on the ragged edge"; but that ragged edge was most probably sharpened by the instruments they had at their disposal... look at the year the recording was made: 1953. Stalin was probably still alive during much of the recording process, the Cold War was in full swing, trade relations between East and West were almost inexistent and "the Leningrad Factory" - one of only three places in the Soviet Union where brass instruments were made - still lay in ruins, only being rebuilt and back into business some years later. They probably had to do their best on - if lucky - very old instruments, or - if not - on some student grade horns slapped together somehow; and it is known that some of these musicians were reduced to building their own horns out of any materials they could find. One tuba is known to have had engine springs from a military truck as valve springs, being made out of the brass of spent shell casings...
As the joke went...
What is the difference between a Capitalist and a Socialist violin player? -
@kehaulani It does not show anything of that; only that they did not have the same kind of access to up to date instruments, and, older instruments usually being narrower bores than later ones, the sound may have sharpened and thus given an edge to the playing. As to the surviving of older instruments... most instruments of the Leningrad Philharmonic were kept in the Philharmonic Building as they were not the private property of the musicians, but owned by the orchestra, rules about private property being what they were at the time. Musicians were not supposed to practice at home, many even before the war living in shared apartments (one three-bedroom apartment shared between three or even four families), a condition that became even more crowded as war destruction worsened. Professional musicians were expected to practice in the orchestra building - the Leningrad Philharmonia housing both the Leningrad Philhrmonic Orchestra and the Academic Symphonic Orchestra of the Leningrad Philharmonia - which suffered heavy damage from German bombing resulting in the loss of many older instruments and part of the sheet music archive.
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Deliberately not replying to any post in particular, one or two of our members may benefit from a little background info on the St Petersburg/Leningrad Philharmonic.
http://guilhermebernstein.com/UR/cambridge_companion_to_the_orchestra_2003.pdf
Scroll down to the relevant section starting page 134.
Other than the during the siege, it seems that members of the orchestra had both the means and opportunities to obtain in principle, any instrument they needed.
