Private Performance - For When You Face The Awful Truth That The World Is Indifferent To Your Aspirations

There is an archived website that has some of the programs and other material of the Society for Private Musical Performance, Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen.  Reading through them it's obvious that they depended very heavily on 4-hand reductions of orchestral and other pieces.  They presented 4-hand reductions of the massive orchestral structures of Schoenberg's close friend and mentor Gustav Mahler, likely the first time many of those in the audience had a chance to hear them. Such reductions featured heavily in the presentations, along with chamber works, works for solo instruments and vocal music.  I recall from an interview with one of those most active in the Society, the great pianist Eduard Steuermann, that they, at times, made liberal use of the large "art harmoniums" which had large numbers of stops, the ability to change volume and a pedal board as well as, often, two keyboards, though I haven't had the chance to go through all of the programs to see where that figured in.  It's impressive how much you can do with such limited resources at your disposal.  I would imagine they would have made use of electronics if those had been available to them, such an effort, today, would have that to work with.  The question is the actual performance of sounds, live, and, ideally, in collaboration with other performers.

But I'm focused more on students and amateurs as well as those continuing to struggle through a life in performing arts who don't get the chance to perform things they should have the chance of performing.  This did get started by me wondering why actors, playwrights, directors, don't do the kind of chamber performance of plays in order to, maybe the only time in their lives, to play roles and act in plays they will, otherwise, never get to do for-pay in front of a, hopefully, paying audience.  

Most of this kind of in-house music playing, study, practice, takes place in private, among those who have a great desire to experience, in some way, experiencing the performance of the music, to learn what only can be learned from making that music come to life from the printed page. 

Here are two examples.  The first is a couple of young brothers performing the first movement of the Mozart Symphony #40.   If I were their teacher I'd insist on the repeats but that's another thing you can do when you do this, you can take that responsibility on yourselves. 

The piano players are identified as just, "Mike and Alec" and they did a good job of it.  I assume that the rest of the videos in the Youtube Channel indicate that they've gone on to what might turn into a professional career but I can't follow that up just now. 

Here's another one, a  performance of the first movement of Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony that shows that, now, you can do something like that without having to be in the same room not even on same continent.  

Monica Alienello and Andreas Pfaul, pianos.

The 4-hand reduction used was made by Hugo Ulrich  who made a huge number of such reductions,(click on the "as arranger" tab here).   My guess would be that more people have had the equivalent of conducting, or, rather, co-conducting this music from his reductions than who ever had the chance to conduct them in front of an orchestra.  Of course there's nothing to prevent you from going to the library, getting the modern editions and either editing Ulrich's reduction or making your own, as you judge most fitting.  The scary need to make choices in this, trying things, sometimes failing sometimes having your choices not agreed to but learning something from it a major part of this, as well as having the experience of the work, itself.  You've got notation software, for free if you can't afford more sophisticated versions, that is a huge help.

This might give anyone interested in other performance arts some idea as to what they might do to get as close to an experience of performing roles or pieces as they probably will in their lives.  The lack of chances at playing George and Martha or Brick and Maggie or Lady Macbeth or Hamlet or any other role, in a full production doesn't mean that you can never play it, it just means that you'll have to play it in a different way.   You can go past table readings of new plays and try things out, you could even include the difficulties of costume changes and using props that Madeline George said was so enlightening to her creative work.  The choice is yours if you choose to make it.   I'd look at the play in the play of Hamlet for some idea on that.  If it's something advocated by the author of Hamlet, for crying out loud, that's all the permission you need to try it.