Song & Dance: When Ballet Orchestra Players Step Into the Spotlight

By Brian Wise | From the September-October issue of Strings Magazine

Of the more than 40 ballets that George Balanchine choreographed to Igor Stravinsky’s music, few have achieved blockbuster status like a pair of works that feature the solo violin: the Stravinsky Violin Concerto and Duo Concertant. The choreographer once called his ballet version of the concerto his “greatest accomplishment,” and both scores—which Stravinsky composed for the violinist Samuel Dushkin—seem to enjoy a larger presence in the dance repertory than on concert stages.

Given the opportunities to perform such works, principal violin or cello positions in ballet orchestras tend to be highly coveted. But these roles come with tradeoffs. The ballet orchestra concertmaster who toils over a 25-minute concerto does so within a subterranean pit and with the dancers’ needs continuously front of mind.

“You can’t in the moment decide, ‘Oh, I’m feeling really good, it’s sounding great, so I’m going to stretch this tempo,” says Michael Jinsoo Lim, concertmaster of the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra in Seattle. “That’s where you’re locked into what the dancers need. But in terms of expressiveness and emotional feeling, you still have a great amount of spontaneity and things you can feel free with.”

Lim, who will perform the Stravinsky Violin Concerto as part of an all-Balanchine program in November, says he relishes being part of a larger theatrical presentation. “Sometimes there’s an extra inspiration that comes from sharing that type of experience and sharing perspectives about these works.”

Balanchine lavished considerable attention on the Stravinsky Violin Concerto, devoting more than 100 hours of rehearsal to its 1972 premiere at New York City Ballet. He had previously adapted the same concerto for his Balustrade, a 1941 work for the Ballets Russes whose choreography and costumes have since been lost. Both the original and the remake are known for their spellbinding pas de deux but also the folksy playfulness of the outer movements. Stravinsky was pleased with Balanchine’s initial results, calling the ballet “a dance dialogue in perfect coordination with the dialogues of the music.”

Ballet orchestra principals must adopt a similar attitude when performing solo concertos. Arturo Delmoni, one of two concertmasters of the 65-member New York City Ballet (NYCB) Orchestra, recalls once being asked to play the first movement of Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 at an unbearably fast tempo. “It’s kind of rough going for the violin,” he says of the final minutes. “The violin has kind of a descant in which we’re playing really fast notes in addition to the theme. The ballet master at the rehearsal said, ‘Can we move this a little bit? There’s not much going on up here.’ It was already being pushed to a speed that was impossible to play.”

Delmoni says the dancers’ requests were “incredibly reasonable” and a compromise was reached before the performances. Still, “each time that piece has come back, I’ve had to plead with them to not run it too fast because I can’t get all the notes in,” he adds with a laugh. 

The Art of Flexibility

Sometimes disagreements hinge on stylistic discrepancies. Eric Sung, principal cello of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, remembers being tasked with learning a group of solo cello pieces by Philip Glass for a 2021 ballet choreographed by Dwight Rhoden. He arrived at the first tech rehearsal to find that the dancers had been preparing for a darker, more angular-sounding performance.

“I started playing with my conception of it and, as I’m playing, the choreographer said, ‘We need it to be a lot angrier and kind of ugly,’” Sung recalls. “As I started watching, I began to understand: without being explicit, it was representing his struggle, or maybe mankind’s struggle, through Covid.” Sung adds, “Seeing the corresponding body movement was so impactful. When I came out to the stage for a solo bow, it was the biggest applause I’ve ever heard in the opera house.”

Sung finds that the dancers’ counts—which are distinct from musical meters and inscrutable to the uninitiated—can influence his interpretation. “They’ll ask me to accentuate certain rhythms or certain sounds in order for them to latch onto their choreography,” he says, alluding to Gateway to the Sun, a ballet by Nicolas Blanc based on Anna Clyne’s Dance for solo cello and orchestra.“Then, it’s like voicing, where the music takes on a different shape.”

Delmoni of NYCB marvels at how many rehearsals dancers require, sometimes spanning several weeks. “But I try to be part of the rehearsal experience,” he says. “That way, I can at least give them some warning about what I want to do and see if they’re willing to bend a little bit. That usually works very well.”

Delmoni may issue such warnings about a planned rubato in Barber’s Violin Concerto or an artful pause during the violin solo in Swan Lake, for which Balanchine choreographed a standalone pas de deux. “It’s one of my favorite solos, but I like to linger and hold back. The dancers are more than willing to go a little faster or a little slower if they know it in advance, and they have time to work it out.”

Why Concertos Are Danceable 

Choreographers may turn to concertos because they emphasize dramatic struggle, confrontation, and resolution in their form. Balanchine was especially drawn to the so-called concertante principle, as seen in Concerto Barocco, based on Bach’s Double Concerto in D minor, and Duo Concertant, which will be performed at NYCB this September. The latter is especially striking in how it places the musicians onstage with the dancers.

A pas de deux, the piece opens with two dancers—one male, one female—standing beside the concertmaster and pianist and attentively listening for several minutes. Balanchine told Peter Martins, who danced the premiere along with Kay Mazzo, “I think in the first movement, Peter, you just stand and listen to the music because this dance is about music. I want the audience to listen, to really listen.”

Aware that a broken string could derail an entire performance, some violinists obsessively change their E strings before playing the Duo Concertant. Others simply take the opportunity to marvel at the dancers’ physicality. “That was the first time I’ve been onstage interacting with dancers in that way,” says Lim, recalling a performance in Vail, Colorado. “It struck me one night as we were performing, just the incredible speed and athleticism that they have. Sometimes you don’t notice it from the audience because their job is to make it look easy and elegant.”

Contemporary choreographers and directors have built on Balanchine’s use of onstage musicians. Aaron Schwebel, concertmaster of the National Ballet of Canada Orchestra, founded Echo Chamber, a Toronto-based troupe that merges contemporary dance with chamber music, often in theatrical stagings. In a recent production of Poetry in Motion—featuring Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending—Schwebel sits on top of three supine dancers before all rise and the dancers evoke bird-like gestures. In a staging of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, Schwebel drew on the composer’s description of “music of stone, formidable granite sound,” and stationed the musicians on statuesque platforms among the dancers.

“The reason I fell into this was from my work with the National Ballet,” Schwebel says. “It started with little conversations with dancers and becoming interested in their experience with the music that we play and what jumps out to them. The whole idea is for the musicians to be as integrated as possible into the movement.”

Regardless of the staging, ballet orchestra musicians say there is a lot less dawdling allowed during a performance. Pauses between movements must be brief, leaving soloists little time to wipe their brow or adjust their shoulder rest.

“Once you play the first movement, then you’re on to the second,” explains Denise Tarrant, concertmaster of Houston Ballet, who performed Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in June to choreography by Stanton Welch. The production dramatized the concerto as the stages of a woman’s life from the youthful vigor of spring to the pensiveness of old age in winter.

“One thing I’ve worked really hard on is being in the moment. If you start thinking, ‘I wish I’d played that phrase a little better,’ then it’s over for you.” Tarrant adds that her solo part was amplified—a standard practice in orchestra pits—meaning that soft phrases require less exertion.

Nearly all of the ballet musicians interviewed were quick to stress that great concertos will stand on their own without visual stimuli. But dance can bring new interpretive layers to a favorite warhorse. “Sometimes, there’s an extra inspiration that comes from sharing perspectives about these works,” says Lim. “You see how dancers react to the music, how choreographers interpret the music, and the worlds that come alive from staging, lighting, sets, and costumes. This all contributes to a whole that is so much greater than the sum of its parts.”