How does an audience’s knowledge of the piece you’ll be performing change your interpretation?
If I’m conducting a new work, or a piece that I’m fairly certain most audience members are unfamiliar with, I’ll prepare it differently than if I’m preparing the US National Anthem or a Beatles song.
(And I’ll prepare the Beatles song differently if it’s an acapop rendition versus a completely reimagined arrangement.)
If it’s familiar, I lean on the palimpsests of performances past – I trust the recognition, and make sure that we reflect the past performances. The ensemble should be trying to reignite archived emotions in the listeners.
If it’s a new or unfamiliar work, we have to work extra hard to communicate meaning. There is no meaning already stored in the listener, so we have to provide it.
I’m also going to program more carefully leading into and out of a new piece, because I want to emotionally prepare the listener for that piece. That’s less important with a familiar piece.
Also, I am likely to give a spoken introduction to a new or unfamiliar piece, to help guide the audience to the right headspace. If I were programming a rendition of Stevie Wonder’s Superstition, though, I might start it “cold” – trusting the opening bass line of the song to immediately raise an emotional response with the audience.
What other ways do you differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar works as you communicate them with an audience?