Early yesterday evening the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) presented a live-streamed Summer Sessions Watch Party. Violinists Laurie Goldman and Marian Tănău, violist Mike Chen, cellist Peter McCaffrey, and bassist Kevin Brown, all DSO members, performed Antonín Dvořák’s Opus 77 (second) string quintet in G major. The performance took place in the outdoor Sosnick Courtyard adjacent to Orchestra Hall. The musicians were adequately socially distanced, and the same seemed to be true of the audience.
Sadly, the event did not live up to the standards of the DSO Replay Web site, which has served as a valuable resource during shelter-in-place conditions. Most important were the technical problems. Presumably, Orchestral Hall is well supplied with the audio and video equipment necessary to create quality content for DSO Replay; but capturing an outdoor event in real time is quite another matter. Most importantly, the entire performance succumbed to a problem I have encountered in similar live-streamed content: synchronization between audio and video was entirely lost. To the extent that it is worth the trouble to watch a video of a chamber music performance in the first place, the primary feature is the ability to observe how the members of the ensemble engage with both each other and the music they are playing. When the visual signal is significantly out of whack with the audio, the virtue of having video in the first place is entirely lost.
That said, what one could see, regardless of what one was hearing, was disappointing. Most important was that there were few signs of eye contact among the players. Almost all of the time, each player was buried in her/his own score pages. Clearly, having a greater distance between the performers was a contributing factor, as were the outdoor conditions that required keeping those pages from blowing around arbitrarily. Finally, each performer was fitted with a microphone attached to her/his instrument, which clearly interfered with the normal physical practices of playing that instrument. Conditions could not have been more pessimal.
Finally, throughout the performance I found myself wondering about how much preparation time had been allocated. To be fair, San Francisco is very much a “chamber music town.” Under “normal conditions” there have always been abundant opportunities to listen to not only major visiting artists but also an abundant share of local talent covering the gamut from seasoned professionals to well-trained graduate students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Furthermore, chamber music is so important to the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) musicians that they plan two concurrent seasons of programming; and those plans are in place at the same time that the plans for the SFS subscription concerts have been finalized. (That concurrence sometimes means that an artist performing with SFS may stick around for a few extra days to contribute to a chamber music concert.)
By contrast yesterday evening’s offering came across almost as an afterthought. Clearly, there have been few circumstances to play for audiences (physical or virtual). So one can appreciate an emergence of the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney “let’s put on a show” spirit. Nevertheless, when it comes to honoring the real motives behind such a show, Dvořák deserved better, as did anyone that takes listening seriously.
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