Sprightly

Lincoln Bicentennial Tribute Root - The Battle Cry of Freedom Payne & Bishop - Home, Sweet Home Harris - Symphony No. 6 (Gettysburg) Bennett - Selections from Abraham Lincoln (A Likeness in Symphony Form) Copland - Lincoln Portrait Beethoven - Symphony No. 5 James Gaffigan, conductor James Earl Jones, narrator Kevin Gudahl, speaker Gerard McBurney, speaker I think the last time our orchestra performed the Lincoln Portrait the junior senator from our state did the narration. Since he went on to bigger and better things James Earl Jones stepped in and schooled everybody in the meaning of star power. Still, having the current junior senator do the honors might have made for an entertaining evening. Program notes or a post-concert press conference could have clarified and revised the senator’s narration. Besides, we might have been able to boast hosting one of his final public appearances. Not sure what Beethoven 5 was doing on this concert – Lincoln’s favorite piece? ...

The Forbidden Concert Hall Friday, February 13 Beijing We may have finally found a venue on this tour to match the massive inhuman scale of our repertoire. While exploring Tianamen square I kept bumping into the ghost of Anton Bruckner. Out for a stroll, hands clasped behind his back, the venerable composer nodded in silent approval, dreaming of ways to subjugate another string section beneath his musical fist of iron. It seems as if regular-old socialists and their ‘national’ brethren share some taste in architecture. The scheduled 2-hour morning rehearsal was converted to one of the 45-minute pre concert warm-ups so I did not arrive in the vicinity of the ‘Egg’ (National Center for the Performing Arts) until about 4 in the afternoon. I enjoy arriving at a new concert hall alone, not with the group, in part to see how these architectural marvels yield up their secrets to a more or less ordinary person encountering them with the modest goal of entering, perhaps finding a bathroom, my i...

Shanghaied... If someone on the street in Shanghai offers to take you to a tea ceremony or an art gallery, my advice would be to respectfully decline, that is if you value the contents of your pocket book. Unfortunately, anybody who wants to ‘practice English’ is probably up to no good. Having made a brutally honest assessment of my appeal to members of either sex, I have to conclude the countless offers for more personal sorts of attention attracted while walking alone were nefarious as well. Another depressing fact: the 300 kph (!) train ride from the airport is more than 10x faster than the creaky, lurching transit system in my hometown. Tuesday, February 10 Breakfast: thank heaven for the in-room coffee maker! Another rehearsal this morning, devoted to Bruckner and Haydn. Graciously acknowledging the presence of many Shanghai musicians and students, Haitink changed his usual rehearsal routine and offered up a read-through of the Bruckner 7 Finale before hitting the same old spo...

Cursed! Friday, February 6 Hong Kong. Breakfast of fruit in my room, compliments of the hotel. Afterwards, another rehearsal 11 – 1 devoted to Mozart and Strauss. Same passages covered as at previous rehearsal in Tokyo. On my way out the door after finishing, I glance at my watch. It’s 11:23. There were some warnings about the acoustics at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. It’s sort of a smallish place and the sound was not too clear, although I’m not convinced we did our best to adjust our playing to the room. There is no backstage there to speak of, so much of our stuff had to be stored at the hotel, which was a bit of a drag. After the brief rehearsal, while soaking up some of the nice warm sunny weather, a man in a turban approached me, introduced himself as a ‘Yogi from India’ and began telling me I had a lucky face, along with a number of other insightful observations about my personality – all of them way, way off. This shifty-eyed gentleman was impossible to get rid of, an...

Breakfast of Champions Tuesday, February 3 Today, the titular breakfast – diet coke and a handful of aspirin before heading off to rehearsal, already the fifth one of the tour. Haitink certainly love to rehearse! Today the task at hand was the Bruckner 7th, which for me is kind of like a trip to the dentist – in the wrong hands truly painful, and even with the most skilled practitioner avoiding discomfort becomes an end in itself. Kudos to Haitink for scraping off some of the tartar. Wednesday, February 4 Breakfast at Starbuck’s again and another one of those, creamy, dreamy sandwiches. Today I ate in Shibuya, at the famous Starbuck’s overlooking the intersection where every time the light changes about ten thousand people swarm across. In the evening, another one of those little rehearsals, 5:30 - 6:15 before a 7 PM concert of Mozart 41 and Heldenleben . There’s a pattern forming to the way we rehearse Heldenleben – start at the beginning, then jump to (oops, forgot the number, ...

Coffee and Fish Sunday, February 1 Breakfast at Starbuck’s again today, coffee and a sandwich with a deliciously creamy but unidentifiable filling – tasted vaguely like tuna, which is hardly reassuring. Rehearsal and concert of Mahler 6 today at Suntory Hall, mercifully in walking distance from the hotel. I found the experience of playing Suntory much better than Minato Mirai – easier to hear the inner voices and not at all muddy. Rehearsal was scheduled from 11- 1:30, but Haitink wisely called an audible and let us out early, so there was time for a quick lunch and a quick nap before the concert at 4. Monday, February 2 Due to excessive sake tasting Sunday night, I’m in no mood for breakfast today. Technically, if breakfast is the first thing I ate, I have to include the large quantity of kaiten (conveyor belt) sushi eaten at about 2 PM. The rest of the day was ‘off’ in every sense of the word. (Internet service is getting more and more expensive so I am growing more creative try...

Saturday, January 31 The first post veered way off topic, I’m afraid. I’ll try and stick to the subject matter at hand – a group of Americans flying g to Japan and China to play German and Austrian music under a conductor from the Netherlands. Breakfast today – Grande Latte at Starbucks. Returning to the Hotel, I stopped in the lobby to glance at the bulletin board set up for orchestra members and noted about half of the space was dedicated to breakfast in one way or another. I wonder if any Japanese folks curious about what is going on have had a peek at our board (it’s hard to avoid if you come in the front door, actually) and wondered if the Culinary Society of Ohio might be in town, with the primary mission of tasting the breakfast options available and an auxiliary function of putting on a few concerts. Haitink is pretty adamant about wanting a lot of rehearsals on tour – more than we are used to. Today we had one of these ‘acoustic’ (or sound-check, or warm-up) rehearsals fro...

Order of Lenin, hold the Mayo The last time the orchestra came to Japan I flew with the group and found myself assigned to a uncomfortable center seat beside two of my more talkative colleagues. About eight hours into a thirteen hour flight, when my interest in the shoes sizes of offspring, what was eaten for lunch on certain day, the cost of various consumer items and so on and so forth reached its nadir, I began hatching a bold plan about what to do should I ever be called upon to return to the land of the rising sun. Hardly worth mentioning now, at the time it seemed entirely reasonable to chart an overland journey across Canadian provinces, the frozen tundra of Alaska, fording the Bering Strait, before island hoping my way down out of Siberia, eventually arriving comfortably by bullet train at Tokyo station, twenty two months late. Eventually it struck me that what I ought to do is simply book myself on a different flight, so that’s what I did. There are a few ‘jetlag days’ at th...