Sprightly

“ Well, I'm back .” – Sam Gamgee       Sorry for the lengthy hiatus. For some of the time, I have a good excuse for not posting – I was away on sabbatical for a year – and for the rest of it, I have an even better one – general malaise, with a side of laziness.   Thanks to those kindly who inquired as to the fate of the blog, and even in a few rare instances, my own well-being. The requests to have the blog start up again were all greatly appreciated and truly touching. Any fellow creeping along a high ledge, hearing the crowd below encouraging him to 'jump!' would be so moved.   After rubbing elbows with the peculiar brand of paranoia extant in the orchestra for many years, I find it difficult to divulge my exact whereabouts during my time off. With the beginning and endpoints shrouded in secrecy, details of my travels to other points around the globe must remain necessarily vague. Flirting with treasonous candor, a few nuggets of information are more tha...

  A pattern seems to be evolving at Ravinia; begin the truncated summer session with a week of Christoph von Dohnányi and end with a week of Lord of the Rings. I'm not sure how many years the eighty-three-year-old maestro has left, but now that the LOTR folks have turned The Hobbit into a trilogy of films, we have five more to go. (If they tackle The Silmarillion, I'll probably throw myself under a train. If Ravinia ever makes us play LOTR, the musical, I might self immolate in the parking lot.)   Sometimes it feels as if Sauron himself takes a hand in scheduling during the summer season. Nothing whips the Orc-hestra into that deadly combination of boredom and anger like fifteen hours of rehearsal spent going over (and over) two Beethoven Symphonies and two Piano Concertos (3, 3, 4 and 5 – don't ask me which is which; I'm desperately trying to put the whole thing behind me). Dohnányi, who has admirable qualities as a musician, also has a disposition which forces ...

The Rivers Festival came to an end on June 9 th , although the onstage activities seemed to take a week off for a Haydn/Martinu/Scriabin program that had nothing to do with rivers, as far as I could tell. Music directors conduct what they want, when they want to, and the rest of the season kind of takes shape around that. However, among other things going on that week, there was some sort of outdoor concert which the MD took part in, and also a bunch of brass players went down the local river in a boat ( He got a real pretty mouth ain't he? - insert your favorite quote from deliverance here. I don't think Dueling Banjos arranged for Tuba and Bass Trombone made it onto the program, but who knows, I wasn't there, and since the nice web-page devoted to the festival has disappeared, everything I'm writing is based on very imprecise recollection).   To be honest, I ducked out that week for some much needed relief in order to play a set of concerts with a local period in...

Rivers Festival, May 9 – June 9     After two weeks of the Rivers Festival, it is hard to determine if we are headed up or down stream. Whatever direction, the journey has had its interesting moments. In spite of the minor drought of audience members, the Festival deserves credit for at least attempting to find some connection to the world outside the concert hall. Heaven knows we need some of that. For those interested in more background information, a handsome website has been put together. Go to {redacted} so.org and look for the link to the Rivers Festival.   Although talking about classical music programming has about as much relevance as a couple of Byzantine priests arguing over which moldering object in the reliquary might be the most holy, I'll risk putting a toe in those waters by saying I have appreciated the Festival for bringing a few seldom heard pieces to the stage. The usual dead, male, European composers will all still be dead, male, and European wh...

My vacation took me far away from the first couple weeks of the latest installment of music director mania. The third week had some underplayed gems on the program - Mendelssohn Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage , Beethoven Consecration of the House , Schumann Rhenish . (Mozart, Piano Concerto no. 21 with Pollini rounded out the show.)   Legitimately a masterpiece, the Schumann is also the least underplayed of the of the three. Nevertheless, I would gladly trade in a few extraneous repetitions of Bruckner 4, Beethoven 3, (and while in the key of E flat, throw in Ein Heldenleben ) for a couple more performances of the Rhenish over the years. Consecration of the House might fall under the rubric of 'forgettable' works by great composers, and even butt of the (hilarious) observation that there are no undiscovered masterpieces. (Then again, there is no bit of received wisdom that can't be shoehorned into a tired old saying by some wag in the musicians' lounge either.) A...

  The orchestral musician needs to know which things are bad and which are good. This usually applies to conductors and repertoire, but it easily spreads to soloists, critics, administrators, and a myriad of other things as well. A quick and easy aid to forming an opinion is to have a default setting, let's say any new thing is bad until it passes a litmus test to qualify for goodness. The reverse is of course true, albeit rare, as nobody wants to play the fool. Much lively debate goes on backstage as players take sides or work towards formulating opinions about the good and the bad. Some folks enjoy the verbal sparring. Others get less pleasure from it or become positively annoyed. If you take the debate too personally, it can be painful to see a sacred cow slaughtered on the altar of prevailing opinion; or else, hearing a perennial scapegoat suddenly elevated might bring on a sort of persecution mania, the feeling everyone around you has mysteriously taken leave of their s...

Last week we played, among other things, the Adagio from Mahler's unfinished 10th symphony. For health reasons Pierre Boulez had to withdraw from two weeks of conducting, passing the baton onto Cristain Macelaru and Asher Fisch. Another notable piece on offer was the Bartók Divertimento for String Orchestra, which has had a notable history in our orchestra, particularly for the bass section, but about which I can write absolutely nothing. Although my fondness for Mahler's music has gone up and down over the years, the 10th symphony has always been a favorite. As a youngster   in the early 1970s , I had the good fortune to be part of what I think was at the time a very rare early performance of the performing version by Deryck Cooke. The mystique behind the piece captivated me - Mahler's supposed obsession with death, the poignant funeral procession for the New York fireman which passed below his hotel window. The sensationalism behind that performance also made a lasting im...