Seeing the Score

The surest way to make an impression on fellow concertgoers is to bring a score and silently read along during the performance. In a recital at Manhattan's Town Hall last week, Canadian Violinist Hyman Bress threatened to render this excellent ploy obsolete. Behind him, as he played Schoenberg's Fantasy Opus 47, the twelve pages of the score were projected on a screen.

Bress's hopeful theory is that most people can read music or that they can at least "get the pattern." The combination of sound and score is particularly essential in the performance of modern music, Bress believes, to convince bewildered audiences that "they are not being hoodwinked and that the artist is not getting away with murder." Last week's performance suggested some hazards that Bress, 29, may not have anticipated. Spectators on the left of the hall grumped that the violinist's tall silhouette concealed many of the notes. Other spectators seemed so fascinated by the sight of the music that they neglected to listen to it.* But the worst hazard of all was posed by the critics: remarking on Bress's generally dispirited performance, they scanned the huge sheet music behind him, found that at points he did not even know the score.

* Recalling Brahms's response to the suggestion that he go to Don Giovanni at the Vienna Opera: he heard the best performance, he said, when he read the score.

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