| Per Questa Bella Mano by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart KV 612 Performers: Rebekah Griffin Greene, double bass, Andrew Nolen, baritone, Dante DiIanni, piano Recording made at the Third Street Music School Settlement, Anna Maria Kellen Auditorium, New York, New York, November 19th, 2007 The sound I was trying to approximate is that of an instrument that is more about chordal resonance than vibrato/sustained phrasing, thus you will hear lots of open chords and not a lot of vibrato. Although this performance is not perfect, I think there are a lot of great musical interactions going on between the three of us, and I hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed performing it together! Special thanks: Joseph Carver,for introducing me to a tiny bit of the wide world of gambas, and Tobias Glockler for his wonderful edition which has options for orchestral, solo, and Viennese tuning. English translation of the text: By this lovely hand, by these fair eyes of yours, I swear, my love, that I will never love any other than you. The breezes, the plants, the rocks, that know of my sighs, can tell you my constancy. Cast happy or severe glances, but only tell me whether you despise me or love me. I am always enflamed by your sweet darts. I always want you to call me yours, neither can heaven nor earth alter that desire which is alive in me My adventure with this piece started in the spring of 2007 when I took a Baroque Performance Practice course with Arthur Haas at SUNY Stony Brook as part of my doctoral studies. As my final project for the course, I elected to interpret this piece as "authentically" as I could as a modern French bow player on a four-stringed bass. The instrument that it was written for was a "Viennese" bass: a five-stringed violone with frets tuned in a D-major chord, most likely played with an underhand bow. Since I do not own a Viennese bass,I tuned my 100-year old 4-stringed German bass ("Harold") to A-F#-D-A, the first four strings of a Viennese bass. With the help of my bass teacher, Joseph Carver, and lots of research, I determined what I felt to be appropriate ornamentation and vibrato for the time period. I was lucky enough to meet a wonderful bass-baritone singer named Andrew Nolen through Stony Brook's anniversary production of Orfeo, and he said he'd love to perform this piece with a bassist, and was also very excited to learn that it was written for the same bass-baritone who premiered the role of Sarastro! Over the next year, I performed this piece in a recital and also wrote my DMA paper about the interpretation of this piece. Harold stayed in Viennese tuning for 18 months! If you're interested in a copy of my paper for your own research, please email me at rebekah@rebekahgriffingreene.com and I'll send you one in the mail. . |
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