Showmanship

musiclover · Joined: 13 Mar 2007 Posts: 1 Location: Brighton

I do think the percussion section of the orchestra is very impressive, but would love to see the cymbal player stand up for those crashing cymbals.
Maybe the sound doesn't suffer if the player remains seated but it's all about showmanship too.
Standing up and holding wide the reverberating cymbals really makes the music climax more impressive and more exciting.

Brighton Philharmonic

Of course it would be lovely for them to stand and show off every time and in theory they dont need much encouragement (!)- but its all a question of practicality.

The showmanship quotient is tempered by how many bars/beats they have before they need to play another instrument and also where on the stage and at what height of riser/stage the instruments are situated.

There is actually very little room back there when a concert has a full percussion section as we had for West Side Story.

I think you can be assured, however, that sitting or standing you will certainly feel the full force of the percussion section in the '1812' at our last concert on 21 March 2010 !