I love Leverage the series, and have now watched all 5 seasons in quick succession many times. Their plots are usually solid and the cons are persuasive and tricky. Which is why this episode is so disappointing in many ways. They simply didn't do their musical homework:
1. Sheherazade is not "the most difficult violin solo ever", but an orchestral piece with some extensive solos for the concertmaster (first violinist in the orchestra). And these concertmaster solos are certainly not the hardest in the standard literature--nothing like as hard as, say, the solos in Ein Heldenleben by Richard Strauss.
2. It is not the case that the piece leads up to a super-solo at the end. Concertmaster solos are spread throughout the piece, at least one in each of its four movements. The one that is in many ways the hardest is right at the beginning of the first.
3. The idea that Nate could accurately project the timing of a piece as Romantic and fluid as this is silly. That the conductor would suddenly adopt a new unanticipated tempo that would take a minute off the remaining timing is absurd; tempos don't fluctuate THAT much. And the place where the tempo change is announced isn't one! (It's actually an edit between two passages with pretty much the same tempo!)
4. It's an attractive notion that Hardison's teenager skills on the violin could be recalled by hypnotism, and perhaps his confidence could be boosted this way. But the limberness of the fingers and the precision of the bow arm--these would take months, if not years, of exercise and practice to regain, to be able to play at the level that he is supposed to be operating at.
Aldis Hodge does a decent job of faking; he obviously does play the violin, and isn't just waving his hands around near an instrument, finger-syncing to a sound-track. That's not the problem. I just wish the writers could have come up with a plot that didn't embarrass all the professional musicians in the audience...
1. Sheherazade is not "the most difficult violin solo ever", but an orchestral piece with some extensive solos for the concertmaster (first violinist in the orchestra). And these concertmaster solos are certainly not the hardest in the standard literature--nothing like as hard as, say, the solos in Ein Heldenleben by Richard Strauss.
2. It is not the case that the piece leads up to a super-solo at the end. Concertmaster solos are spread throughout the piece, at least one in each of its four movements. The one that is in many ways the hardest is right at the beginning of the first.
3. The idea that Nate could accurately project the timing of a piece as Romantic and fluid as this is silly. That the conductor would suddenly adopt a new unanticipated tempo that would take a minute off the remaining timing is absurd; tempos don't fluctuate THAT much. And the place where the tempo change is announced isn't one! (It's actually an edit between two passages with pretty much the same tempo!)
4. It's an attractive notion that Hardison's teenager skills on the violin could be recalled by hypnotism, and perhaps his confidence could be boosted this way. But the limberness of the fingers and the precision of the bow arm--these would take months, if not years, of exercise and practice to regain, to be able to play at the level that he is supposed to be operating at.
Aldis Hodge does a decent job of faking; he obviously does play the violin, and isn't just waving his hands around near an instrument, finger-syncing to a sound-track. That's not the problem. I just wish the writers could have come up with a plot that didn't embarrass all the professional musicians in the audience...