Friday, September 11, 2009

Qi Zhang's electrifying organ performance

After I listen this music which played by electronic organ, I compared with the original one which play by the full orchestra. The musician, She performed very good interm of technique and interpretation. However, I think there are many different things between playing by organ and playing by the orchestra.
The First, It is about "Timbre". It's clearly for listener about the colour of the organ is very different of orchestra's colours. You can feel that when the orchestra play this piece, It's make you feel more colourful in the same time it is makes more exciting feeling. The reason is there are the real instrument that make the real sound and musician can make more colour through the instrument on the other hand, in the way of play organ they can produce the sound that have colour closer the real sound but musician can not do anything beside "touch on the key". Moreover, I think she doesn't understand exactly how the wind instrument work (I mean how they breath), so when she play it is don't like wind instrument but it's like keyboard instrument play.
Second, It's different in term of "Dynamics". As the musician know, In the orchestra music there are so much range of dynamics that we can make it. For example, the "ff" it's mean very lound, "f" it's mean lound, "mf" (medium lound), "mp"(medium soft), "p" (soft), "pp" (very soft) etc, While the keyboard instrument can not do that. Refer to this thing, it's make different feeling when I listen this music. In addition, When the orchestra play with crescendo or diminuendo it's so clearly different, while the organ can't crecendo and can't diminuendo with natural sound.
next, The "Articulation" that creat stylistic of the music. There are many ways of the articulation such as slur, lagato, staccato, accent, marcato etc. And when the different instrument plays that kinds of articulation, the feeling is also changing. The bad thing is when you play music
on the organ it doesn't make much different feeling for listener, likewise some part of the music different section have to make different articulation but with organ, it's hard for musician to makes different articulation in one hand. It's depend on musician's imagination.
Then, It's different about "Balance and Intonation". In the music there are harmony to make the sense of the music. I listen sometime she can't control the balance in the line. It's make music became disgusting. How about the intonation; refer the music theory, keyboard instrument is tuned with equal system( every note is equal) while the wind instrument and string is tune with just intonation(every notes are not equal). So when orchestra play the chord (major chord , minor chord, Augmented chord, Diminished chord) the colour it's different from keyboard interm of "intonation"
In conclusion, To making a judge it's bad or good,it depend on the purpose of the performance. If she just want to show the new way of the performane, it's very good. But in term of music and interpretation, I think it's not good enough. At any rate, it's depend on audience's expect in the performance.

2 comments:

  1. wawa, I am very agree with you !!!
    exactly what i want to say!

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  2. Nok you have really articulated yourself well and analysed the music well. Great work.

    ReplyDelete