Battleship Potemkin

Last weekend the University of Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Barbara Schubert, performed Battleship Potemkin in real-time accompanying the film. Battleship Potemkin is a film created by Sergei Eisenstein in 1926 to commemorate the 1905 Battleship Potemkin uprising. In our performance, we gave the U.S. premiere of the film with the original score by Edmund Meisel -- apparently most of the scoring in the DVD formats is music added by various entities to "sound Russian," but isn't the original music.

The music is very progressive and several sections consist of repetetive (almost minimalistic in some way) passages that build in accordance with the film. The end sequence is nothing short of grueling for the timpanist as three one-bar phrases are repeated over the course of some 10 minutes gradually making a crescendo. To some extent this wouldn't be so bad, but the volume of rolls and playing throughout the first 63 minutes of the work is very tiring itself!

As for the movie, there are several moving scenes. The most memorable, and that which has made it's way into other movies following Potemkin is the scene at the steps of Odessa which depicts the slaughter of innocent civilians by the military. I was amazed at how progressive Eisenstein was for his time. Hopefully sometime soon the original film score can be recorded for the DVD. It is much more appropriate than what exists now.

Three-stringed Violin? Two-valved Trumpet?

This really bothers me: I recently played at a middle school here in the Chicago area with a local community orchestra (it was one of those "get people interested" concerts). We were doing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24 and the Beethoven Pastoral Symphony. Both of these pieces don't require much from the timpanist (G+C, F+C). When I arrived at the school I found the drums to be in a horrific condition that could only be described as inadequate for music education. Not only were the pedal mechanisms broken, but there were broken lugs on each drum and torn heads that must have been [at least] 15 years old. The sizes must have been two 25" drums and one 28" drum. One of the 25" drums had to be removed from the equation since no pedal was left. I was appalled at this site and worked on the drums to get the pitches required. After 20 minutes there was no luck of getting the lower drum tuned properly. My animosity grew more during this performance not due to the fact that I had to play on these drums; we all have to deal with crappy equipment at some point. Instead, it bothered me that the music director did not realize the drums should have been repaired and kept in a minimal working condition. The orchestra director did mention they were in disrepair the day before this performance, so I'm certain they are aware that there is a problem.

If you're an orchestra or band director who is responsible for educating students, ask yourself this: would you let your string players come to rehearsal and play on 3-string violins? Would you let your trumpet players come to lessons with only two valves? If you've said no to these questions and have percussion equipment in poor condition, perhaps you should rethink your stance on what fears you about percussion and if you think it is a "serious" instrument.

Remember that percussionists are musicians too and the sooner you start percussionists to practice and perform on good, working equipment, the sooner you will foster sensitive, musical playing.