Five friends were having a drink at a party when one of them jokingly suggested to play a piano quintet together, and thus ensemble de Formule was born.
When we sat down to discuss our ensemble, it became clear that we all had a wish to do something extra besides being a ‘regular’ chamber music ensemble: we wanted to feel more involved with our society, reach people from different backgrounds, cultures and social ranks.
To reach a bigger audience we had to get out of the traditional concert hall and be creative. It made us rethink and question many traditions that are being upheld in the classical music world. There are many classical musicians who try to reach a younger and more diverse audience by creating multidisciplinary experiences, and there is a very mixed feeling about this in the classical music world. There is a group of people strongly against this; their main argument is that music does not need anything ‘extra’ when it is well written and well performed; it speaks for itself. Adding visual, auditory, or tactile incentives and working with alternative locations, positions and scenery are all distractions from the quality and message that the music contains; most likely, all of us have witnessed concerts where there was a dancer making wild, big movements on stage while musicians were performing music that seemingly had nothing to do with the physical movements.
It is difficult for us, young musicians, to see that people our age do not go to classical music concerts. We believe that it is not because classical music is not responding to today’s generation, but it is because they do not know how to listen to the music. And here lies our job: we can help them to listen. As well educated students, we agreed that everything on stage must be in honour of the music, of the score. After deciding to play the Shostakovich piano quintet, we started the process that we will be discussing in this research: How can a performance of Shostakovich’ piano quintet be dramatized by using words, movements, staging and lighting?
We will start looking at what kind of research has already been done about this subject in order to start our own journey.
In the research process, we will be focusing on internal and external features, starting with the internal aspects that were part of our analysing process during practice, before creating the actual performance.
In making a connection with the music, it is important to know the background of the composer and the piece. We will look at historical and political sources from the time of Shostakovich’s life. How were the circumstances of the time and place where he lived? Did they influence his music?
First, we look at the score and question ourselves what we think is meant with the notes. Then, we want to explain our internal and external research process in five sections, per movement. We did this by journaling our thoughts: writing down in rehearsals what every quintet player thought about a phrase, about a movement, about a chord, etc. Then, we try to forge all ideas in an overlapping and unanimous interpretation for the whole quintet, in order to create our own version with external additions.
We tried to convert our ideas and emotions into a choreography, a self-written text that you will find at the top of every chapter, and lighting aspects. For the performance we tried different stage settings: where to put the stage (are there multiple possibilities?) and where do the players stand or sit? In this journal, you will see experiments of different choreographies of certain passages where we try to find the right motion.
To be able to perform movements while playing, it was necessary for us to learn the score by heart, a process in itself where we got to know the music even better, making the performance even more exciting.
To conclude, we will reflect on the process and hopefully show you a part of our performance.