PERFORMING WITH HEART AND MIND

Folks, my radio is turned on as soon as I enter my residence. First I tune in to the news and then switch to classical music. 

But I also watch concerts and find great sympathy for our musicians. I think those who perform classical music are really a dedicated group. They endeavored to learn and read melodic notes, or scores which are not that simple to learn. 

I sympathize most with the conductors who have to deal with 50 or more musicians of various types -- wind, brass, strings, percussion and so much more -- indigenous instruments. 

Their greatest problem is how to make the instrumentalist play in harmony and as an ensemble. 

But the greatest problem of our musicians in general, when playing foreign classical music is how to touch the hearts of the audience with their performance. 

First of all, they have to overcome the racial barrier between them and the composer. Chopin, Tschaikovsky, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt and others are all white and foreign. Their works reflect the lives they have led, or rather their works are based on their lives as born in the European countries. 

Hence, our Philippine musicians have to overcome first of all the inculcation of colonial mentality when we were still growing up (maybe the millennials have overcome this. Although some women are really hook line and sinker in following the fashion in the west showing their complete subservience culturally).

Secondly, they have to place themselves in the shoes of the composers, thinking, feeling how he or she could have composed those pieces and find out what feelings should be conveyed. This is what you would call, performing with the heart and mind. 

Otherwise, if the instrumentalists do not do this then the performance would just be a technical one -- the scores are followed to the detail but not the feelings of the composer. 

So no matter how hard a conductor tries to extract those feelings from the instrumentalists, if the latter do not exert effort to imagine the roots of the composition and the composer, then the performance would not have that what you would call "Oomph!" or Pizzazz!

I would try to expound on this topic some more in the future. 

My motto when attending any cultural program: "Gusto ko kikilabutan ako kapag nanonood ako o nakikinig sa isang palabas."