Tomorrow, May 5th, marks the 9th anniversary of livestreamed concerts in Berwaldhallen. A selection of the many hundreds of concerts broadcast on the Swedish Radio’s classical channel P2 in the past decade have also been filmed and streamed on Berwaldhallen’s website.
I was there from the very beginning, as I even wrote about here on this blog. At that time, I did a lot of freelance work for Berwaldhallen as a writer and editor, as well as occasionally presenting concerts on stage or as pre-concert talks or interviews. When they were assembling their livestreaming team, they approached me about joining it as a script supervisor. They knew I hadn’t done it before, but they also knew that I was both a proficient score reader and that I wasn’t afraid of going loud, so to speak.
Working as a script supervisor for these types of concert broadcasts can be slightly different depending on the workflow. We have stuck to a kind of semi-preplanned approach where we do at least one dry run of the entire programme – usually when the ensemble has its dress rehearsal – but with few exceptions we avoid predetermined camera cuts or sequences of shots.
For me as a script supervisor, this means loudly describing the music as it is happening, just far enough ahead that the camera operators and producer are able to create an attractive, dynamic visual presentation. I’ve come to expect feeling slightly hoarse after particularly intense programmes that require a lot of narration. My loud, vivid descriptions (that sometimes, I think, would be borderline nonsensical to outsiders) have become something of an in-joke at Berwaldhallen.
At the time of writing, there is still a video up on Berwaldhallens Instagram from when we rehearsed on May 5th ahead of the inaugural livestream. The video gives a small glimpse of the kind of running commentary I give but not nearly as heated as it can get.
Before sitting down with the others in the broadcast studio, though, I need to go through and prepare the scores. This can take more or less time depending on the complexity of the music, but with experience I have found that it usually takes me somewhere between two to three times the duration of a piece for large-scale orchestral works. Chamber or vocal music will naturally be quicker to prepare as there are simply fewer musicians, fewer parts, to keep track of.
But it is not as simple as more players equal more time. A typical symphony by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, for example, would be comparably much quicker to prepare than one by Gustav Mahler. Not only did Mahler write for larger forces, but also and more importantly, his instrumental arrangements are much more complex and nuanced which requires much more from me in terms of planning ahead and choosing what to mention in the overall texture.
Indeed, that very first livestreamed concert featured Mahler’s fifth symphony, conducted by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra’s then-music director and Mahler aficionado, Daniel Harding. Back then, I tried to include as many details as I could which resulted in me peppering the camera operators with instructions. Over time and with experience, I have developed a pretty good sense for how much is too much, and what information is most valuable to relay.
A common misconception when I describe this job to others is that they think I call the shots, that I decide what to show on camera. That is however (mostly) false, as the camera operators would tell you in no uncertain terms. They are responsible for the visual narrative, but they are simultaneously dependent on the information I give them. We have different and equally important roles, but ultimately, they decide what to show.
Already back in that blog post from 2017, I describe my desire to subtly educate the viewer in the intricacies of the music by, for example, promoting more than just the obvious solos or prominent melodies. This remains a cornerstone of pretty much all my work, not only when preparing scores for streamed concerts.
Our most recent broadcast was Friday April 24th and included works such as Esa-Pekka Salonen’s symphonic poem Nyx and Witold Lutosławski’s Paganini Variations for piano and orchestra, featuring the brilliant South Korean soloist Yeol Eum Son. The broadcast will remain available on Berwaldhallen’s website until May 24th – I highly recommend checking it out.