After remembering the problems from playing in similarly cold weather during high school marching band, I wondered how the quartet featuring Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Anthony McGill and Gabriela Montero managed to play with such precise intonation during the cold weather at the inauguration. Simple– the broadcast and webcast audio was recorded in advance in a temperate recording studio.
The New York Times reports, At the Inauguration – The Famous Fingers Were Live, but Their Sound Was Recorded: “The players and the inauguration organizing committee said the arrangement was necessary because of the extreme cold and wind during Tuesday’s ceremony. The conditions raised the possibility of broken piano strings, cracked instruments and wacky intonation minutes before the president’s swearing in (which had problems of its own).”
And for other clarinet nerds, that snazzy clarinet McGill played is a LeBlanc by Backun Legacy. The Times profiled McGill, who is a principal clarinetist for the Met opera earlier in the week, Another Eloquent Chicagoan at Center Stage.