From the Podium...

Steven Spielberg and John Williams

2011-12-28T13:32:00.000-08:00

The two are inextricably linked, from Jaws to E.T.and The Adventures of Tin Tin. Spielberg is arguably the finest storyteller in film. My son says there is no one better at portraying the ravages of war, and I'm inclined to agree. With War Horse, Spielberg once again returns to the subject of a world at war. This time, it's The Great War, and the battle scenes are so vivid it's hard to imagine either side emerging victorious.

Say what you want about the film's merits. What occupied my thoughts during much of the film was that John Williams -- one of the greatest film composers of all time -- was at Spielberg's side, once again.

I have always wondered about the working relationship between these two men. Having met and worked with Williams, I know that he is an uncommanly nice man in an uncompromising business. When you hear a chorus in a Spielberg film, you can be sure it was the director's idea. But it has become impossible to think of the first great Spielberg film, Jaws, without also recalling those low tones in the string bass -- one short, the next even shorter, a half-step higher -- that tell us the shark is beneath us, always lurking. One could argue that these two notes are as famous as the four which open Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. No one could have known then what we know now, that no matter how challenging it was to build a viable, realistic-looking shark (and you thought the eponymous character's late appearance in the film was a dramatic tactic!), Williams had it in his hip pocket all along. And that is a testament to his genius.

But the music doesn't quite get it right with War Horse. This is the first Spielberg/Williams collaboration where the music is pervasive. That's not necessarily a bad thing: think of those great anthems from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Superman, or the bittersweet melodies in Schindler's List, and you welcome it.

Thomas Newman, one of the busiest film composers today, takes a different approach. In any of his film scores (Road to Perdition, American Beauty, and The Shawshank Redemption, to name a few), you are never aware of the music. I've seen Shawshank dozens of times, and am still, to this day, never conscious of the music. Newman is proud of this, having gone on the record to say he prefers "to deepen the action through subtext, as opposed to commenting on the drama." Perhaps this is one reason why Newman is ever malleable to the demands of the director, and is proud of that. You'll never hear his music on a symphony pops concert. And maybe that's not such a bad thing.

Williams's ability to take an idea and make it his own has always been a trademark. The parabolic trumpets in Star Wars are right out of those in Ravel's Daphnis. Others may recognize Gustav Holst's The Planets in some of the battle scenes. But the end result is never derivative; it always ends up sounding like John Williams.

Which is why, during the opening of War Horse, I was surprised when Ralph Vaughan-Williams immediately came to mind. (Williams has always had a love for English composers.) There are also tips of the hat to Aaron Copland. But what really perplexed me was the direct quote from Star Trek, played by french horns just as Alexander Courage scored it for the 1960s hit television series. James Horner (Titanic) is unabashedly unafraid to steal from his favorite composers: think of how he lifts a phrase directly from Copland's Our Town in Field of Dreams, or from Mahler's Seventh Symphony and Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf in the animated film, Land Before Time. But I've never known Williams to do this, until War Horse.

Writing music for film can be tricky. The brilliant composer, John Corigliano, who wrote luminous scores for "The Red Violin" and "Altered States," recently had an experience where his music was not to the director's liking, and was not used. (Corigliano was still paid.) In most cases, music written for a particular movie does not belong to the composer, who later may be surprised to hear his music in other media, without accreditation.

John Williams teamed up with Itzhak Perlman and the Pittsburgh Symphony for a recording ("Cinema Serenade") of movie tunes for solo violin and orchestra. The session began with Perlman in the middle of the orchestra, with a microphone above him, but early takes were not to his liking. Finally, the producer moved him back to the front of the orchestra, and things progressed nicely from that point on. Of course, Williams's music for Schindler's List was included, and Perlman's rendition was as glorious as it was in the film. Returning to the green room (which had been converted into a studio) during each session break, Perlman had much to say, but Williams always deferred to the producer. He was also very kind to other composers represented on the disc. (Of Andre Previn's contribution, he shook his head in admiration, saying "boy, they just don't write music like that anymore.")

You would be hard-pressed to find equal doses of genius and modesty in another human being. When I saw him last summer at Tanglewood, Williams, now just shy of eighty, was his usual jovial self, trading niceties with staff and musicians.

The Adventures of Tin Tin is a movie I would have seen by now had it come out years ago, when my children were younger. But I will see it, if only to hear the Williams score. I am still, and always will be, a devoted fan. I can hardly wait to see (and hear) what he and Spielberg have wrought with Lincoln. (And Jurassic Park IV is on the way . . .)

A good performance can only come from a good start

2011-12-19T13:21:00.000-08:00

At the dress rehearsal for a performance of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, and then again at the warmup two days later, I had the winds play the opening two bars several times. They were probably scratching their heads: "Why is the conductor having us play these 13 notes over and over again, when there are so many other spots that still need touching up?" Of course, they were right. But, reminded of two past events with another masterwork -- one told, one experienced -- I thought the better of it, and stuck to my guns.

Someone told me a great Leonard Bernstein story that sounded like vintage Lenny. (No, I never met the man, but many of my colleagues and friends were fortunate to study with him, and hearing them recount their stories has given me great vicarious pleasure.) One went like this: after a party that went on all night, Bernstein -- cigarette in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other -- went to his desk in preparation for a rehearsal later that morning of Tchaikovsky's Symphony no. 6, "Pathetique."

He opened his score to the first page.

The music opens with contrabassi, playing an open fifth, E and B. A solo bassoon enters, meandering within that fifth like an inchworm -- up two steps, down a step; then again, up two steps, down one. Again, a third time. It's as if, after months and months of deep sleep, a grizzly bear is slowly waking up. Or maybe it's Tchaikovsky himself, unable to find the key of relief that will unlock him from yet another debilitating depression.

This is hypnotic music, in a world of its own, and it had cast a spell on Bernstein, for he never turned the page. He sat and studied the score for over an hour, but he never strayed from those opening bars. For Bernstein, the whole world of Tchaikovsky's Pathetique was in that solo bassoon and the low strings.

When I was a conducting student at Yale, the six or seven students would share a concert at the end of the year, with four of us dividing up the symphony on the second half. Our teacher, Mr. Mueller, usually gave me the finale -- my first year, it was Beethoven's Seventh Symphony; a couple of years later, we did Symphony no. 3, "Eroica." But when we did Tchaikovsky's Symphony no. 6, I was given the first movement. (He said the first movement was nicht für Kinder -- a William Steinberg phrase that he oft-quoted -- but somebody had to do it.) After the performance of the Tchaikovsky, speaking of the climax in the development, Mr. Mueller criticized me for being 'too Catholic, not enough Russian Orthodox.' Like many of his pedagogical urgings, it took me years to figure out what he had meant.

But what I won't ever forget was how the symphony began. The opening fifth in the basses was compressed, making it sound more like a tri-tone (sometimes known as L'intervallo del diavolo). It was awful. To make matters worse, a cellist seated near the basses started to giggle. Things soon got out of control. Any hope for the music to dramatically unfold over the next twenty minutes was ruined. It shook me to the core of my being. The way our curriculum was set up, we had one concert a year in which to shine, and this was my moment. Think of an ice skater who, in some national or international event, opens with triple axle and falls to the ice. That's how I felt at the time. Why go on?

I asked Mr. Mueller what he would have done, given the same situation, if he would have started over again. He said yes.
And so I resolved, from that day forward, if something did not begin well, I would stop and take it over again, from the top.

Ten years later with the Pacific Symphny Institute Orchestra, the solo trumpet kicked the first few notes of his solo in Ravel's orchestration to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. The trumpeter was a brilliant player, but also ultra-sensitive, and I knew that continuing would likely diminish him, as well as the performance. So I wheeled around, cheerfully said to the audience, "we're going to try that again!" Yes, we. Because I took a measure of the blame. If a player does not play his best, it's possible, maybe even likely, that there was something I could have done to help him play it better. (The late great conductor, Calvin Simmons, who opened his first concert as music director of the Oakland Symphony with Mussorgsky's Pictures, was luckier than I. He bounded on stage, took a bow without the orchestra, and as he came out of his bow, turned around to give a downbeat to the solo trumpet. I knew Simmons had caught the trumpeter off guard, but he played it brilliantly nonetheless.)

And so, we started Pictures once again. And this time, the trumpet solo was perfect. He nailed it. And it set a postive tone for the entire piece.

That's why, years later, I had the Hartt students play the opening bars of Symphonie Fantastique over and over again. In my mind, I was setting them up for success. The first two bars are undeniably difficult, and Berlioz's exacting dynamic directions . . .

begin softly, gradually increase the volume, and then, at the end of the crescendo play the next bar suddenly softer still, attacking it accurately and together, and then hold it, in perfect intonation

. . . are often shortchanged. After they played it correctly once, I had them do it again, and again still, so that their success was habit-forming.

Sure enough, in the performance, the winds played these two bars beautifully, which set the tone for what would be an exhilarating performance. All's well that begins well.

Berlioz and his Symphonie Fantastique

2011-12-12T21:30:00.000-08:00

Two nights ago, the Hartt Symphony Orchestra performed Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, and it was an unexpected thrill. Why? Because, a few days earlier, we were anything but ready. One might chalk it up to the hectic lives of students and their busy schedules at the end of a semester. But I can remember some fine performances with other orchestras where things went down to the wire. I am hesitant to praise my students too strongly, because I fear they may carry the belief that waiting until the last minute to properly prepare one's part leads to a more exciting performance.

Meryl Streep once said, "Sometimes under-preparation is very good, because it instills fear, and fear is galvanizing. It makes you break out of yourself. If you're prepared, then you think you're ready, and if you think you're ready, then you're not ready."

A few years ago, a snowstorm forced the Hartford Symphony to move a concert to the following evening. Because the guest artist (the fine cellist, Julie Albers, playing Stephen Albert's Cello concerto) had a previously scheduled engagement in Princeton, the orchestra had to fill her spot with a musical selection that would be performed without rehearsal.

Since it was Valentine's Day (Prokofiev's ballet music to Romeo and Juliet was already slated for the second half), I put Tchaikovsky's Overture-Fantasy to Romeo and Juliet in place of the Albert concerto. To this day, whenever the subject comes up with my friend, Leonid Sigal (concertmaster of the HSO), he resolutely maintains that it was the best performance of the Tchaikovsky he's ever done. High praise, coming from a Russian artist who has played this work many, many times.

Was it really that good? And if so, was the excellence of our performance in part due to the fact that every player was sitting on the edge of his/her seat, ready for any cue that would come his/her way? Certainly. Meryl Streep would have loved it. [Hmm -- after practicing the violin 6 hours a day for a month (in preparation for her role in "Music from the Heart"), maybe she could have joined us.]

But Tchaikovsky' Romeo and Juliet is not nearly as difficult as Symphonie Fantastique, which always sounds like a wild ride no matter how much rehearsal time has gone into it. As well as my students played it, I will always wonder -- could it have been better? Maybe, maybe not.

Several years ago, the great Polish conductor, Jerzy Semkow, conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony in Rachmaninoff's Symphony no. 2. The first rehearsal was unforgettable, on-the-edge-of-your-seat stuff. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the subsequent rehearsals and performances had none of the energy and vigor of the initial playthrough. But the audience did not know what I knew: before that first rehearsal, the orchestra had spent all morning recording short popular melodies with Itzahk Perlman, violinist, and John Williams, conductor ("Cinema Serenade"). When you've spent hours and hours playing (and replaying) little bonbons from Yentl, Out of Africa, and Il Postino, you can hardly wait to sink your teeth into a big piece of meat like Rachmaninoff. And so, later that day, when Semkow -- a favorite of the orchestra who had not been in Pittsburgh for a long time -- ascended the podium, the orchestra took on the persona of an uncaged lion, and the playing was electric. But by the end of the week, the orchestra was more than ready, and the effect was stultifying.

There are other entertainers who would agree with Meryl Streep. Bill Cosby hates to rehearse, but one cannot deny the brilliance of his standup comedy, or his work on television. In preparation for a film, Dame Judi Dench does not like to memorize her script. And yet, on the screen -- whether as 'M' in James Bond or as Hecuba in Hamlet -- she delivers her lines like she owns them, as if she has written them herself.

The late Carlos Kleiber, regarded by many to be the best conductor of the late 20th century, performed in a manner that suggested he was making it up as he went along. During the latter part of his career, his public appearances were few and far between, as he demanded extraordinary amounts of rehearsal time that few orchestras would give him. Perhaps the essence of his disarming spontaneity was supported by the high level of preparation he required from his players.

Who is to know, really, what is best?
I just hope my students don't wait until the last minute to practice.

Brahms

2011-11-13T00:31:00.001-08:00

My orchestra performed Brahms's Symphony no. 3 Friday night. It will go down as one of the most satisfying concerts of my career.

Also on the program was Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra and Walton's Portsmouth Point Overture, a rambunctious work that, with all of its rhythmic complexity, is constantly darting this way and that. (In a rehearsal of this work with the Aspen Festival Orchestra back in 1982, Jorge Mester became so frustrated with the strings' inability to negotiate all of the metrical land mines that he exasperatingly placed his baton on his stand, asked concertmaster Ruben Gonzalez to take over the rehearsal, and left!)

The Walton is very tricky, and there were times early on during the rehearsal process when I wondered how much time it would take to get a five minute piece ready for performance. But once the players understood it to be an English hootenanny, we were fine. The Brahms, however, was another matter.

Kurt Masur calls Symphony no. 3 "the most personal" of the four symphonies by Brahms. It's also the hardest. And the first movement alone may be the single most difficult symphonic stretch for any orchestra.

You might say Le Sacre du Printemps is harder. Perhaps it was in 1913, or even 1923, but nowadays the best youth orchestras can handle it with dispatch. Elliott Carter's Symphony of Three Orchestras? Sure, but if you make a mistake, only you will know. Anything by Mozart, or Mendelssohn? Again, yes, but in works by these composers there are instances of great momentum, with plenty of opportunities to let go. This never happens in the first movement of Brahms's Third.

With few exceptions, you won't find youth orchestras playing the symphonies of Brahms. Youngsters do well with Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. I've done Beethoven's Fifth Symphony with orchestras at every level, from the Pacific University's town 'n gown orchestra (where some of the ladies would blow the dust off of their violins once a week), on up to the world-class Pittsburgh Symphony. I am as proud of what the former did as I am of the latter. (My brother attended both performances, and preferred that of the town 'n gown bunch.) Not all of Beethoven's symphonies are this way -- the Fourth is very difficult, and that may be part of the reason why it is so infrequently performed. But the Fifth, to quote Edmund Morris, has a universality to it. Everybody gets it.

Not so with Brahms. Many people know the music to be great, but that doesn't mean they want to spend time with it. Rachmaninoff's piano concertos will always be more popular. Brahms wrote beautiful song cycles, but those by Schubert and Schumann are the ones we often hear on vocal recitals. The piano music is astounding, but not as popular as that of Chopin, Liszt or Beethoven. That being said, you will hear the chamber music of Brahms on many programs. Same with the four symphonies.

But the Third Symphony is in a world of its own. In what other symphony from the standard repertory does a composer conclude all four movements in quiet repose? When I thought about how to order the pieces on this program, I had the brief temptation to put the Brahms first, then the Walton and Britten on the second half, so as to bring the program to a rousing close. But then I remembered what the great conductor, Bernhard Klee, told me many years ago when he commented on a program that began with the 3rd Brahms and ended with Schubert's epic Symphony in C major. He said, "This is a travesty, for nothing can come after the Brahms."

One of my first lessons at Yale with Otto-Werner Mueller was on the first movement of Brahms's First Symphony. Mr. Mueller kept stopping me because he didn't feel I was showing the right sound. (Imagine that -- a conductor actually projecting a certain kind of sound.) At the time, I thought he'd gone mad. But then he instructed me to fly to Los Angeles to watch Carlo Maria Guilini conduct the work, and I began to get the idea.

With Brahms, sound is everything. (One conductor told me that, after he lost nearly a hundred pounds, he couldn't get his orchestra to play Brahms the way he wanted. Much to his musical -- if not physical -- satisfaction, he promptly put the weight back on.) In the first movement of the Third Symphony, sound is paramount, but rhythm is king. It's in 6/4, meaning there are 3 subdivisions to every beat (instead of the customary 2), which means that within every beat there is that extra little semi-beat where something can go wrong. Additionally, Brahms is constantly thwarting the natural rise and fall of the rhythm, so that a phrase such as "When are we going to Pillsbury Hill," which has natural stress points on "WHEN are we GO-ing to PILLS-bury HILL," instead with Brahms comes out sounding, "when are WE going TO pillsbu-RY hill." After awhile, you feel like you are continually putting the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble.

And there is that issue of momentum (or lack thereof); in this music, you can never rest! In the middle movements, Brahms does release the tension somewhat, only to return to it once again in the volatile finale.

The late, great Carlos Kleiber was once asked to conduct a Brahms cycle with the Chicago Symphony, and he asked for 6-8 rehearsals. (Four is the standard.) The management wrote back, "Oh Maestro, you won't need that much rehearsal time, as the orchestra has recently performed all the Brahms symphonies." Kleiber's response? "In that case, make it 15." (The invitation was rescinded.)

The story may be partly apocryphal, but you get the idea. After Friday's performance, I'm certain the members of the Hartt Symphony Orchestra get the idea. Their rendering of Brahms's Symphony no. 3, and of the first movement in particular, had a majesty to it. They were rightly thrilled, and the audience (which properly waited several moments at the close of the symphony before clapping) responded with equal parts exhilaration and exhaustion. Brahms does that to you.

Gidon Kremer at the White Light Festival

2011-11-11T08:29:00.001-08:00

Alex Ross recently wrote about Gidon Kremer in the New Yorker, where he agreed with Herbert von Karajan that Kremer is the greatest living violinist.

Very strong words indeed. But from Kremer's recent performance at the White Light Festival at Lincoln Center, I'm certain Mr. Ross felt justified in going out on that limb.

Many violinists would take exception to this belief. They complain of Kremer's penchant for performing concertos with the music in front of him, rather than from memory, as most violin soloists do. Some violinists have told me that Kremer doesn't always play in tune.

To their complaints I say so what. Listen to his music. Listen to the poetry that comes from this man.

During my residency with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Kremer was a guest, performing the Sibelius Violin Concerto. (Yes, he used music.) This was a piece I thought I knew, a piece I had performed before and several times since. But no performance I have heard or conducted can compare to what Kremer did with this masterwork.

The Sibelius concerto is hard, really hard. Some would say that Beethoven's is the hardest. (Joseph Silverstein told me that if you can get past those opening octaves, you have a fighting chance.) Others might say Brahms's, or Tchaikovsky's. But Sibelius's violin concerto is difficult for the orchestra, too.

On this occasion, Kremer played in a way that separates him from the rest. (Even Nikolaj Znaider -- who gave a brilliant performance of the concerto with Colin Davis and the LSO earlier in the White Nights Festival -- must take a back seat to Mr. Kremer.)

There was nothing technically flashy about Kremer's performance, and there was even the occasional note that was not pitch-perfect. But in the controlled frenzy of his rendering of the finale, the soulful quality to the second movement, and an earth-shattering moment in the first movement, Kremer stands apart.

It happened not in the cadenza, but after it. For those of you who may not know, a cadenza is a place where a soloist can shine on his own, independent of the orchestra. Sometimes a cadenza is brief (Bach, Mozart), sometimes long (in Shostakovich, it can be an entire movement). Sibelius was himself a violinist, a frustrated one at that; given a choice, he would much rather have been a violin virtuoso than a great composer.

This frustration is evident in the cadenza, but I had no idea of it until I heard Kremer play it. And then, when he came to the end of the cadenza, there was something Kremer did (or didn't do . . . I'm not quite sure which) which made me break down.

At the end of a cadenza, a violinist is often asked to exalt, to be heroic, and the close of Sibelius's cadenza confirms this. In any other concerto, the orchestra would re-enter with great excitement and confirmation. In Sibelius, there is none of this, as the bassoons murmur along, stuck in the mud. (They don't even have the courtesy to wait for the violin to finish before they come in.) The rest of the orchestra straggles back in, one by one, and the violin soloist follows suit, almost catatonic. Think of a child, trying to please a parent to no avail, and you get the idea.

In short, the orchestra ignores the soloist, just as late 19th century European orchestral world ignored Sibelius the violinist. In an instant, Gidon Kremer brought all of this to bear, and I soon realized that I had stopped breathing. Backstage afterwards, I fumbled, trying to find the right words to compliment Mr. Kremer. It was useless. But he knew. For him, this kind of tacit praise is probably a regular occurence.

Oh, and one other thing -- thinking that I'd like to communicate with him at some point (when the words would hopefully come to me), I asked for a way to contact him. He not only gave me his home address, he gave me his phone number.

Among the great violinists living today, whom do you know would do such a thing?

Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra at the White Light Festival

2011-11-05T19:58:00.000-07:00

Maestro Colin Davis and the LSO did an all-Sibelius program at the White Light Festival at Lincoln Center last month. The program: Violin Concerto, with Nicolaj Znaider, and Symphony no. 2. The wondrous playing at this concert made me wonder why the London Symphony is not more frequently mentioned in the great orchestra discussion.

Who are they? Certainly the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, and depending on your point of view, members of the Big Five, such as the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra. (Philadelphia and Boston, in particular, are truly great, but the former's financial problems and the latter's very public search for a music director have put a temporary chink in their armour.) Others have their favorites, such as the Concergebeow of Amsterdam, or other top orchestras in the U.S., such as those in St. Louis, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh. After a recent appearance in Carnegie Hall, the music writer Alex Ross insisted that the Minnesota Orchestra (under the leadership of Osmo Vanska) be a part of that discussion.

Except for a few of these, I have heard all of the above-listed orchestras live in performance, most of them in their home hall. Except for a rehearal I attended ten years ago at the Barbican in London, where Colin Davis rehearsed Berlioz' Beatrice and Benedict in preparation for a concert performance, I had never heard the London Symphony in person. What I heard a few weeks ago made me think that Avery Fisher Hall is one of the great acoustic wonders of the world. (Believe me when I tell you it is most certainly not.) On this night, the LSO sounded like the greatest orchestra I have ever heard in my entire life. The entire concert was a revelation.

Let's start with the Sibelius Violin Concerto. But first, a little background.

The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is noted for their performing without a conductor. Although it sometimes lacks for a singular interpretation, it is a remarkable ensemble. And there is one thing that this orchestra does as well if not better than any other conductor/orchestra combination: accompany. It pains me as a conductor to write these words, but the Orpheus has a way of tapping directly into the soloist that maestro-driven orchestras cannot do. When things go awry, orchestra players can be divided over whom to follow: the conductor, or the soloist? Because, sad to say, the conductor sometimes just gets in the way. Famously, before a 1962 performance of Brahms's Piano Concerto no. 1, Leonard Bernstein introduced the piece by warning the audience how he and the pianist, Glen Gould, were distinctly at odds in their collaboration. The message was, 'listen at your own peril.'

The Orpheus can accompany any of the concertos by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, etc. Not so the Brahms, if only because it demands a large orchestra. Same with the Sibelius.

And on this October night, the collaboration between Colin Davis and Nicolaj Znaider was a thing of beauty. Among the great conductors in the world today, Davis is renowned for his lack of ego, which serves him particular well when accompanying. There is a great deal of give-and-take in conducting an orchestra with a soloist. But the Sibelius concerto (which I have led several times in the last year alone) makes unusual demands of the conductor, as the piece puts a high premium on rhythmic elasticity, ensemble control, and balance. The audience wants to be able to hear the soloist at all times. The Sibelius concerto is a challenge in this respect, occasionally requiring an orchestral dynamic level bordering on inaudibility. And with someone like Znaider -- who invites you in, rather than throwing his sound out -- the conductor must go to even greater lengths to make sure the soloist can always be heard.

On this night, Davis went one better -- he had the LSO playing like a chamber ensemble, as if the players were huddled together in a large sitting room, sharing music together, intimately, confidently. From where I sat, it appeared that Davis was hardly moving, inviting the players to listen, rather than follow. I forgot that there were nearly one hundred musicians on the stage.

The Second Symphony was something else. (For the second half, I moved closer to the stage for a better view.) From the beginning, the LSO sounded less like an ensemble firmly in the command of a venerated maestro than a great orchestra unleashed. With his gestures, Davis seemed to be telling the players, "you know how this goes, so go ahead and play it, and I'll be here when you need me." And this could likely only happen when an orchestra and conductor have been working together for more than a generation, something that no longer happens with the major orchestras of the world. Smaller orchestras are prone to having one sitting music director for twenty five years or more, but the legacies of Szell/Cleveland and Ormandy/Philadelphia are a thing of the past.

On this night, however, I was reminded of what can happen between a great conductor and great orchestra when their collective history goes back nearly fifty years. How else can you explain the orchestra knowing everything Davis wanted of them, before he even asked? Don't get me wrong. I know the LSO has recorded the Sibelius symphonies with Davis, and that touring orchestras arrive in one's city as finely chiseled Swiss watches, ready to go. I get all of that. But on this night (which was, to my surprise, not sold out), something else was at play, a collective esprit de corps, a willingness to take a different trail that was not clearly marked. What I am saying is that the orchestra played as one. On a good day, a conductor standing in front of a orchestra hopes to have a simple majority of players in his court. On this evening, the players' trust in Davis was total.

Immediately after the performance of the concerto, Znaider returned to the stage for an encore, which he dedicated to Colin Davis. This gesture was extraordinary, but in context, quite appropriate and fitting.

I have been thinking of Gideon Toeplitz, the great orchestra administrator who died last month. Gideon was also at that rehearsal ten years ago, and he introduced me to Colin Davis. My memory of meeting him is mostly of the man's warmth and humor. When he steps off the podium, he no longer commands a room the way Dudamel and Gergiev do, wherever they go. Davis is, for me, a model of the ideal conductor of our times. My fear is that, given how many orchestras are running scared today, in search of the perfect panacea, or a maestro with a capital M, the grace and manner of Colin Davis may soon become a thing of the past.

An Evening with Richard Rodgers

2011-05-18T23:54:00.001-07:00

Last Saturday night, the Hartford Symphony presented -- with gifted students from the Hartt School Music Theatre and Ballet program -- an evening dedicated to the music of just one man: Richard Rodgers.

Who gets this kind of treatment? Beethoven. Tchaikovsky. I've seen and attended all-Brahms programs, sometimes on successive nights.

But Richard Rodgers? BELIEVE IT. And even if we were to play someone else's music on the same program, it wouldn't matter, because

RICHARD RODGER IS THE MOST FREQUENTLY PERFORMED COMPOSER OF ANYONE WHO HAS EVER LIVED.

More than Bach. More than Mozart. More than Irving Berlin, Cole Porter or Jerome Kern. No one else comes close.

Think about it. Haydn wrote over 100 symphonies, and a good 15-20 of them are played regularly, around the world. Schubert wrote over 600 songs. How many of them do you know? Let's see . . . Doppelganger, The Earl King, Sylvia, Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel, Ave Maria, and there are many more.

Did you know Rodgers wrote over 900 songs? You might not be able to name them all, or even half of them, but if someone started singing them for you, you would find yourself saying over and over again, "oh yeah! I know that one (too)."

Because Richard Rodgers not only had the gift of melody, he was astoundingly prolific. He started composing at the age of 9. He made it to Broadway by the age of 18. (Gershwin didn't get there until he was in his 20s.) With Lorenz Hart he created 15 musicals between 1925 and 1930. With Pal Joey (1940) and later By Jupiter, Rodgers had turned in two decades of Broadway success, and had not yet reached the age of 40. If he were Rossini, he would have retired, his legacy secure. But no. Instead he moves on to a new association with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, writing musicals for nearly two decades more.

Let me put it you another way: Richard Rodgers made it to Broadway when Babe Ruth was just getting going. And he was still writing hit tunes when Richard Nixon resigned and Reggie Jackson became known as Mr. October.

If Richard Rodgers had somehow been more flamboyant, more of a bon vivant, hounded by media, then he would rightly take his place as the American Mozart in work and play. Instead, he was family man, with two daughters and a wife he loved (and who loved him). Sure he had a reputation for charming the ladies, but have you ever seen a picture of Rodgers when he wasn't wearing a suit and tie? (I haven't.) The first thing that comes to mind is an accountant, or an actuary. On television, he appeared dour and colorless.

But what a titanic genius! As a friend pointed out to me, Richard Rodgers is the only person to have received an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony and 2 Pulitzer Prizes. After awhile, R & H, unhappy with what producers were doing with their shows, decided to start producing shows on their own, making them both fabulously wealthy (which also goes against the grain of what people associate with the laboring, starving artistic genius). Rodgers was so good, he got to a point where he could put on shows without stars, without bankable names. Since the music was so good, people were going to come anyway. Before Oklahoma, anything that got 500 performances was considered a Broadway hit. Laurie and Curly, Ado Annie and Will, Aunt Eller and Jud went on for 2,212 performances. After that colossal hit, one bigwig said to him, "Hang it up, now. You will never do anything better than Oklahoma." Oh yeah? How about Carousel?

So you can see my problem in planning last Saturday's show. The question was not, what to play, but rather, what can we leave out? For how many Broadway composers can you do a show like this, leave out so many hits, and still leave the audience happy? We didn't do anything from The King and I. We didn't do the Carousel Waltz. Not even 'My Funny Valentine,' or 'Out of My Dreams' (my favorite waltz, by the way). And no one cared.

Because this was perhaps the best pops show I have ever done with the Hartford Symphony. With Michael Morris's brilliant direction, Denise Leetch-Moore's majestic choreography, and Alan Rust's theatrical expertise, not to mention those fabulous young men and women from Hartt, we put on a show of shows. The buzz was palpable, from start to finish. The roars began early, and continued throughout.

It was my last pops show as Music Director of the Hartford Symphony, and it was a fabulous way to go out.

getting ready for a World Premiere, and Tchaikovsky

2011-05-18T11:17:00.000-07:00

This week will feature the Hartford Symphony's concertmaster, Leonid Sigal, in a new work by Stephen Michael Gryc, Harmonia Mundi, for violin and orchestra. It's a beautiful work, and I'm confident audiences will respond very positively to it.

Last week I was really nervous. It was before our first rehearsal on Tchaikovsky's Symphony no. 4, a work most of the players have done before, probably several times, and thus is one of those pieces (like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony) where a conductor must necessarily come with a unified conception and interpretation, if only to counter the many habits, customs and traditions that accompany a well known work from the standard repertory.

Advancing one's strong ideas about Beethoven is one thing. But Tchaikovsky is a different animal -- the orchestra and I last did his Fourth Symphony in 2002, which is the equivalent of never, as most of these players were not playing in the orchestra 9 years ago (and it was a summer concert, making it even less memorable). On top of that, I haven't done much Tchaikovsky with the orchestra since, and thus we haven't developed a way of doing his music over the course of my tenure.

Add to this an added nervousness because of my big experiment, having created a new edition of sorts. Using my own orchestral materials (most conductors bring their own score but leave the individual orchestra parts, bowings and markings, to the host orchestra), I changed several of the meters in the first movement. You might ask, why? The piece has survived as a great classic since 1878 without anyone doing this before, so why now? Can't it stand on its own, as is?

The answer is yes, of course it can. And it has, for over 130 years. And will continue to do so, thank you very much.

Except for my teacher, Otto-Werner Mueller, who first put the idea in my head, no one has ever done what I am about to describe. And in my previous outings, I did not have the time to go through with it. But I figured, as Doc Brown says in "Back to the Future:" what the hell? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

If you're wondering what the heck I'm talking about, I'll explain.

The first movement is in 9/8 time, which is, for most composers who write in this meter, 123-456-789, and generally conducted in 3 beats to the bar, with a stress on beats 1, 4 and 7. 'Happy Birthday to You' and 'Star Spangled Banner' are also in 3 beats to the bar, but are in simple meter, or 12-34-56 (as opposed to the compound meter in 9/8).

Tchaikovsky divides those 9 small beats in many different ways: sometimes he will have one short beat followed by a 4 bigger beats, so that it comes out sounding like 1 23 45 67 89, and throughout much of the exposition he writes the music in 3 simple beats followed by 1 compound beat, or 12-34-56-789. (One of the most famous compound/simple meter combos is from Bernstein's West Side Story, "America," where it goes back and forth between
123 --- 456 and 12 -- 34 -- 56:

1---2---3
"I like to

4---5---6
live in A--

12---34---56
me--ri---ca"

In the climax of the first movement in Tchaikovsky's Fourth, just before the return, he takes two measures and stretches them into one giant measure, looking (sounding) like this:

12 -- 34 -- 56 -- 78 -- 91 -- 23 -- 45 --67 --89

or, to one's ears, a big giant:

1 --- 2 --- 3 --- 4 --- 5 --- 6 --- 7 --- 8 --- 9

In these two measures, Tchaikovsky expects orchestra players to negotiate all of the cross rhythms, even though they go 'against the grain.' And for most of the music, the players do just that. They're professionals, you expect that of them. But in this place, even for world class orchestras, it can be a crap shoot. In the few times I've conducted Tchaikovsky's 4th, it hasn't always worked to my satisfaction.

And so, for this place, and a few others with complex rhythms, I rewrote the meters (I didn't change a single note) in a manner which projects the actual rhythm of the music. Some would surely object to this, arguing that Tchaikovsky wants the built-in tension left alone, as is. And I can see the merits of that argument. But I was undaunted.

Of course, in the first rehearsal, the players took some time getting used to the changes. But after a few times playing through these spots, these passages came off without a hitch. And the music (i.e., the rhythms) sounded just how I've always heard it in my head, and how I believe the composer wanted it to sound: jagged, off kilter, slightly off balance, creating enormous tension just before the reprise.

Tchaikovsky was highly disturbed when he wrote his Fourth Symphony. He was newly married (even though he was homosexual), attempted suicide, throwing himself into the Moscow River, and was generally resigned to never ever being a happy person (the 'fate' motive at the onset of the symphony reflects this). So it makes sense that, given what he was going through at the time, that Tchaikovsky would put himself out there on the edge of a creative cliff, given the enormous pain he endured while writing this symphony. It's all there in the music.

June 4 Finale -- be forewarned!

2011-05-08T07:57:00.000-07:00

The first piece on my last concert as music director with the Hartford Symphony features a new Requiem by Stephen Montague, who is nothing if not one of the finest dramatists writing music today.

If you don't believe me, check this out. (Stephen is the guy with baton in white tie and tails.) --EC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeG9PRMCKrE

Happy Birthday, Willie

2011-05-06T07:47:00.001-07:00

For some reason, I have always remembered May 6 as Willie Mays's birthday. Born in 1931, that marks today as his 80th. And whenever there are new revelations about Barry Bonds having said this or Mark McGuire having (not) said that, it makes me wonder what Willie thinks about all of the commotion that has tainted professional baseball.

Willie Mays started out with the New York Giants, but he didn't come into the full view of this Oakland kid until the team moved west to San Francisco. And for a few years, until the Athletics moved from Kansas City to Oakland to play in a stadium that I could see from my front yard, the San Francisco Giants, with Mays, Marichal, McCovey et al, were my team.

On my eighth birthday, I got a new skateboard and a trip to Candlestick Park with my Dad and brother, Robert. It was Picture Day, so we got to see the players up close. They were playing the Pittsburgh Pirates, with their own young legend-in-the-making, Willie Stargell. We sat in the bleachers behind centerfield, so as to have a perfect view of Mays playing defense. Stargell did not endear himself to me that day, hitting a long fly ball over Mays's head, not quite out of the stadium.

I still have a running video in my head of Mays scrambling frantically for the ball against the cyclone fence, no higher than what you would see in someone's backyard. Mays rifled the ball to second, limiting Stargell to a double. His throw was a dart; you cannot even begin to imagine what power emanated from Mays's arm unless you were to experience from close range.

Over thirty years later, I had the opportunity to share an elevator with Stargell, when he was a guest of the Pittsburgh Symphony, narrating Lincoln's words in Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait. I recalled that beautiful August day with him, when he got the better of Mays. Stargell was not well, on dialysis for his kidney ailment. He was an inch or two taller than I, and even though his body was not the tower of strength it once was, he still loomed large in that crowded elevator.

He asked me, "what year?"
"1963," I responded.

Stargell's rookie season. He was the young upstart, having come to San Francisco to proclaim his right to play on the same field (and share the same first name) with my beloved Willie. Stargell lifted his head, shut his eyes a little, trying to recall the events of that day, and then nodded his head in acknowledgement. I guess baseball legends and orchestra conductors have one thing in common -- a prodigious memory.

What I did not have the nerve to tell Mr. Stargell was that Mays could have caught his long fly ball that day. He just ran out of room. As anyone familiar with Mays's unbelievable catch of Vic Wertz's long fly ball in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, Mays not only had a great arm and power at the plate, he was fast as they come. And since the playing field of Polo Grounds went on forever, making it nearly impossible to hit a home run to centerfield, Mays simply outran Wertz's deep fly to center, catching it over his left shoulder while still running full speed away from home plate. If you have not seen it, I invite you to do so now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dK6zPbkFnE

Happy Birthday, Willie. And thank you for making the childhood of this writer so much brighter with the wonder of your play. Long live the Say Hey Kid!

The Women of Villanova

2011-03-05T08:48:00.000-08:00

Over this weekend I have been enthralled by women of the Big East, sixteen teams battling it out for the league championship. It started with a close game between University of South Florida and Pittsburgh, in which the latter prevailed by 3 points. Syracuse and West Virginia both won games they were expected to win, leaving only Providence and Villanova to battle it out.

Both teams came in with losing records. During warmups, the Friars appeared quicker than Villanova, even if smaller as a team, which could explain why the Friars had bested the Wildcats in their last four meetings. Even the Battle of the Bands did not bode well; the Wildcats had a meek sound which could not be heard so well over the din. Providence, in contrast, had a big sound, but on closer inspection I noticed an old ringer in the trumpet section. [During one number later in the game when he was missing, the band wasn't nearly as good.]

Sure enough, Villanova spotted Providence 13 points in the opening two minutes. A look at the scoreboard over the course of the first half showed the Wildcats down by 3 to 5 baskets most of the way. Coach Harry Perretta was yelling at the players constantly; on the court, on the bench. As he wildly gesticulated to anyone who cared to listen -- no coat, no tie, arms flailing, right hand contorted -- those of us in the stands could hear every word. He apeared to be a man not in control of his team. By contrast, Providence Coach Seymore was a model of restraint and elegance.

After halftime, the Wildcats continued their pattern of occasional brilliance, bringing them ever closer, followed by turnovers or missed layups. Also hard to watch were the three-point attempts taken from Dreamland, with little chance for success. Clearly much was expected of forward Megan Pearson, who seemed uncomfortable with the dribble. Emily Suhey was more accurate from around the key than beyond it. Center Heather Scanlon was not so effective against the quicker Friars.

But then the young guard Devon Kane took over the game. She frequently looked over to Coach Perretta for guidance, and he grew calmer, deferring to his able assistants. And with just over two minutes to play, the score was tied, and the place rocked. Over and over again, Kane found forward Laura Sweeney under the basket. By overtime, the momentum had clearly shifted, and Villanova took control and kept it. The Big East tournament had its first upset.

On the concourse after the game, I met a petite Villanova fan who looked like she'd just seen a ghost. She was Laura Sweeney's mother, and from the look on her face you'd never know that her daughter had scored a game high 21 points. (It wasn't until I met the father that I could tell where Miss Sweeney got her 6-2 inch slender frame.) They were resigned to staying in Hartford for another evening, as the Wildcats would face a much tougher Louisville team the following night.

Later that evening, as I walked my dogs in downtown Hartford, the streets and bars were abuzz with activity. I congratulated some Villanova players in front of the XL center. As I rounded the corner at Church and Trumbull, there was Coach Perretta: oblivious of the cold night air in his shirtsleeves, arms still flailing this way and that, holding court with anyone who would listen. I yelled my congratulations to him across the street. Without missing a beat, he waved back. He was still talking.

Pre-concert adventure

2011-01-13T06:54:00.000-08:00

Fresh off of Wednesday's storm, in which Hartford received (according to some reports) more snow in one day than it had in 120 years, there was another storm last Friday, which gives me pause even now, just to think of it.

Early morning January 7, I traveled to Long Island for the funeral of a dear friend's mother. I arrived at St. Agnes Church, Rockville Centre, in a swift two hours, evidently just missing rush hour. I was a nervous wreck because I had agreed to perform for the memorial service, on both piano and french horn. (I was particularly nervous about the horn playing, because I had not played publicly for 10 or 15 years.) Whenever I play the Bach Prelude in C, it usually goes off without a hitch, but my nerves got the better of me, and I made an early gaffe. The horn call (from Britten's Serenade) at the end went much better.

Exiting the church, the snow had started to come down - - not the stuff that sticks, but the swirly stuff. I did not stay for the burial, because I didn't want to chance cutting it close with my concert that evening back in Hartford. So I left around 12:20, confident that any traffic snags caused by the weather would not present too much of a problem.

How wrong I was.

Got off the island okay, over the Throgs Neck Bridge, and then into the state of Connecticut. Then, an hour later, a few miles short of Stamford, traffic came to a crawl, 3-5 mph. After 3 hours of this, I texted my son, Ian, to convey any information he could find. (If he'd been in the car with me, he could use his iPhone to come up with the 'green' routes via the internet, but I was to learn later that there were none; even the Merrit Parkway was closed.) Ian texted back that the problem was construction and traffic between exits 8 and 12. [Construction? On a Friday during rush hour? It proved to be bogus.] One woman who hosts a radio show in Westport came on the air announcing she would spend her entire two hour program talking about weather and traffic updates, helping people on the road, and keeping those at home safely off of it. (Not a good sign.) I called in to her show just as I saw an 18-wheeler facing the wrong way on the other side of the highway (which explained why opposite traffic had been so smooth sailing up to that point). After I hung up, I could hear my own talking, with the ten-second delay (to avoid the unwanted expletives of other guests, I suppose).

After five hours of driving, I began to get some wind (20 mph) approaching the junction from I-95 to I-91, near New Haven (normally 35 minutes from Hartford). Sigh of relief.

Whoops. Spoke too soon.

The junction was backed up for miles and miles, and then, once safely on I-91 north, the traffic continued at a crawl for miles and miles. This was the first moment when I began to realize I might miss my pre-concert talk at 7 p.m., one hour before the concert. I had already been in touch with Ken Trestman, the HSO Technical Director, for advice on routes. (He suggested Hwy 8 to 84 would be better, but I didn't agree.) Now I was asking him to make arrangements at the Bushnell Theatre to do the pre-concert talk via remote, over my cell phone (still thinking that I would, of course, make it to my concert in time). Ken was quite cavalier about my concerns, telling me "not to worry, just keep going, you'll make it here on time." I was not so sanguine.

As instructed, I called in at 7:03 to give my talk over the phone. Luckily, since I don't have blue tooth, my companion Elizabeth Vandeventer was at my side, holding the phone while I continued to -- yes -- drive in the horrible conditions. And, as luck (or not) would have it, the traffic began to break just as I began speaking, when some drivers began to show their true colors, swerving in and out of lanes with reckless abandon. Betsy was breathing so deeply and audibly that I had to momentarily break off from my talk to ask her to stop, because it was making me so nervous! (I thought she was worried about my driving -- I'm not the best driver, as my record shows -- but her reactions were to other drivers, darting in and out.)

I don't remember any of my driving during the next half hour. I tuned out all things visible, and went deep inside of myself, summoning the likes of Bela Bartok, Paul Sacher, Felix Mendelssohn, Ferdinand David, Sirena Huang, Joseph Haydn, the Prince of Esterhazy, Johann Peter Salomon, and the "Surprise" in Symphony no. 94. I was intent on speaking clearly and succinctly, and doing it in the proper time allotted to me. Once I reached the end of my talk, I thanked the audience, telling them I'd been driving for seven hours straight, and, by the looks of the traffic, would make it to the concert in time. Whew! (I would later learn that the players idling backstage would ask Ken where I was, because . . . he and Sound Man Al had been so deft handling the situation, most of the players thought I had been out on stage the whole time!)

When I arrived in Hartford around 7:45, I understood why Ken hadn't believed me. Not one snowflake had hit Hartford; it was clean as a whistle. All of the 'weather' had been in southern Connecticut. Of course, by the time the concert was over, it was coming down pretty hard. I had been in a race with the weather, and won.

Beethoven and Handel

2010-12-13T08:10:00.001-08:00

My teacher Mr. Mueller often mentioned that Handel was Beethoven's favorite composer. He would say that the trio from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony was a Handelian fugato which inextricably leads into a glorious hymn (with trombones, which, up to this point had been mainly used in religious works).

Then, this past Saturday, I conducted Beethoven's 5th in the afternoon, and Handel's Messiah in the evening. While conducting Handel's oratorio, I was as much listener as leader, taking in all of the glories and wonders that would later find its way into the symphonies of Beethoven.

Thank you, Mr. Mueller. Now I get it!

Handel's Messiah

2010-12-13T08:04:00.000-08:00

At recent performances of Messiah, the audiences readily stood during the Hallelujah chorus. During my pre-concert talk, I suggested that the tradition may have started when King George II stood thinking that he was hearing his country's national anthem (Rule Brittania). They do start similarly, in identical rhythm. (Maestro Rick Coffey respectfully disagrees with me on this notion.)

At any rate, if today we stand not for The Crown, but rather for Handel and the wonder of his titanic genius, then I'm all for it. Let the tradition live on for another 250 years.

When to Applaud, by Emmanuel Ax

2010-09-10T11:02:00.000-07:00

On September 25, Mr. Ax will play Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 4 in G major with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. If you plan to attend, read below, and think twice about not applauding at the end of the first movement!
----------ec

All of us love applause, and so we should – it means that the listener LIKES us! So we should welcome applause whenever it comes. And yet, we seem to have set up some very arcane rules as to when it is actually OK to applaud. I have been trying to find out exactly when certain listeners and performers decided that applause between movements would not be “allowed”, or at least would be frowned upon, but nobody seems to have been willing to admit that they were the culprit. Certainly when a composer like Beethoven wrote the symphonies and piano concertos that we hear today in the concert hall, he himself expected that if a movement ended with a flourish, such as the first movement of the 5th piano concerto, the audience would leap to its collective feet and let the composer (and pianist) know that they had triumphed. Mozart often wrote to his family that certain variations or sections of pieces were so successful that they had to be encored immediately, even without waiting for the entire piece to end.

I really hope we can go back to the feeling that applause should be an emotional response to the music, rather than a regulated social duty.

--I am always a little taken aback when I hear the first movement of a concerto which is supposed to be full of excitement, passion, and virtuoso display (like the Brahms or Beethoven Concertos), and then hear a rustling of clothing, punctuated by a few coughs; the sheer force of the music calls for a wild audience reaction.--

On the other hand, sometimes I wish that applause would come just a bit later, when a piece like the Brahms 3rd Symphony comes to an end – it is so beautifully hushed that I feel like holding my breath in the silence of the end. I think that if there were no “rules” about when to applaud, we in the audience would have the right response almost always. Most composers trust their listeners to respond at the right time, and if we feel like expressing approval, we should be allowed to, ANYTIME! Just one favor – even if you don’t like a concert of mine, please PLEASE applaud at the end anyway.

Emmanuel Ax

2010-09-10T08:18:00.000-07:00

There was a time when the Hartford Symphony regularly played host to some of the greatest figures in symphonic music.

Lotte Lehmann sang a Wagner program in 1939.

During Fritz Mahler's time, guests included the iconic pianist, Arthur Rubinstein, and the Chilean actress, Felicia Montealegre (Mrs. Leonard Bernstein).

Without a doubt, Arthur Winograd's reign as music director was the richest for guest artists: violinists Yehudi Menuhin and David Oistrakh; cellists Jacqueline du Pre and Yo Yo Ma; sopranos Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and Birgit Nilsson; pianist Van Cliburn, and flutist Jean Pierre Rampal. Benny Goodman played on the pops series, and Arthur Fiedler conducted a pops program, and two notable composers were guest conductors: Aaron Copland and Aram Khachaturian.

Michael Lankester was no slouch, either, having invited violinists Nigel Kennedy and Joshua Bell, contralto Marilyn Horne, composer Michael Tippett (who conducted one of his works), and the pianist/conductor/comedian Victor Borge.
Mr. Ma returned.

Early in his tenure, Maestro Lankester invited Emmanuel Ax to perform a Mozart concerto. Four years later, in 1990, Mr. Ax returned with his wife, Yoko Nozaki, to perform a Bartok work and another piece, Mozart's Concerto for two pianos and orchestra in Eb major, which the duo will return to play on September 25. (Those of us in Hartford can feel fortunate, as the duo is advertised as 'not available' for the 2010-11 season.)

For their return trip, the two of them may note several changes in the past twenty years -- a new piano (purchased several years ago by the Bushnell), a new concert hall (the Belding, which debuted in 2001), and a different music director. . . though I expect Manny and Yoko will recognize many familiar faces still in the orchestra.

My first performancing experience with Yo Yo Ma came after a long association with him that began in Southern California and continued in Pittsburgh. The same is true of Mr. Ax, who came to Tampa to perform Strauss's Burleske when I was Resident Conductor of the Florida Orchestra in the early 1990s. What struck me immediately about this artist was his radiant joy, and his temperament. Even in the flashiest of passages, there is always a soul to Ax's pianism.

He was a guest in Pittsburgh a number of times during my years there, and a favorite memory is sitting with him while the orchestra rehearsed a symphony by Haydn. (For those of you who are not performers, it is extremely rare to find a solo pianist sitting in the audience while the orchestra rehearses other works on the program. "My gosh," he said, bouncing in his chair, "this is such great music. . . Why don't more orchestras perform Haydn?") Oh, and how often does one hear a pianist talk about harmonic adventurism in Bizet's Carmen ? (Don't believe me? go to his blog: http://emanuelax.wordpress.com).

Horatio Gutierrez gave a beautiful rendering of Beethoven's 4th piano concerto in Hartford several years ago, but I will never forget Ax's performance of this work in Pittsburgh. From the very first chord, played so poetically, it became immediately apparent we were all in for a unique experience with this masterwork, the most intimate of Beethoven's five concertos for the piano.

And to give you an example of Ax's daring, he did something with the New York Philharmonic that few pianists would agree to do. While the orchestra played Ive's Unanswered Question, Ax sat at the piano, waiting . . . just as the final strains of Ives died away, he began the Beethoven. It was a heavenly segue. A friend of mine reported on the event as "pure poetry." In effect, Beethoven became the answer to Ives's question.

Emmanuel Ax, a poet among pianists.

George Steinbrenner (1930-2010)

2010-07-28T22:39:00.000-07:00

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

"Kind of young to be doing this, aren't ya'?"

Those were the first words Mr. Steinbrenner said to me, when I met him in 1989, in the lobby of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. As Resident Conductor of The Florida Orchestra, it was my job to conduct all youth, park and community concerts. That December, The Boss wanted to produce a concert for the disadvantaged and indigent kids of the Tampa Bay area, and it fell on me to conduct the concert.

Of course, Mr. Steinbrenner was known to be a man in control, and even with a holiday concert for kids, he didn't want to leave anything to chance. He probably wanted Skitch Henderson - the orchestra's Pops Music Director - to do it, because he knew Skitch and the two of them got on quite well. But Skitch was a busy man, so why not have the new kid do it?

"A conductor's got to start somewhere."
"Hrrumph. . .. I guess you're right."

. . .and he took one last look at me, sizing me up, and walked away.
To this day, this brief encounter still stands as the shortest meeting I have ever had with anyone.

It was your typical Christmas concert, but with a few Steinbrennerian twists. Randy "Macho Man" Savage was brought in to speak the kids. In his distinctively brusque voice, Savage was great at making the audience feel special, that "any one of you can do anything in this world, if you put your mind to it."

And at the end of the concert, when it was time for the sing-along, Santa (yup, Steinbrenner himself) came onstage to sing in front of the orchestra. I don't remember momentarily giving up conducting duties at this point, but there it was on the front page of the Tampa Tribune sports section the next day: a big cover photo of me, Steve Sax, Macho Man and Santa Steinbrenner, all with our mouths wide open, singing in full voice to 2,400 kids. Each kid left the hall beaming, proud owner of a new Yankee duffle bag filled with baseballs, a mitt and other paraphenalia. It had been nearly fifteen years since the Yankees had won a world championship, but not one of these kids cared. They were on cloud nine.

Oh. . . I almost forgot. Mr. Steinbrenner even roped Billy Martin into the act! The challenge left to me then, was. . . what will Billy do? After some hand wringing, it was decided that Mr. Martin would narrate 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.'

He arrived an hour before the concert. (Big time baseball managers don't have time for dress rehearsals.) With the help of a rehearsal pianist, we took a few minutes to determine how I would coordinate the end of his narration with the end of the orchestra's music. (Steinbrenner was hovering, but thankfully, once he figured I knew what I was doing, he stayed out of the way.)

Given his mercurial reputation, I was surprised to find Billy Martin so meek and mild. I mean, here was this baseball legend, just past sixty years of age, with a beautiful young blonde on his arm, and I was understandably nervous. As it turned out, he was far more nervous than I, clearly out of his element, having been pigeon-holed (yet again) by The Boss. But he did well in the concert.

Less than a week later, Martin was dead, having gone off the side of a road in his pick-up truck.

More holiday concerts would follow, and since Steinbrenner was also a supporter of the University of South Florida (where I taught), we became a little more than just acquaintances, if not friends. Someone had told me that Skitch once let Steinbrenner conduct his New York Pops, which gave me an idea: why not ask George to conduct my school orchestra for the annual school Arts gala? I knew he was going to be there to receive some honor; why not have him strike up the band, for good measure? He readily agreed . . . but then came his conditions and requirements! He would conduct the "George M. Cohan Salute." This was a favorite of his, and I think he might have done it before, so I agreed to his terms. (Like I had a choice.)

I am now recalling what the great conductor, Georg Solti, said when asked what he first looks for in a conductor, more than anything else: "Not a good ear, not even good musicianship, or good hands. No -- the most important skill for a conductor, is that he must be able to lead."

Of course, this skill was quite evident in the way Mr. Steinbrenner led my college charges. I had prepared them a few weeks before, but Mr. S. came in and did everything his way. By the end of the rehearsal, everyone knew exactly what he wanted. The performance came off beautifully, without so much as a hitch.

Georg Solti would have been impressed.

Motown Mountain

2010-07-08T08:47:00.000-07:00

Most people are unaware of the music I listen to at home, in the car, etc. As I have noted in a previous post, I do not own an iPod. In my apartment, the music is rarely on, unless there are people visiting. In truth, people are maybe a bit surprised when I tell them that most of my listening choices gravitate towards the classical. (Yeah, I like what I do.) Yesterday afternoon, in preparation for a NEA grant, I spent most of the afternoon listening to performances of the past season -- equal parts pleasure and pain.

But my children (and most of my friends) know of my passion for a certain type of music which I could not get enough of growing up in the Bay Area -- R & B. When I got a new train set as a kid, I played Smokey Robinson's Tears of a Clown over and over again, one play for every eleven revolutions of my nifty N-gauge trains.

When my sister received Songs in the Key of Life for Christmas, I 'borrowed' it over and over; I couldn't get enough of it. (Years later, as a mellophonium player in the Disneyland All-American College Band, we played Stevie Wonder tunes that made my heart soar.)

Down the street from where I grew up lived a man who managed Sly and the Family Stone. His son, Junior (guitar), another friend, Brian (bass) and I (drums - my first instrument) played our Stone favorites in my side yard. (Much to our neightbor's chagrin, the garage didn't have enough room.)

Yes, the Taxman and Norwegian Wood figured in there, somewhere along the way. But no one, no group, could compete with Earth Wind & Fire. For me, they were the apogee of anything pop, rock, soul, jazz and R & B. The orchestrations, the harmonic adventure, the soaring vocals, the extended jazz riffs - - these guys had it all.

So, for my last concert at Talcott Mountain as Mus. Dir. of the Hartford Symphony. . . it won't be Beethoven (admittedly, another passion), not Bach, Handel and Vivaldi (to this date, certainly the most memorable of the performances I have done in Simsbury over the years), not even some of the wonderful all-Tchaikovsky programs we did early in my tenure. . . . . no, instead it will be SPECTRUM: rhythm and blues as good as it gets. I must say that I could not have asked for a better way to go.

See you all Friday night!

after Bogota -- preparing for Talcott Mountain

2010-06-24T08:54:00.000-07:00

I was in Bogota last week, conducting Schoenberg's Pelleas und Mellisande -- a piece which you will never hear played by the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. That's not a bad thing, just simple fact, because the Schoenberg piece is one of three (along with Transfigured Night and Gurrelieder) that are early, late Romantic works before the composer abandoned this post-Wagnerian style for serial composition.

Schoenberg's Pelleas requires an enormous orchestra: take the usual count of woodwinds and brass you would normally see, and double it. (eight french horns, and FIVE trombones!) When the Hartford Symphony takes on the challenge of an orchestral work requiring enormous forces, it must choose carefully because, unlike the Filarmonica de Bogota, or the New York Philharmonic for that matter, extra players contribute significantly to the expense side of the ledger. (For example, in several major orchestras, they carry upwards to four trumpets on their full time roster, whilst the HSO carries just two: even hiring a third, a frequent necessity, is an added expense which the orchestra must adequately plan for.)

During a rehearsal of Haendel's Royal Fireworks last night, I had to catch myself, for I had just spent dozens of hours speaking in (albeit somewhat fractured) Spanish, and here I was, able to speak in English again! (por favor. . . otra vez ['once more,' please] uh. . .. diez y ocho. . .. no, wait a minute, rehearsal #18!) And with all the fussiness of Haendelian articulation at stake, I truly would have been at a loss with a Spanish-speaking ensemble.

Some Bogota players took me aside (Maestro, you are free to speak English, as most of us understand. . .), but I've always felt it disrespectful to do that. Even with a Czech orchestra twenty years ago, I did as most as I possibly could in Czech and German, their second language. (Of course, their word for the number 'four' gave me fits, but you have to give it a go, no?)

But as the rehearsal continued, I was in a mild state of amazement at the weather, which was positively glorious. (Usually, we only have one dress rehearsal on site.) Would this beautiful weather continue through the weekend? I was told that it would. How many summers have we played at Talcott Mountain where the Rain Gods had their way? Too many that I can recall. So this seemed like a very good omen, and the players responded in like fashion. Even all the extra time spent taking care of Baroque neccessities ("sixteenth, maestro?" "double-dotted or triple-dotted?" "you want fries with that?") did not diminish the overall good humor of our first rehearsal of 2010 in The Great Outdoors.

And the feature work of the program is none other than Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, to be played by the orchestra's concertmaster, Leonid Sigal. In our pre-rehearsal discussion, I was delighted to learn that Lenny wanted to dispense with some of the traditions that have come to be associated with this masterwork, including the traditional (what I like to call) 'hiccup' that comes right before the very end. Kind of like growing up with burnt potatoes, and expecting the rest of the world to like them, just because you do.

Did you know that this Vivaldi work is the only classical (that is to say, any work written by composers of the Baroque, Classic, Romantic and Modern periods) to make it on the Top-40? After Nigel Kennedy (who now goes by just "Kennedy") came out with his thrilling recording of 1989, some enterprising DJ figured out that each of the twelve movements (three for each of the four concerti) is approximately 3 minutes in length -- that is to say, the same length as most of the pop and rock tunes which get air time on radio stations. And just like that, a phenomenon was born: Vivaldi, the new King of Pop. Well, for 15 minutes, anyway. (After all, MJ was still in his hey day.)

On Friday night, when we get to the storm movement of 'L'Estate' (Summer), I surely hope that the Rain Gods will be snoozing.

on Ives's "Sonata Set for violin and orchestra"

2010-05-15T10:15:00.000-07:00

Hello All,

more on Ives later,
but here's a nice article by Phillip Lutz on the topic:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/nyregion/16musicct.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

My inner iPod

2010-03-16T11:38:00.001-07:00

There was an article in the March 15 New York Times Science section ("Mental Melodies," by C. Claiborne Ray) on why people get a certain tune in their heads, and then have difficulty saying goodbye to them. For me, it's like an ongoing but beautiful sickness, for there is never a time when music is not going through my head.

In fact, while I was a graduate student, I had a tune stuck in my head for 18 months. Believe it.

A month I can deal with. Two to three months, that becomes a problem. For half of 2009, it was Mahler's Ninth Symphony. But a year and a half can be unpleasant, no matter how nice the melody, or how gracious the tune.

And that's all it was - a tune. I kept singing it to my conducting colleagues, and no one could identify it. I don't have perfect pitch, but I knew it was in Eb major, and that it very likely was part of some sonata, string quartet or symphony. Unfortunately, the melody was too obscure to be readily identifiable. I asked the smartest musicians I knew, even the musicologists and computer brains -- all to no avail.

At the time, I was working on my thesis, the birth of the sonata rondo (kind of like a hybrid of the 'rondo' and 'sonata form') in Haydn's music, mainly the 80+ string quartets, 50+ piano sonatas, and 100+ symphonies. If you know anything about Haydn, then you would understand when I tell you that -- save for this innocuous tune that would not leave me -- it was a very happy year, immersed in the music of the world's most underrated great composer.

Studying the natural evolution of the sonata rondo in Haydn's music naturally led me to other composers, and how they handled this particular form. (Two excellent examples are the finales of Beethoven's Second and Eighth symphonies.)

One day, I looked through the symphonies of Schubert. I had often thought of an excellent performance of Schubert's Second Symphony with the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch, long before he succeeded Riccardo Muti in Philadelphia. Looking through the score that day, the memory of the concert came back to me with a glow.

And wouldn't you know -- while thumbing through the pages of the Schubert score as I listened to it in my inner ear -- once I came upon the finale, and the second theme in particular, there it was. . . .

. . . the tune!

Eighteen months, five hundred forty days, nearly thirteen hundred hours later, and I had finally found it. It felt like I'd climbed Mt. Everest.

And the next day, the tune was gone.

The Nose

2010-02-13T08:18:00.000-08:00

No, this is not a post about Shostakovich's opera about a guy (who cuts hair) who finds a schnozz in his panini. (And who else but Dmitri could write music on such a subject?)

No, this is about the vagaries of performance, and the things that happen beyond the stage. This is about you, our wonderful audience.

Last night, after the orchestra and I completed our performance of Sibelius's Seventh Symphony, the marvelous pianist Andrius Zlabys came on to play Mozart's "Jenomy" concerto, K. 271. (No, it's not the "Jeunehomme;" more on that for another post.)

After the first movement, a few audience members could not help themselves, and began to clap. It was entirely appropriate. It felt right. But when only a few do it, these people can feel (and from reactions around them, made to feel) foolish.

I love it when this happens. It's a spontaneous reaction. Mozart would have loved it. Andrius smiled, acknowledged the happy few, and when I turned around to thank them as well, more people put their hands together. It was a moment of deep and abiding appreciation for a pianist who brings uncommon skill and panache to Mozart.

And Mr. Zlabys had played a different Mozart concerto (no. 24 in C minor) the previous night, dispatched with his customary brilliance and sensitivity. Truly, there are few pianists who can sing on the instrument at a dynamic level just this side of inaudible. With this young man, it's breathtaking to behold.

After intermission, we played Vaughan Williams's Symphony no. 5.

Now, the Hartford Symphony is a fine ensemble. And a professional orchestra always comes through for its audience. But there are moments when, together, we all strive together in lockstep. This whirlwind rarely happens, and when it does, one doesn't want the music to stop. The third movement Romanza, beginning with a glorious solo from English hornist Marilyn Krentzman, was stunning from start to end.

And then, in the closing moments, as lower strings gently expired, it happened. Someone blew his/her nose. It completely destroyed the canvas of silence.

Quietly, I remarked to the string players within earshot of me, "did someone actually just blow his nose?" Affirmative head shakes. Incredible. Was this some guy who'd been dragged to the symphony by his music-loving spouse? Or an aqualine-endowed woman who cane reluctantly with her husband? (Unlike approaching footsteps, or breathing, large noses that honk when blown belong to my sex and the fair sex.)

To add insult to injury, just as celestial strings finished the last page of the symphony, we were all treated to an encore. Yes, The Nose. Again. A passive agressive critic.

You, Ladies and Gentlemen, are on the other side of the proscenium, but you are part of the performance. Just with your attendance, you play an integral role in the action. You, as a group -- and as individuals -- have the power. Every one of you.

Toscanini and Tiger

2009-12-14T06:52:00.000-08:00

A question I am most often asked: "Who is your favorite composer?"

and then the next after that is:

"Who is your favorite conductor?"

People love to talk about their favorite recordings, and those conducted by Arturo Toscanini, or Herbert von Karajan -- to name two towering figures in 20th century classical music -- are often at the top of their list. But these two conductors, great though they were, often leave me wanting.

And I sometimes wonder if my view of their work has something to do with the fact that I tend to favor the great gentleman conductors, such as Pierre Monteux and Carlo Maria Guilini.

If he didn't get what he wanted, Toscanini could be downright mean towards his players; and Karajan, in one of his most petulant moves during a long tenure as music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, began doing more recordings (a lucrative business at the time) with the Vienna Philharmonic instead of his own orchestra, after his players voted him down on his preferred player for the principal clarinet seat.

Pierre Monteux will forever be known for having conducted the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. My first teacher played for Monteux, and he adored the man for his musical intelligence and rehearsal decorum. Members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic used to say that a rehearsal with Guilini was like going to church, such was the effect he had on players. With his matinee idol looks, he would had no problem welcoming the advances of adoring fans, but he remained a devoted family man to the end.

Before I appear holier-than-thou, I must go on the record as a conductor who has, on occasion, in rehearsal, lost his temper. And some players may recall an incident at a children's concert at a local city school where, after my repeated requests to a noisy group of youths went to no avail, I finally turned around in a fit of exasperation and yelled, "SHUT-UP."

I know -- horrors. You'd think I'd just tripped the Queen of England, or had forgotten to take off my hat during the Pledge of Allegiance. But what surprised me even more was the reaction of some of the players: one likened the word 'shut-up' to a dangerous expletive; another cried racism. (Fortunately, this player was quickly disabused of such a notion.)

Last night on '60 Minutes,' during an interview with Barack Obama, Steve Croft told the president that his recent speech at West Point was 'analytical.' Since President Obama appeared to have fire in his eyes during his speech, I was surprised by the question. Indeed, Obama's cool under fire -- often criticized -- is a fine trait, given the enormous stress and strain that goes with being Commander-in-Chief. The same could be said of Ronald Reagan, who never, ever, lost his temper in public.

Tiger Woods' recent admission of transgressions and infidelity interests me less than the prevailing perception of his perfection and infallibility, as if his golf prowess would naturally extend into his private life.

Woods is the most gifted golfer to ever grace the planet. His penchant for throwing clubs and profane outbursts on network television has been known to golf afficionados for years. One time, after Woods dropped the F-bomb, the ensuing quiet from the announcers was deafening. They were horrified, as were millions of listeners. Only NBC's Johnny Miller has gone on the record to criticize Woods for his foul mouth. (CBS, which airs most of the golf tournaments throughout the year, probably directs its announcers to stay mum.) With Tiger's most recent decision to take an indefinite break from golf, we are reminded why CBS has remained quiet on the subject, and why Nike and Electronic Arts will forever stand behind their man: Tiger holds all the cards.

Woods is a one man industry. Golf purses have increased four-fold since he joined the PGA tour in 1996. There are people who hate golf and who will never step on a golf course, and yet they still love watching Tiger. The numbers prove it -- during the latter half of 2008, when Woods was recovering from knee surgery, television viewers of golf dropped by 50%. Pair this statistic with the fact that PGA Tour purses have increased dramatically due mostly to advertising revenue, and the picture becomes clear. While his hiatus from golf may truly be a desire to save his marriage, it can also be construed as Woods's reminder that -- no matter what the public may think of his on-course behavior or his off-course infidelity -- Tiger still holds all the cards.

During his heyday, Toscanini could - for the most part - do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Up until the last half of the 20th century, there were no unions to protect an orchestra musician from Toscanini, who had no fear of apprisal when he chewed out a player in front of his colleagues. After Wilhelm Furtwängler died in 1954, Karajan was subsequently asked to succeed him as music director of the Berlin Philharmonic. He said yes, with one proviso: that he be appointed 'conductor for life.' They agreed.

What was it that Lord Acton said?
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Richard Cumming

2009-11-30T00:26:00.000-08:00

My cousin, Richard Cumming (known to friends and family as Deedee) died on Wednesday, at the age of 81. He was a composer, pianist, teacher, and for 25 years, the composer-in-residence at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island.

Deedee would be known to Hartford audiences for two works the orchestra performed. Passacaglia was presented on the (now defunct) Rush Hour series several years ago. I commissioned the work when I was still a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and needed another short work to fill out a noon concert program that included Brahms's Serenade no. 2 for small orchestra.

Not wanting to be accused of blatant nepotism (of which Deedee loved to say, "it's okay, dear, as long as you keep it in the family. . ."), I was going to leave it at that, but after a number of players and audience members remarked to me how much they liked Deedee's Passacaglia, I kept my ears to the ground for another work from his pen; when he told me that his Aspects of Hippolytus was looking for a first performance, I jumped at the chance, and the HSO presented the work on its Masterworks series.

Richard Cumming's music was always unabashedly tonal, well before it was de rigeur to write that way. In the 1950s and 1960s, most classical composers wrote music that could be terribly forbidding, and many didn't care whether you liked their music or not. Only with the advent of Minimalism from Messrs. Riley, Glass, Reich and Adams did classical music begin to become more accessible -- but Deedee was there long before them. The great American pianist, John Browning (1933-2003), recorded Deedee's 24 piano preludes, then later his Silhouettes. Browning and Cumming were close friends as well as great colleagues; John premiered Samuel Barber's Piano Concerto in 1962. (I had hoped to bring him to Hartford to perform the work.) Deedee told me, "Sam was taking his time on the concerto, even though a number of us kept reminding him that John needed time to learn it before the premiere. Well. . . damned if Sam didn't get the finale [which is excrutiatingly difficult -- ec] done just a week or two before the concert date, but John being John, he did the whole work, and the finale, from memory."

Deedee was scary smart, with a wonderful command of the English language. Books surrounded his apartment in Providence, and when I asked him if he'd read them all, he quickly responded, "yes, most of them 2 or 3 times." If a fine writer were to take up the project of writing a Richard Cumming biography, it would be a great read, if only for the stories. He had a laugh that could easily fill a room. Even when he was cranky or irritated, he seemed to be smiling; any room he entered was quickly filled with his mirth.

He was a fabulous pianist, touring the world in recital with the soprano, Phyllis Curtain (1921 - ). The late bass-baritone, Donald Gramm (1927-83, who was known for his brilliant protrayal of Boris Godonov at the Met), was another singer who worked regularly with Deedee.

He studied with Roger Sessions, and Ernest Bloch was a musical grandfather to him. When Arnold Schoenberg gave composition classes in Los Angeles, Deedee signed up. (It drove the other students crazy with envy that Schoenberg referred to all of them by their sirname -- except for Deedee.)

Time spent with Deedee was invariably a learning experience. One time he recounted a story of his time on tour with Igor Stravinsky. I think Deedee began the stint as his musical assistant, but ended up doubling as his valet, making sure he had plenty of vodka in his room. Like so many Russian men, Igor liked the hard stuff, and Deedee was a good drinking buddy. (I think his daily vodka and milk on the rocks -just before bedtime- was introduced to him by Stravinsky.)

I first met Deedee (technically speaking, my first-cousin-once-removed) 35 years ago, when I was a horn player with little design on becoming a conductor. He was as tall as me, but bigger, somehow, contributing to his larger than life persona. He asked me if I'd like to play something with him; I suggested the Hindemith Horn Sonata, and he played the difficult piano part brilliantly, at sight. I was awestruck. . . this guy is a relative of mine? Where did he come from, and why didn't anyone in my family tell me anything about him before that day?

The fact that he was homosexual (and openly so) might have had something to do with that, long before it was remotely socially acceptable, even in the most liberal cultural circles.

What I will always take with me, though, is the music he introduced to me. Strauss's Elektra. Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915. Ned Rorem's song cycle, Flight from Heaven. When I got to 'Upon Julia's Clothes,' Deedee began screaming, "Is that not the best song of the 20th century? Damn! I wish I'd written that. . ."

Holiday concerts in December

2009-11-24T21:32:00.000-08:00

This year, for the first time during my time thus far with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, the Holiday concerts will be as I've always wanted them to be.

In previous years, there's always been something missing - - lots of singing and playing, but no dance.

This year there will be, as always, plenty of playing, plenty of singing (from the Hartford Chorale and the Connecticut Children's Chorus), but also dance (!), specifically, selections from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker ballet, featuring youngsters from the Hartt School.

And, for the first time, Santa will be here, but with a few surprises of his own . . . let's just say he won't just be showing up for a few "Ho Ho Ho's" before he's on his merry way.

Yes, Santa is a busy man, and has millions upon millions of presents to deliver to children of all ages around the world. But he has a special place in his heart for Hartford, and he tells me (via SSN, the Santa Satelite Network) that he wants to be more integrated into the program.

Who am I to disagree?
Say no to Santa?
The man tells me he wants to sing, he's going to sing.

If I were you, I wouldn't miss it.

on Gilbert and Gustavo

2009-10-26T08:17:00.000-07:00

This is a very exciting time for symphonic music in the United States. For the past decade, new offerings seemed to be coming only from the left coast, via Michael Tilson Thomas (San Francisco Symphony) and Esa-Pekka Salonen (Los Angeles Philharmonic).

Now, with Alan Gilbert taking the reins of the New York Philharmonic, and Gustavo Dudamel's start with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, we can once again look to both sides of the continent for excitement.

Nothing need be said here about Dudamel that hasn't already been said. I've met the man. I've seen him conduct (Stravinsky's Firebird, in San Francisco). He's the real deal.

And with this country's love of media hype and the next young thing, Gilbert seems to pale in comparison. Don't believe it. While the LA Times, Washington Post and even the Arizona Republic (!) have weighed in on the comparison between Gilbert and Dudamel (one is 'staid;' the other 'fiery'), I am more in line with Anthony Tommasini (NY TImes) and Alex Ross (The New Yorker), who are among the finest writers on music today. Both agree that the New York Philharmonic is finally on a path worthy of its name. Ross says the orchestra sounds better than it ever has in the last 17 years, that the orchestra sounds more 'mature' than it did under the direction of Gilbert's predecessors, Masur (in his 80s) and Maazel (almost 80)!

And later this season, Gilbert will embark on a bit of real daring, conducting an opera by Ligeti, Le grand macabre. I bet the subscribers will stay away. Wonder what will happen to all of those unused seats? Time will tell . . . .

Bravo, Alan.

Opening Night at Pops

2009-10-25T05:14:00.000-07:00

I've never forgotten what Leonard Bernstein said the day after John Lennon died. All the media outlets were looking for quotes from the greatest musicians of the day, and, in Bernstein, a towering renaissance figure of American culture, they knew that a call to him would bring about some meaning to the madness of our world. Why would someone kill John? Why? Why?

So... what did Bernstein say?
He talked about the Beatles's intonation.

Intonation!

Great figures do not just enlighten us, they confound us. Both Lennon and Bernstein left us a legacy that continues to delight and enrich us all. But, as geniuses are wont to do, they can be maddening. Why, on a day when all of us needed to derive some meaning from Lennon's assassination, did Bernstein talk about how well the Beatles sang in tune?

Well, because singing (and playing) in tune is a wonderful thing. You don't think about it when you hear it, but impeccable intonation contributes greatly to a musical performance that is transfixing. And, last night, when the Hartford Symphony hosted the a cappella quintet, Five by Design, we were treated to a performance from Laurie, Sheridan, Kurt, Michael and Terry that held us in awe.

The orchestra charts were great. And the players, as always, came through with panache. And Five by Design's drummer, Matt, and pianist, Taylor (along with the HSO's bassist, Rick Rozie) were stellar.

But the high point of the evening was in the middle of the first half, when Matt, Rick, Taylor and all the orchestra musicians were silent. The quintet launched into a tune, sung a cappella (literally, 'from the chapel,' when singers perform without instrumental accompaniment) which is still ringing in my ears. (I had been waking up every day the past week and a half with Mahler in my head, but no longer.) And why?

Because of impeccable intonation.

What makes a great barbershop quartet? --- spot-on intonation.
Why are some violinists better than others? --- intonation.
(Pianists have no such concerns -- they can blame the piano tuner.)

When I listen to "Good Day, Sunshine,"
I hear immaculate, exquisite intonation.

Last night at the Bushnell, when orchestra players were waiting for their next number to play, something happened -- they became audience. As conductor, I had the unique perspective of being in the middle of it all, watching people seated on both sides of me, transfixed, jaws dropped. Terry, the bass man of the quintet, became a string bass player, riffing away, his entire body resonating with his vocal pizzicato. The other four, vocalizing above his walking bass, sounded like warm honey. Something special was happening, and not one of us could move. We were listening to musical magic.

In large part, due to spectacular intonation.

after Mahler. . .

2009-10-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

What does one take away from four performances of Mahler's Symphony no. 9?

Some initial observations:

The audience on Thursday night was one of the most rapt, attentive audiences that I have encountered in over thirty years of performing. On stage, we could hear a pin drop, from beginning to end. This is rare, for in a large crowd, there is inevitably one poor soul who has brought with him or her a ticklish throat, or a partner who'd rather be home watching the Red Sox lose to the Angels, or taking a nice nap (which comes on anyway, given the ideal conditions for such: a cozy chair in a dark concert hall.)

But on Thursday, October 8, the Hartford Symphony was treated to an audience that held its collective breath for ninety minutes - - - I don't remember anyone coughing, not even in between the movements!

Thursday night was our first complete run through of the symphony. Surprised? Well, there are decisions a conductor must make with the limited time at hand, and by Wednesday night's dress rehearsal, we had accomplished a great deal on the first three movements, but there was still work to be done on the final Adagio. I did this on purpose, knowing that the Adagio was technically the easiest, but emotionally the most taxing. When you run a marathon (as our assistant principal violist, Sharon Dennison did on Saturday morning, and who did not look any worse for wear at that evening's performance), you must pace yourself.

As the Adagio runs nearly thirty minutes, I did not want to run the risk of playing the symphony in order and possibly run out of time at the end, so I began the dress rehearsal with the final movement, then proceeded through the other three movements before we called it a night.

So Thursday night's concert was the first real play-through of the entire work, in movement order. That's why we often call the first of several performances a 'dress rehearsal' for the public. In the opening movement, we were a little tight, a bit on edge. After that we were fine. And the audience, in the closing four and a half minutes of the symphony, was just unbelievable. After the violas uttered the final four notes, I could have held the silence forever, and no one would have minded.

Mahler's Ninth (part 3) The Ländler

2009-10-01T11:42:00.000-07:00

In my first Mahler post, I wrote at length about the first movement. This will deal mainly with the 2nd movement.

First, a little background. . . .

The third movement (in the case of Mahler's Ninth, the second movement) of a classical (i.e., by Haydn, Mozart, or one of their contemporaries in the late 18th century) string quartet or symphony began traditionally as a minuet, or a dance in 3/4 time, in a moderate dancing tempo. The Minuet is in three parts, with a contrasting 'trio' section (so named, I believe, because the more intimate character of this section often featured up to three solo instruments, as with the clarinet and two horns in the trio of Beethoven's Eighth Symphony) before the return of the minuet.

When Beethoven came along, he transformed the minuet into a scherzo (literally, 'joke'), still in 3/4 time (like "Happy Birthday to You," or "When Irish Eyes are Smiling") but much faster (like Lennon/McCartney's "Norwegian Mood"). The title scherzo is often associated with the faster tempo, but more likely due to the fact that there was so much more humor -- sometimes on the audience, sometimes on the musicians (an inside joke), and on occasion maybe even making fun of the conductor. As with Schubert and Bruckner before him, Mahler had a preference for the Austrian ländler , which is like a minuet, but with a characteristic lilt.

In his Ninth Symphony, Mahler does all of the above (and then some)! But first, a few particulars. . . .

The movement begins harmlessly with violas and bassoons, but soon thereafter, with the entrance of the 2nd violins (who, as you will recall from my first post, were the first to play the melody of the 1st movement) we come to understand the meaning of Mahler's heading: Etwas täppisch und sehr derb, 'somewhat clumsy and very coarse.' Because the 2nd violins do more than upset the apple cart -- they run it over. (Imagine three women who resemble Dick Butkus fighting for the last peach in the produce aisle, and you get the idea.)

The music goes along like this for awhile until the more intimate Trio section. . . but wait a minute! Before going there, Mahler hurls us into an angry waltz, replete with jabs by brasses and kettle drums, followed by a truly uncouth street song played by low brasses, winds and strings.

So. . . after this do we get the Trio section? ? Nope!

Because Mahler throws yet another curve -- the ländler returns, but now in the faster tempo of the angry waltz! (Listen to how hard it is for the horns to keep up!) Finally, after a series of low gas utterances (imagine Paul Bunyan spitting out his food), the more gentle Trio section arrives, bringing appropriate relief to all of the previous shenanigans.

The Mad Waltz returns, and gets wilder and more out of control, more brisk and more hurried (Mahler's words) with each appearance, until the horns finally cry uncle, furiously putting an end to such nonsense, bringing us back to the original tempo. With the last six notes, played by the highest (piccolo) and lowest (contrabassoon) instruments of the orchestra, Mahler leaves us with the musical equivalent of a wink of the eye. That's it for the fun and games in this symphony. Everything you hear from hereon is serious business.

Mahler's Ninth (part 2)

2009-10-01T10:09:00.000-07:00

In my first post earlier today, I mentioned how much this symphony has taken out of me. When the Hartford Symphony was still knee deep in Beethoven symphonies this past spring, my head was already well inside the Mahler symphony, and I've barely come up for air since. I will put it to you this way -- when I had heard that Claudio Abbado and Simon Rattle (both world-class conductors and wonderful interpreters of Mahler) each took six months off to study this piece, that got my attention. And so May-September (five months, for those of you counting), it's been Mahler, Mahler, Mahler.

But I did something that Abbado and Rattle did not do, something few conductors do anymore, rather old-fashioned, really.

In the early part of the 20th century, many European conductors would conduct from their own materials, meaning the orchestral musicians would play from parts that were corrected, marked and otherwise carefully prepared by the conductor and/or his assistant. (Today, most conductors study their own score and don't know what the players have in front of them until they arrive at the first rehearsal; some will send a few bowings and markings in advance for the staff librarian to put into the individual parts.)

Ron Krentzman is the brilliant and fastidious librarian for the Hartford Symphony; he and his assistant, Joy Glassman, copied bowings from string masters into all of the string parts. Otherwise, every marking in the part was made by me over the summer. Indeed, it took me all summer just to get through all of the woodwind, brass, harp and percussion parts. (30+ parts, each with 85 minutes of music.) Hundreds of hours of fussy work, checking every note of every part against that of the score.

But at last night's rehearsal, our first together, it went largely without incident. Time well spent. And, to be sure, all of my time with the individual parts gave me time to study specific individual music, which goes against the grain of what is so easy to do when one studies a score -- which is more general in character.

And every morning I wake up with Mahler in my head. Who needs an iPod when you're already hard wired?

on Mahler's Ninth Symphony

2009-10-01T09:07:00.000-07:00

The orchestra and I had our first rehearsal on Mahler's Ninth last night. One member of the orchestra commented that he thought I looked like an old man as I walked into the hall -- not surprising, as this symphony has taken a lot out of me.

My teacher, Otto-Werner Mueller, used to tell his students to be careful studying Mahler, because something can happen to you, and creep into your soul. And when the symphony in question has (what many to believe to be) a preoccupation with death, you begin to get an idea of what it's like to take on this mammoth work.

Bruno Walter, who knew Mahler well and conducted the premiere of the Ninth a year after Mahler's death in 1911, calls this symphony "Mahler's masterpiece." And many believe the first movement to be his finest symphonic movement -- structural and spiritual perfection.

Why so?

Michael Steinberg believes it has a great deal to do with Mahler's mastery of the transition, which, next to variation, is perhaps the most challenging aspect of composition. Think about it for a moment: you write something, and then you have to move on to the next event, seamlessly. No bumps or grinds.

David Letterman makes it look easy every night with his first transition: how does Dave get from the stage to his desk without millions of people looking at his backside? Simple -- introduce Paul Shaffer. Or, in other words, create a diversion.

But Mahler has no such luxory. He must skillfully move from one event to the next without so much as a hiccup. (Mahler frequently litters his score with the directive unmerklich - - imperceptible.)

And so the first movement begins Andante comodo (a comfortable walking tempo), and proceeds from there to go faster (Allegro moderato -- moderately fast), then still faster (Allegro), but then there are other moments when Mahler clearly wants to get your attention, by suddenly (Plotzlich) getting slower. Towards the end of the movement, Mahler gets slower still, then very slow at the end.

How many tempos altogether, just in the first movement? I couldn't begin to count them all -- Mahler is clearly trying to attain some kind of overall rubato (from the italian, rubare, to steal time, but in music, rubato usually means to steal time and then give it back. . . listen to any great pianist playing the music of Chopin and you'll get an idea, as the left and right hands move in different tempi, but always end up together).

That's the ebb and flow -- what about the stuff of this movement? What makes it symphonic? The first thing you hear is an irregular 3-note rhythm (Mahler's heartbeat? a doctor told him to cut back on his vigorous exercise regimen when he detected a valvular dysfunction) played by the cellos and fourth horn. The harp immediately answers with a regular rhythm (is this Mahler's way of saying, 'but I want life! I have more to say!'), then another horn takes it a step further by playing an amalgam of the two -- part regular, part irregular -- this has the makings of a theme. Still only a fragment, with heroic potential, but it gives us some hope for a melody to come.

Then the second violins make their first entrance. . . is this a melody? Or is it the beginnings of one? Two notes, like a sigh, falling. Again two notes. More resignation. They expound a bit, but silence remains a big part of their music, as if they are searching for a way to express themselves, and what they wish to say continually eludes them.

And so, in the first moments of this symphony, you are given an irregular and regular (heart)beat, a (heroic) motif, and a haltering theme of resignation. A lot for you to digest, certainly! But these musical seeds are all you need as you traverse this nearly half hour of music, Mahler's masterpiece of ever-evolving transitional variation.

And we have only just begun.

Michael Steinberg

2009-08-01T06:03:00.000-07:00

Michael Steinberg, a great musicologist and music writer who wrote for the Boston Glove and was Artistic Advisor to the San Francisco and Minnesota Orchestras, died earlier this week. Anyone interested in learning more about The Symphony or The Concerto would do well to read his books on the subject. But more than anything else, he revolutionized the art of program annotation. His program notes were not just informative -- they put you there, at the time. You can smell the coffee Beethoven was drinking.

Long before he began writing program notes, however, he wrote for the Boston Globe. Here is a review (taking no prisoners) of Bernstein's Symphony no. 3, "Kaddish," printed in the Boston Globe 45 years ago:

Bernstein's 'Kaddish'

There is something enviable about the utter lack of inhibition with which Leonard Bernstein carries on. His Symphony No. 3 (Kaddish) is a piece, in part, of such unashamed vulgarity, and it is so strongly derivative, that the hearing of it becomes as much as anything a strain on one's credulity. Can the narrator really have said "Do I have your attention, Majestic Father?" and did she declare to her God, "We are in this thing together now, you and I"?

But yes, there it was, along with, at the end, the familiar figure of the composer himself, fetched from the wings by his wife (who had narrated), and bowing to the cheers and to the applause amid a veritable extravaganza of bear-hugs and kisses.

"Kaddish" was commissioned by the Boston Symphony and the Koussevitzky Music Foundation for the orchestra's 75th anniversary season, 1955-56. The composer responded with an ambitious work, laid out on a large scale. At its center stands the Hebrew Kaddish, the prayer of sanctification, traditionally used as a prayer for the dead, though its text speaks not of death, but of the praise of God and the hope of peace. Bernstein has troped the liturgical words with an English text of his own, one in which the speaker fights her way, Job-like, from despair faith.

The idea is splendidly imaginative, and it is tempting to think of what a poet like Auden might have made of it. But Bernstein as a writer of words has only fluency at his command, and that fluency produces a lava-flow of cliches wherein a few cozy intimacies (speaker to God, "We'll make it a sort of holiday") are contrasted against the tinny rhetoric of Norman Corwin's radio plays from the forties.

As a composer of music, Berstein's bent is principally theatrical. He knows how to make an effect, and "Kaddish" is full of detail that really tells: the dense and anguished cadenza for chorus a cappella is an example, and so is the tremendous orchestral outburst, with trumpets shrilling on high C flat, that starts the finale. The last ten bars of Amen are quite wonderful, not only for the magic of their sonority, but for the precision and skill of their harmonic preparation as well.

At such a moment, Bernstein shows that he can compose, and I just wish he would. Mostly, he seems to prefer the easier way of assembling a series of tricks. These tricks are mutually incompatible, and they are generally irrelevant to the task at hand. The program notes explain how atonal chromaticism is associated with despair and G flat major with faith, but no symbolism can justify the musical illogic of the transition. The idea of such a symbol is perfectly plausible, but Bernstein just has not managed to compose it out properly.

"Kaddish" was in the final stages of scoring last November when circumstances commanded its dedication "to the beloved memory of John F. Kennedy."

Charles Munch, during whose directorship "Kaddish" was commissioned, conducted this, its American premiere, and he led a spirited and exciting approximation. There were many ragged attacks and not quite comprehensible rhythms. I suspect that balances perhaps suffered because crowded conditions on stage necessitated the exile of a number of violinists. The principal chorus was that of the New England Conservatory, impeccably prepared by Lorna Cooke de Varon, and superb in every way. The Columbus Boychoir, Donald Bryant, director, had a substantial part as well: pitch and tone are amazing, rhythm less so, and there is no diction to speak of. The narration was by Felicia Monteleagre (Mrs. Bernstein), who for all of her intensity is not really an interesting performer, and who was made to sound metallically cold by the electronic amplification. Jennie Tourel sang the soprano solos, and she did so with utmost beauty and distinction.

The concert began with Handel's Concerto Grosso, Opus 6, Number 4, in a curious reading that demonstrated that it is possible to achieve a certain charm even with every imaginable feature of sonority, speed, articulation, dynamics quite wrong. There followed Bizet's youthful Symphony in C, so attractive in its evocation of the 17-year-old boy's playing of Schubert duets. Mr. Munch slammed through it rather roughly, and I am afraid both its performance and that of the Handel demonstrated how much rehearsal that the Bernstein Symphony had required. I found it interesting that even Handel's and Bizet's relatively simple patterns of quarters and eights came out pretty much all over the place, and I was the more braced, therefore, against the confusion caused by Bernstein's rather more complex metrical requirements.

Michael Steinberg
February 1, 1964

Rochberg String Quartet no. 3

2009-07-28T21:05:00.000-07:00

Earlier today, I went to a friend's house in Lenox, Mass, to hear four students from the Tanglewood Music Center perform Rochberg's String Quartet no. 3. Their coach, Andrew Jennings, was in attendance, as were about twenty other new music afficionados who had come to hear this work, created for the Concord String Quartet (of which Mr. Jennings was a violinist) in 1972.

I know Mr. Rochberg by name only; I knew none of his music before today. A score to the Transcendental Variations for string orchestra, taken from the middle (3rd) movement of this quartet, sits on my shelf, waiting to be perused. Studied. Well, opened.

But today, with the help of Katherine, Stephanie, Pei-Ling and Catherine (I don't know if I got the spelling of their names right, and they didn't tell me their last names, but I do know that they are from North Dakota, Houston, Taiwan and San Francisco, respectively, and that they are 3- to 4-year veterans of Tanglewood, and that they all met at Rice University in Houston, but that this was the first time they had ever played together as a quartet. . . sorry for the run-on), those of us in the living room audience were treated to a concert that I will never forget for as long as I live. It was a seminal event.

Thank you, Jan and Hermine, for inviting me.

and thank you, Fromm Quartet, for introducing us to this masterpiece, and for playing it with such devotion, technical virtuosity, and passion.

2009 season at Talcott Mountain

2009-07-07T10:26:00.000-07:00

There is a serenity prayer:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

The Hartford Symphony was set to perform with David Foster and his band on Friday June 26, but thunderstorms necessitated that we move the concert to the following day. The concert was great fun ("Pass the Peas" was a hit, and for the introduction to Maceo Parker's rendition of 'Georgia,' the audience could even hear the orchestra, however briefly!), but it was clear that we had lost most of our intended audience from the previous night.

Doggone weather!

Then, on Thursday July 2, with lousy weather all day, we held our patriotic "Celebrate America" concert as planned, even though it sprinkled throughout the evening. Ken Trestman, HSO Technical Director, hobbled on to the stage (he tore a ligament earlier that day) in the second half and said to me, ". . . electrical storm on the way . . ." which meant I had to either take quicker tempos or cut something. I'm sure the audience would not have minded if I had cut the Ives piece we were just about to play, but with all the work concertmaster Leonid Sigal had put into his solo part, I wasn't about to do that. The next piece, a new arrangement of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine" I had created specifically for this program, I was loathe to cut for selfish reasons, I suppose. . . but also because an HSO staffer, Ashley Malcolm, was so disappointed last year when I had pulled another arrangement of Porter's 'Beguine' from the program. So, we cut an arrangement of the Duke's "It don't mean a thing. . ." In hindsight, we needn't have, because the storm didn't arrive until well after the fireworks were over and the audience -- several hundred folks under their umbrellas -- had left. A highlight of the evening: during the traditional "Armed Forces Salute," I asked veterans of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard to raise and twirl their umbrellas when their song appeared, instead of standing. One woman out on the lawn had quite the twirl during the Navy song; during intermission, when I walked out to thank the patrons for coming to our concert in such inclement weather, I tried to find her, so that I could give her an award for the fastest and finest twirl! All of the umbrellas were quite a beautiful sight, since members of the audience were brandishing the most colorful striped varieties I had ever seen.

Confounded weather!

Needless to say, it was a stressful evening, wondering if the weather would hold out. (It did.) Afterwards, a few of us had a glass of wine on the stage. Poor Nick, the Holder of the Keys -- we had to rouse him out of his pajamas, as he had locked my dressing room and went home before I had a chance to get my things.

On Friday July 3, the HSO was treated to its first sunny evening at Talcott Mountain. Spirits were high (and flowing) for a change, as we prepared to present our first summer concert without the threat of menacing clouds. As it turned out, rain fell like buckets in other parts of Greather Hartford, but it mercifully left us alone for the evening. Still, with such wet stormy weather throughout the day, we couldn't help but think how many folks had elected to stay home. Gosh-darn weather!

My view of Talcott Mountain is that, for the most part -- save for the isolated Motown review, or perhaps ABBAMANIA or the music of Billy Joel -- if the weather is glorious, people come. They bring their wine and cheese and children and blanket and make a nice evening of it. Those people who were at the Thursday July 2 concert were music junkies, plain and simple. Or maybe they were fireworks fans, and they couldn't come the next night -- who knows. But when the weather is nice, I see thousands of people from the stage, smiling, being convivial, enjoying the music.

Gratefully, the weather looks good for July 10 (ABBAMANIA), and even for the Michael Cavanaugh evening the following Wednesday.

Fingers crossed!

Beethoven's Seventh Symphony

2009-05-21T19:26:00.000-07:00

At the conclusion of the Hartford Symphony's performance of Beethoven's majestic Symphony no. 7, I held up four fingers for the orchestra to see. I had not done this after four consecutive performances of Beethoven's Fourth Symphony earlier in the season, nor had I done it after four performances of the mighty Eroica , which is longer than the Seventh.

When I held up my fingers, I mouthed the words, 'we did it four times. . . FOUR TIMES!' One player within earshot cracked back to me, 'let's do it four more times.'

My reason for such a display? I will give a hint first. . .

During my pre-concert talk earlier that week (joined by the young gifted musician, Joseph Henaris), I mentioned that the 2nd movement had to be encored at the 1813 premiere. The audience would not let Beethoven continue with the third movement until he repeated the 2nd movement! And in some history circles, there is the belief that Beethoven had to play it a third time.

Well, later that evening, after we did the Allegretto, a number of people in the balcony applauded. It sounded a bit forced, not very spontaneous; the brief clapping probably would not have occured had Joseph and I not mentioned the encores demanded at the premiere. But I felt compelled to address the moment, telling the audience "this is really hard work, and we need to keep going . . . if you want to hear it again, please come back tomorrow night!"

And therein lies the answer -- playing/conducting Beethoven's Symphony no. 7 is completely exhausting, like a half-marathon. Most works have a moment here or there where one can physically dial-it-down, if not mentally. (After a concert, my head is totally spent no matter what the physical requirements may be.)

Wagner knew what he was talking about when he called this piece the 'Apotheosis of the Dance.' Once you get on the dance floor, there's no leaving it until the jig is done.

Verdi's Requiem

2009-05-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

Performing Verdi's Messa da Requiem recently, I was profoundly aware of Verdi's position as a composer for the theatre, a composer of music for the stage. Even with massive forces, he was unafraid, for example, to focus on only two people -- soprano and mezzo soprano -- to sing the Agnus Dei. During such a moment, there is a heightened tension, I believe, because the orchestra and chorus become audience.

Whether you are in a concert space designed to surround the performers (Amsterdam, Vienna, and San Francisco, to name a few), Verdi's Agnus Dei transforms the performance space into a circular event, where listeners engulf the two singers.

Or, to take another magical phrase from Verdi's masterpiece, there is the a cappella music for solo soprano and chorus, in the Libera Me. Here, solo singer and choristers are separated by a quiet orchestra, frozen by what they are hearing. Why? In part, because they are listening to what the strings had sounded an hour earlier, at the very beginning of the work. But now, in the Libera Me, there is a new hush to the music. . . it's in a different key, slightly higher, with new text, but melody and harmony are familiar. And the soprano solo's leap at the end never fails to astonish.

Yes -- Verdi knows how to make a wonderful racket (bass drum banging in the Dies Irae), and for this Verdi has often been criticized for not being more sensitive to the text, to the religious underpinnings of a mass for the dead. But then you come to such moments as those in the Agnus Dei, and the Libera Me, and you wonder how a non-religious man would have taken the time to write such heavenly music.

Beethoven's Eroica

2009-02-10T23:20:00.001-08:00

The first full program I ever conducted was in July 1980. The program began with Stravinsky's Instrumental Miniatures, then Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings and, after intermission, Beethoven's Symphony no. 3.

I remember studying my Beethoven score on BART trains, on the bus, taking it everywhere with me. Now, in hindsight, I realize it was pretty nervy of me to conduct this magnum opus on my first concert.

Why?

That was nearly thirty years ago.
I've conducted the Eroica several times since then.
But having done it several times does not make it easier to perform.
[This would be, and is, true for most other works.]

But not for the Eroica.

Maybe it's because, after he wrote all nine of his symphonies, Beethoven said the Third Symphony was his favorite.

Maybe it's because, just as the Rite of Spring ushered in a new era in music in the 20th century, the Eroica was a turning point in the 19th.

Or maybe because it's just hard, period.

But what a piece.
What a piece!

My father

2009-02-01T08:50:00.000-08:00

It was a pleasant surprise to read Jeffrey Johnson's commnent in the Hartford Courant that I had programmed Copland's Our Town as a musical birthday card for my dad. Sometimes I do things unwittingly, or in this case, perhaps subconsciously. I have always liked this short work, based on AC's music to the film version of Thornton Wilder's play. But in the many times I have performed it over the years, only my first with the Florida Orchestra (in Tampa of all places, on this Super Bowl Sunday) had really captured the essence of the piece. Don't ask me why.

So, with this in mind, in preparation for an all-Copland concert last weekend, it occurred to me that doing a scene from Our Town might help to set the mood. It was not part of my planning that the performance would occur on my father's birthday, just days after he would die of congestive heart failure. But then Thornton Wilder's nephew contacted the symphony to tell the orchestra that doing a scene from Our Town would not be in accordance with the playwright's estate, which specifically states that excerpting from any of his works is not allowed. (In a very pleasant telephone conversation I had with Tappan Wilder, he told me he'd learned of our plans from a Google search!)

Too bad, because the scene we had rehearsed featured the wonderful young actress, Lauretta Pope, whose considerable acting skills were thus unfortunately not on display for our audiences to witness.

But all was not lost. Forced to punt, I instead spoke to the audience about my father (Edward II; I'm the IIIrd), who had played a scene from Our Town when he was a student at Oakland Technical High School, circa 1941. After telling this story, the Hartford Symphony musicians responded with a very heartfelt rendition of Copland's music.

Learning an instrument.... as an adult!

2008-12-30T19:00:00.001-08:00

In a recent comment on this blog, Jennifer ruminated on the idea of learning an orchestral instrument.
My first reaction is the obvious one: It's never too late to start!

But the toughest row to hoe for an adult learning a new instrument is this: You know how good it can sound in the best of hands. Learning an instrument with this knowledge is what makes it so difficult.

As a kid, you don't care, because you don't know! During a recent visit to my parent's home in Oakland, a neighbor, Howard Jackson, recalled listening to me practice my french horn during my formative years. (In my parent's home, the front door opens to an atrium, where I often practiced when the noise of five brothers and sisters was overwhelming.) Mr. Jackson went on to say, "yeah...one day my wife said to me, 'I remember hearing Edward play his horn, and then, after a few years, he started sounding good.'"

Of course, I thought I sounded good all along! But Ms. Jackson's experience was a bit different from mine.

For an adult, the key is to go easy on yourself. If you want to learn the violin, or the oboe, or the horn, you will need tremendous patience.

But the best place to start is with the piano. Here you have a veritable orchestra; every sound, melodic fragment, magical harmony and percussive thrust, right at your fingertips.

And with the piano, you won't ever have to worry about playing in tune.

Why are the strings sitting there?

2008-12-11T19:08:00.000-08:00

You may wonder why I change the seating of the strings from time to time. It may appear to be random or arbitrary, but hopefully, if you've been paying attention, you already know the answer.

One thing is a given: of the two groups of violins (every string section has five sections: first and second violins, violas, cellos and basses), the first violins always sit on the left side, downstage, in clear view. Most orchestras have the second violins seated just inside the first violins, with violas and cellos to the right, and basses behind them.

Then why do I sometimes place the second violins opposite the first violins, downstage right?

It wasn't my idea. Berlioz did this in the early 1800s, and Mahler did the same in the early 20th century. First and second violins seated next to each other is a relatively new phenomenon, within the past 75 years or so. Why did it happen? I'm not sure, but I can guess..... perhaps during a recording session, back in the days when recording was still a new venture, some wiseguy producer might have asked, "hey, why are the violins separated? Put them together!" Or maybe a second violinist approached a conductor and respectfully asked, "Maestro, can we please sit next to the first violins? We have so much of the same music, and it would be so much easier for us to play together if we were seated together." The idea caught on, and stuck.

But in the last 10-25 years, more and more orchestras began seating the violins like Berlioz, Mahler and Wagner seated them -- on opposite sides of the stage. And the reason is a decidedly musical one, for which the benefit is mainly yours, not ours: because composers such as Vivaldi, Beethoven and even Bruckner wrote for violins stereophonically. When we did Vivaldi's Four Seasons with Sarah Chang last year, did you notice how the violins often talk with each other? In Bruckner symphonies, the violins often trade a musical idea back and forth. And in the finale of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, which you will hear later this season, the first and second violins engage in the musical equivalent of a fencing match, parrying back and forth right up to the movement's climax.

For some composers, writing stereophonically for violins is not a feature of their musical style. So if we do a program of Ravel, Debussy and Poulenc, I'll put the violins together. (Whether the violas or the cellos take the downstage right position is a matter of preference.)

You may ask, then, when violins are opposite each other, "how do you decide where to put the violas and cellos? Who sits inside the first violins, and who sits inside the seconds?

Toscanini liked the cellos inside the first violins, and I think Mahler did this as well. (Indeed, for Mahler symphonies, it makes a lot of sense, as the first violins and cellos often play the same melody together.) For this season, you will often see the violas inside the first violins, because we are in a Beethoven year, and B. loves to group the first violins with violas, and second violins with celli. Indeed, in the 3rd movement of his Symphony no. 3, in a section which features the 3 french horns prominently, both sets of two seem to be involved in a bit of gamesmanship.

So you know -- most second violinists dislike playing from the downstage right position. They would much prefer being inside the first violins, in their comfort zone. I can understand why. When they share the melody (or an intricate accompaniment) with the first violins, it's easier to keep the ensemble tight and taut when playing side by side.

But I want audiences to hear the music the way it was intended to be heard. In a smaller hall such as the Belding, the stereophonic effect is immediately recognizable, even to the novice listener.

Performing in the Belding

2008-12-11T18:40:00.000-08:00

During my pre-concert talks before performances last month of works by Beethoven, Sibelius and Dvorak, I asked all four audiences to raise their hands if this was their first experience listening to the Hartford Symphony perform in the Belding. I was astonished at the response -- all four pre-concert audiences (by my unofficial tally from the stage) was clearly over 50%, maybe even closer to 3 out of every 4 people.

So, for most of our audiences last month, hearing the Hartford Symphony perform in the Belding was a first time experience. And, predictably, most were wowed by the sonic difference. Mortensen Hall is a very large space, nearly 3,000 seats, and orchestras generally sound better in smaller venues. (It isn't the only criterion, but it's a good one.) Belding has anywhere from 800-900 seats, depending on what's going on that night.

When I did my first concerts with the orchestra several years ago, I did not like the Belding at all, but that was my impression from the stage. Now when we perform in the Belding, the sound on stage is much better.

Why the difference?

A few days ago, the HSO's Technical Director, Ken Trestman, gave me my first tour of the backstage area of the Belding. (I know, I know: I should have asked for this years ago. Mea culpa.) I was shown areas not privvy to you from your seat -- up high and beyond public view. When I asked Ken about the acoustical variable, I got my answer. Now, when the orchestra performs, these long, electronically-driven flaps (think long 'shades') are completely drawn, allowing for a much more vibrant, reverberant sound from the orchestra. I'm convinced that these 'shades' were only partly drawn in earlier years, which would explain why the sound was so dead to my ears. When the Belding is used for, say, a stand-up comedian, who necessarily needs amplification, the shades would come down, to deaden the space. The more acoustically 'dead' a space is, the better it is for amplified sound.

And all these years, I had thought a major reason for the sound difference was due to the different stages in the Belding and Mortensen halls. This is a factor, to be sure, but only partly.

Performing Dvorak's Seventh Symphony in November, it was evident to me how much the orchestra members were enjoying their collective sound.

What's your instrument? Piano? Flute? or do you sing?

For orchestras, our instrument is the space in which we play. And the better the venue is acoustically, the more musically rewarding the experience is for you.

Missa Solemnis: closing remarks on Beethoven's last page

2008-07-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

The Missa Solemnis of Beethoven is the most glorious musical work known to me. Yes, I am including all of the magesterial works of Bach, Mozart....you name it. I have said to many colleagues that if I were only given one work to conduct for the rest of my life, it would be Beethoven's great Mass in D major.

And one of the most fascinating aspects of this work is how it concludes. Every conductor grapples with it. Why not a soft ending (as with his only other mass, the Mass in C major? Why not the big ending, as the composer did soon afterwards with his Ninth Symphony?

No, instead it is a "scratch-your-head" conclusion, which doesn’t end in a hush, nor does it end with a rush.

Does the music just stop?
Or does it end with a question mark?

For weeks, I thought to myself:
- - - - - -what am I going to do with those last four bars?
Slow down? crescendo? add more weight to the final two chords?
(The last two chords of his Pastoral Symphony have also caused many conductors to shake their heads as they walk off stage.)

Again and again, the answer that came down to me was the same – let it be. Let it be. Beethoven knows what he’s doing.

In search of an answer, I started at the end of the mass and worked backwards. Yes, backwards. Surely it would appear to me, somewhere. For in every work of Beethoven’s there are always questions, and he never fails to answer them. It’s one of the things that make him great. He never leaves us hanging.

The Agnus Dei is certainly revelatory, daring even, but the answer was not to be found there. So I continued my retrograde until I reached the Osanna. Its concluding bars are so earth-shattering, so final that I wanted to ask the same question Robert Shaw suggested of the Gloria's conclusion: ‘why do we have to go on from here?’

And then it hit me – in many ways, with the end of Osanna, the piece as we know it has come to an end. The chorus sits. The violas and flutes sing. The basses chant ‘benedictus.’ And then there is the violin . . .that violin . . . Beethoven has transported us into a new realm. A new piece has begun. Nothing is as it once was.

And maybe this is why that, at the conclusion of our first performance, then again on the following night, the audience seemed to linger in that last glow of D major. Indeed, they did not seem perplexed at all, nor were they uncomfortable; there was no shifting, no wondering. They seemed to welcome the silence.

For me, the hardest silence was in the week that followed. It has always been difficult for me to sleep after concerts, but after our Missa Solemnis, I couldn’t do anything; even putting one foot in front of the other was a significant challenge. We had climbed Beethoven's Everest together, and now I’d forgotten how to walk. To this day, I still wake up with passages from the great mass running through my head. How lucky we are, how fortunate I am, to have had the opportunity to perform this majestic masterpiece. It was an experience I will never forget.

In the days and months ahead, I may come across a member of the chorus – on the street, in a store, on a bus – and we will share that knowing look. Nothing need be said. And we will smile that knowing smile, a recognition that we served Beethoven well. I can think of no higher calling.

Wagner's Isolde

2008-03-02T20:44:00.000-08:00

When orchestras perform music from Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, they usually perform the Prelude (which opens the opera) and Liebestod ("Love Death," which closes the opera) in tandem. The Love Death is best done with a soprano (Isolde) singing (as Wagner intended), but Wagner wrote the music in such a way that it can be done successfully with orchestra alone.

The Love Death can be played by itself, but not so the Prelude, since it ends inconclusively. (For my opening concerts with the Hartford Symphony in September 2002, I followed the Tristan Prelude with Thomas Ades's Gefriolsae Mae for men's chorus and low strings.)

Several years ago, a retired music critic from Philadelphia gave me the idea of doing an Isolde program -- in essence, the music from Tristan und Isolde without Tristan. At first, I didn't find it very doable, but the more I thought about it, the more it intrigued me. And since orchestra audiences are accustomed to hearing an Isolde sing the Love Death, why not have Isolde sing other music from the opera as well?

Performing music from a Wagner opera in concert is an enormous challenge. It does not lend itself to excerpting because of the music's 'through-composed' nature; unlike the music in an opera by Mozart or Verdi (with frequent stops and starts), Wagner's music is continuous, and cutting it up in order to present it on an orchestra concert is far from ideal.

But I pressed on with the idea nonetheless, and committed to the idea one year ago, thinking I had plenty of time to figure out exactly what I would do. It turned out to be an enormous challenge, understandably, since no one else had done it, and I'm certain many have tried. A colleague shared two Stokowski recordings, where he took music from the love duet in Act II and elided it with the final Love Death. Another practice is to take one act by itself.

Nine months later, I finally had a plan which encompasses music from all three acts. The first half will be music exclusively from Act I; the second half will begin with Act II and end with the Love Death which concludes the opera. The entire concert will be a typical length for an orchestra concert.

Indeed, this was the hardest part of the exercise -- deciding which music to leave out. The toughest decision of all was not being able to include the opening of Act III, music which has haunted and bewitched me from the moment I first encountered it over twenty years ago.

There were many other decisions to make -- which music would Isolde sing, and could we perform music written for Tristan and Isolde without the singers? (Yes -- a violin/viola duet will perform the Love duet from Act II.) A trumpet will fill in for Brangaene; a trombone will play for King Mark. And when I had to decide which chunks of music to leave out, I have strived to move seamlessly from scene to scene.

Why do it at all? Music lovers in Hartford won't hear the Connecticut Opera performing Wagner anytime soon. It is expensive to produce, and finding singers to sing Wagner are in short supply. And you can drive to New York to hear it and see it on stage, and real Wagner fans travel to Bayreuth to hear his music dramas in the space for which it was intended. But I want the Hartford to play this music, because it makes us a better orchestra, and it allows you to hear the music of Tristan in Hartford and still be home in time for the evening news. (Wagner operas are notoriously long in length.)

Will our presentation work? Honestly, I do not know, because this is a first time, and it needs an orchestra and an audience to make the final determination. This performance then, is a premiere of sorts. No orchestra has ever done Wagner's Tristan und Isolde as we are doing it. I hope you like it.

Rachel Lee

2007-12-17T05:44:00.000-08:00

I was asked about Rachel Lee, a young phenom (not yet 21) who was a guest soloist with the Hartford Symphony in late October.

The first thing I look for in a young soloist is poise, and that's something that doesn't come through completely until you get into the heat of performance. In this regard, Miss Lee was a total professional -- anything new and different on performance night did not throw her off in the slightest...if anything, she would merely smile and run with it.

But there was something else about her that struck me from the first rehearsal, and that was her courage to do what she felt Mendelssohn asked. The first movement of his Violin Concerto has the tempo marking, Allegro appasionato, but most violinists play the piece as if Mendelssohn writes "Allegro vivace." Miss Lee had the gumption to take a tempo that was not fast -- some might even think it was a tad too slow -- but the end result was that her tempo choice allowed her to fully express the 'appasionato' direction, giving her time to do things in between the notes that would not have been possible at a faster pace.

Interestingly, the orchestra was somewhat divided on her interpretation --- some wanted the 'usual,' while others were very taken with her unique musical point of view. (Our concertmaster, Leonid Sigal, was among those who were truly impressed with her.)

I would welcome the opportunity to make music with her again, and look forward to witnessing her continued growth as an artist.

Holiday Pops, and murmurs on Tchaikovsky

2007-12-16T18:41:00.000-08:00

Truth be told, I cannot remember having more fun conducting a pops concert. For those of you at the evening performance on Saturday, there was a moment after our trumpet section had just put the finishing touches on their horse whinny in Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride," and I started laughing and couldn't stop! Not the kind of thing you expect from a conductor in the middle of a performance. But I think what happened is, for that brief moment, I became a member of the audience, a spectator rather than a participant. And when I acknowledged Jay, Tom and Jerry, they stood up and pumped their chests out as if they had just played the call from Beethoven's Leonore Overture no. 3. Wow.

There were other moments...

Many of you have remarked to me how surprised you are to learn how nervous I get for my pre-concert talks before Masterworks concerts. Well, our Santa Claus was nervous as ever before the Holiday concerts, but you wouldn't have known it to see him in front of the audience. His biggest concern was remembering his lines. (I wrote two dialogues for him to do with me on Act I and Act II.) He only received the second dialogue on Thursday, which made him more nervous, and then, to throw him another curve, he rehearsed his lines with the Connecticut Children's Chorus (for their jaunty take on "Mr. Sandman" to the words, "Mr. Santa") only moments before the matinee concert, which only made him more nervous.

But when Santa told me he also sings the blues and plays guitar, I somehow knew he would be fine, no matter how nervous he was. (There is no substitute for having performed in front of audiences -- either you've done it, or you haven't. Santa had.) And I knew I'd be able to count on him in a pinch.

As it turned out, he was sensational. Our audiences loved him. When he started dancing to the kids' singing, I nearly lost it again. And rather than trip on his lines as he had feared, he ad-libbed new lines on both performances, throwing me curve balls that I had not expected. Well, given our mantra for "Expect the Unexpected," seems only proper that the music director get a taste of his own mediciine from time to time.

My favorite part of the program? Well, though I always love performing with the the Hartford Chorale (and Saturday was no exception), and though soprano Sarah Callinan was a revelation, my biggest thrill was conducting the finale to Act I of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, with orchestra, children's chorus.... and ballet. You see, I have never had the pleasure of conducting this ballet, for some reason. Music from the suite? oh my gosh, I cannot count how many times I have conducted this music...dozens upon dozens of times. But the Snow Pas de deux must be the most gloriously majestic C major music known to man -- it makes me weep and shiver to hear this music. And then the Pas de deux from Act II......oh lord help me, when the harps enter, and then the strings with their pizzicati, all acting as tapestry for the celli, as they play a descending G major scale. That's all it is, folks, a G major scale. But in Tchaikovsky's hands.....pure genius.

Music teachers everywhere tell their students: 'Music in the major mode is happy; music in the minor mode is sad."

Then why does Tchaikovksy's music in the major mode sound so sad, so poignant? His gift for melody has few equals, if any, and there are none who do [or did] it better.

after Yo Yo....

2007-10-15T08:14:00.001-07:00

People have often asked me, "Is Yo Yo Ma as nice in person as he appears to be on stage?" To which I respond, "no.....he's even nicer."

We met one hour before the orchestra rehearsal, a custom I always do with guest soloists so that there are no surprises when soloist and conductor work with the orchestra players later. Yo Yo had arrived early. (I have read that Sting and Tom Hanks are much the same way, always early for everything, even the most trivial appointments, and wonder if this is something that the truly great artists have in common?) He was waiting for me, cello in hand, and was ready to play Dvorak for me, asking me what I'd like to hear, to which I responded, "Yo Yo...having already heard you rehearse the Dvorak with Levine and the BSO last month, and then your performance on television with Maazel and the New York Phil a couple of days ago, and of course your two different recordings of Dvorak a million times.....well, if I'm not ready for you now, I have no business being here!" And since I knew he'd be hungry after a long drive from Manhattan, I came prepared with sushi from Ichiban. We ate, and talked -- everything from what it's like to make music with Maazel to his close friendship with the late Fred Rogers, of "Mr. Rogers" fame. The orchestra's stage manager, Ken Trestman, interrupted us.

KT: "May I touch your cello?"
YYM: "Do you play?"
KT: "Well......"
YYM: "You have to try this....it's the cello Jackie duPre played...."

and Yo Yo (while Ken protested) proceeded to give a man he'd just met his magnificent Davidoff cello.

Now, how many artists would let you touch their Stradivarius, let alone play it?

Mary Ellen Guertin (wife of board member, Pierre Guertin) was there with 20 or 30 kids, so the rehearsal felt like a performance of sorts. (It doesn't matter if there are 28 or 2,800 in the audience -- orchestras always play differently when people are listening.) And Yo Yo did many things in rehearsal that I did not expect. But in every instance where he pushed or pulled or stretched or suspended, it was always so natural, so logical, always in a beautiful state of flux. That evening, he was different again; it was an entirely different performance. (I must remember to ask Mary Ellen if the Dvorak was a different experience for her in the evening.)

One moment I won't soon forget.....

...there is a magical duet between the cello and violin late in the finale, and in this passage during the rehearsal, I later realized I had not done as much of an accelerando (Dvorak's direction in the score) as I would have liked. Hours later, in the performance, Yo Yo was playing the duet with our concertmaster, Leonid Sigal, clearly enjoying the moment, and yet he still managed to indicate to me with every bone in his back and the force of his musical will that he wanted to fly at this point. And so I took off, taking the orchestra with me, and now I know what Han Solo feels like when he goes into hyperspace. Wow.

But what is it about the end of this Dvorak cello concerto, in which the finale begins with such vim and verve, and then a dozen minutes later takes on a completely different sound world, filled with such pain and sadness? Ah, yes. food for thought (and a future post).

Yo Yo Ma comes to Hartford

2007-09-13T05:04:00.000-07:00

The Hartford Symphony will be performing the Dvorak Cello Concerto on Thursday, September 20 with the fabulously gifted cellist, Yo Yo Ma.

This will be my first time to perform with Yo Yo, although I have worked with him on two previous occasions.

I first met Yo Yo when I was with Assistant Conductor with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra (Orange County, CA) in the early 90s. While he was there -- performing the Dvorak concerto -- Yo Yo did a master class with four cellists from the Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra, an ensemble made up of mostly high school students. [A master class is like a 'private lesson in public,' where student and teacher do their thing in front of a live audience.]

I knew these four youngsters would appreciate the opportunity of having a lesson with Yo Yo, but I was not prepared for the connection he would make with each of them..... before the event, Yo Yo asked me for information on each kid -- not just their musical abilities and interests, but also their hobbies, their personalities, their home life (he specifically asked me if each youngster lived in a single or two parent home, and if they had brothers/sisters) and their favorite sports, televisions shows, movies. In short, for Yo Yo, it was not sufficient for him to give each person some pointers on the concerto or sonata he/she would perform --- he wanted to make a connection. And boy did he ever. The audience was rapt. And each young cellist had a life changing experience with a magical man.

Same thing in Pittsburgh several years later: my parents came to that one, and sat next to (the now late) Fred Rogers, of "Mr. Rogers" fame, a good friend of Yo Yo's. (Yes, Mr. Rogers was like that in real life, too; when Yo Yo introduced Mr. Rogers to me, he called me "Mr. Cumming.")

Oh, and one other thing....

Just before Yo Yo was to perform the Bocherini Cello Concerto, he was talking backstage with me, my wife, Celeste, and my sister Rita, visiting from Brooklyn. Celeste (a cellist) jokingly asked Yo Yo, "can I touch your cello?"

YYM: Do you play?
CC: Yes.
YYM: Come with me.

at which point Yo Yo takes Celeste into his dressing room, sits her down, gives her his cello, leaves the room, shuts the door, and resumes his conversation with Rita and me. This is all happening just a few minutes before the Pittsburgh Symphony is starting the overture. I'm not kidding.

Well, since he once left his cello in the back of a New York cab, I suppose this was not a huge risk for him to take, comparatively speaking. But can you imagine any other major artist, willingly giving up their priceless instrument to someone they had just met, just moments before he/she was about to perform with a world class orchestra? I cannot.

Oh, one other thing.....if you were to meet Yo Yo, either backstage or on the street, and you struck up a conversation with him, you would have to say goodbye to him first. He would have all the time in the world for you. Believe it. The man lives in the moment, and that is a big part of his genius.
--Edward