SAN FRANCISCO — Most people, if they go see The Nutcracker, do it once a season. Maybe twice, if they’re Tchaikovsky super-fans. Nobody needs to experience this ballet 30 times in a single month, and even the dancers don’t perform in every show.
But every performance is just the job description of the orchestra, which, depending on the company, might spend up to a hundred hours this month in the pit.
For longstanding members of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, this season’s run of 35 Nutcrackers is a drop in the bucket.
“My first full season was in 1993, and I was a substitute [player] before that,” says associate principal second violin Craig Reiss. “You can do the math: multiply 35 times 35, and you get to about where I am.”
That math adds up to over a thousand Nutcrackers played over the course of a career by musicians like Reiss and, among the cohort of six musicians I interviewed, more than 8,000 hours of combined experience playing Tchaikovsky’s score. The corners of these pages are worn from so much creasing. Some books are adorned with penciled portraits, quotes, and inside jokes that attest to years of camaraderie between stand partners.
The answer to my most burning question for the musicians — do they still have to practice? — is yes, at least to an extent. Brian McCarty, associate principal horn since 1977, says he sets aside time to get the feel of certain passages, even after all these years. “What’s the support, are you going to run out of air, do you need to work something with your tonguing or the placement of your mouthpiece?”
For the violins, the overture is notoriously thorny. Says Martin West, SFB’s music director since 2005, “There’s no hiding place. It’s very exposed, and we have 10 first violins, which means we have only six playing the high line. If you can’t do it, well, then we’ve got people paying $300 to hear something that’s not good enough.”
No matter how experienced the musicians are, some passages are tricky for the whole group. “There are bits where if you don’t concentrate, things can run away from you, especially in the pit,” West says.
On the other hand, so much repetition also gives players a safe space to experiment with their technical approaches. Even after decades, that work isn’t necessarily done. Thalia Moore, the orchestra’s assistant principal cello since 1989, says she still finds interest in trying new fingerings if she notices that her stand partner has a different solution to a difficult passage, for example.
Sometimes, these tweaks are made out of necessity. Rare is the orchestral musician who has never been injured, whether with a split lip, a pinched nerve, or tendinitis. “A lot of the time you can work through it,” McCarty says. “You may not feel your best, but it’s probably like being a dancer with a sprained ankle, dancing on it a week later.” Others have had to take weeks or even months off. “When you’re younger it’s not so bad, but as time goes on and on, it does take a toll,” says Julie McKenzie, SFB’s second flute and piccolo since 1991.
The show is physically less demanding of conductors, who have a challenge of their own: motivating the orchestra.
“As the guy in front of the band, it’s very important for me to keep their spirits up,” West says. He’ll play with timings or dynamics in moments where the choreography allows, such as a vamped tag at the end of the “Grandfather’s Dance.” “I try to give something that keeps them on their toes, something to look forward to or maybe even be challenged by.”
Other times, the players make their own games. A now-retired violinist used to come into the pit and turn off his stand light. Some musicians perform the entire 90-minute score from memory.
One year, when a storm knocked out the electricity and the theater could operate only on generators, the sole orchestra rehearsal had to be canceled. “It was so fresh and, of course, the orchestra played brilliantly,” West recalls. “It was like, okay, maybe we should do this every year.”
A more regularly scheduled break in the routine comes each year on Christmas Eve, when a company member — whether a musician, dancer, or stagehand — steps in to conduct the overture dressed as Santa.
As for the rest of the time, it’s essential to try to make the music feel fresh. It helps to listen intently, connecting the individual parts to the collective whole. Says McCarty, “If you can focus across the pit and cue in visually — like, what are the basses’ bows doing? — you can actually kind of hear, even though there’s a delay and the full sound doesn’t always seem to get to you.”
When correcting a drifting concentration, early intervention is key, Moore says. “I found early on that if you can’t keep bringing yourself back when you get distracted, it can permeate your entire life. Once, in between shows, I noticed that my gas gauge was low. So I stopped at a gas station, and suddenly I was on the way back and I noticed that my gas gauge was empty. And I thought, ‘I forgot to pump the gas! I’ve got to go back there because I paid!’ And then I thought, ‘Where was that gas station?’ We call it Nutcracker Brain.”
Indeed, how much novelty can there be in repeating the same score so many times and, for the sake of the choreography, in much the same way?
Marc Taddei, one of SFB’s assistant conductors, says there’s more leeway than you’d think. “The number one aspect of music-making that a conductor can influence is time, it’s true. And yet tempo is only a very small part of what we do. There’s phrasing, there’s nuance, there’s balance. There are colors, textures… the list goes on. The palette of a musician is really broad in that regard.”
Moore recalls when she learned to recognize a particular dancer, even without being able to see the stage, just from the music’s timing. “The same exact music is different for different dancers because they dance differently, so in that way there’s variety to be found even in doing the same thing.”
When spirits need lifting, the audience can help. “If there’s a really cute kid, I’ll look over in one spot to see if they’re enjoying the performance,” McKenzie says. “A lot of the time you’ll get them looking over the pit googly-eyed. That’s always fun.”
For McCarty, the connection runs deeper. “For the first few hundred Nutcrackers, it was hard because it was coming at me instead of me coming at it. But then I started allowing myself to become more emotionally involved. That’s very important for me. I want to give the audience the best experience. I’ll glance at them, watch their reaction. If it’s really quiet, if you could hear a pin drop, you know they’re just glued to what’s onstage. And that’s the goal. It’s the excitement, like in the first act, when Clara gets the nutcracker and she’s just ecstatic about it.”
After all, a musician’s 900th Nutcracker may well be a child’s first — or someone’s last, something the musicians remind themselves when the going gets tough. “You have to give the best show,” West says. “You can’t say, ‘Oh, it’s only a Wednesday afternoon, so it doesn’t matter.’ They all matter.”
Every minute of this music counts, but for the musicians, some moments are extra-special.
Reiss says he always looks forward to playing the “Arabian Dance,” one of the divertissements in Act II’s Land of Sweets. “It’s this duet between the first and second violins, and it’s very slow and evocative. I have a great stand partner, and we’re constantly playing off each other and trying different things.”
Popular with all members of the orchestra is the “Waltz of the Snowflakes,” the syncopated, high-stakes finale of Act I. “It’s just pure, absolutely first-rate symphonic music,” West says. “You could play that anywhere — you don’t need the ballet.”
And everyone loves the Act II Grand Pas de Deux, whose central cello melody — based on a simple, downward scale — unfolds in music of utmost profundity. “It’s an amazing piece of music.” Moore says. “I look at the audience and there are people crying.”
When asked about their least favorite part, no one throws Tchaikovsky under the bus. “It’s so easy to almost discount The Nutcracker, like, ‘Oh, you’re doing Nutcracker again,’” Reiss says. “But there’s a reason that it’s stood the test of time.” He singles out the masterful orchestration of the “Dance of the Sugarplum,” a duet between the bass clarinet and celesta. Taddei agrees. “The idea of using the celesta, the diaphanous nature of Tchaikovsky’s orchestration, it absolutely anticipates composers like Stravinsky and Shostakovich and Prokofiev, people who idolized him, and for good reason. Tchaikovsky has a lot to be praised for, and I think Nutcracker is like a poster child for his influence into the 20th century.”
Make that the 21st century.
In 1988, members of the orchestra (led by then-principal clarinetist Donald O’Brien) each pitched in $75 to produce their own Nutcracker recording at what was then Skywalker Sound, a division of George Lucas’s Lucasfilm. The investment has paid for itself many times over, Moore says. This past year, she and the other participants agreed to donate the proceeds to SFB to fund a composition contest. In February, the orchestra will read and record scores by three composer finalists; the winning score may be developed for future public performances. And thus Nutcracker — a piece that for so many musicians represents routine — will bring into existence something entirely new.
But first, the orchestra will play another 35 shows. Is it at all daunting to face this music again? McKenzie demurs. “You know, by and large, Tchaikovsky wears pretty well over time.”
San Francisco Ballet performs The Nutcracker, choreographed by former SFB artistic director Helgi Tomasson, through Dec. 28. For information, go here.
