multi-tasking

Cutting through the clutter and experiencing the present moment fully is part of our job requirements as performing musicians. In a world equally full of attractions and distractions, I think of this as something we're uniquely able to offer people - two hours of focused, impassioned contemplation. Still, we're not immune from distractions ourselves, including the tendency to multitask. Even as I write this blog entry, I am also eating dinner, listening to a recording, getting dressed for a concert, and teaching a lesson. Use more bow! Oops, not you.

The other day in a rehearsal MTT even caught himself doing it - he was conducting a complex section of Petrouchka, featuring a prominent flute solo, and meanwhile making comments and adjusting balances in the previous section. Once he recognized everyone's confusion, he quickly stopped the orchestra, made the correction, and told us, "I'm sorry, I think I'm multi-tasking when actually I'm just being rude!"

I think this is usually the case when we multitask: we think we're being extra productive and generous with ourselves, when actually we are just short-changing one or all of the activities we're engaged in. And ultimately we are short-changing ourselves, because none of those tasks gets as much attention as it deserves. Conducting might seem to require a certain amount of multi-tasking, with all those parts to listen to, people to cue, adjustments to make - and yet it is amazing how an orchestra responds to someone who is fully and deeply engaged in listening and being part of the music-making. There are musicians who you can just watch in the act of listening - how intent they are, how responsive - and already you're inspired to play your best. MTT is one of those, and our soloist this weekend Christian Tetzlaff is another.

I'm wondering how people will deal with the pressures of multi-tasking during this Sunday's live New World Symphony webcast. It's one thing to ignore distractions in the concert hall, the occasional unsilenced cell phone, noisy wrapper-removing, etc. But listening on your computer I imagine as a blizzard of distractions, e-mail, pop-ups, alerts and dialogues. Hopefully our online audiences won't take it upon themselves to also cook dinner, teach a lesson, and redesign their Facebook profiles at the same time, as I am right now.

Anyway, have a great weekend everyone, and try not to do too much! What's that, I didn't mean to write on your wall - how much garlic was that? - who's poking me? - use less bow! Oops, not you.

NWS Petrouchka poster

MTT's cinematic Shostakovich

Until recently, I had no idea that MTT was such a film buff. Whether he's quoting Cher from Moonstruck ("Snap out of it!), complimenting our Polish trombone player Maciej on his cowboy solo in Copland's "Buckaroo Holiday" ("The best tribute to the United States since Borat"), or recommending we check out director Andrei Tarkovsky for a flavor of Russian cinema, this week has been full of film references.

We're rehearsing Shostakovich's 5th Symphony, which we'll play this Friday in Lincoln Theatre, then Saturday in the Carnival Center (along with Shostakovich's Second Cello Concerto with Yo-Yo Ma) before taking all of it on tour to New York. MTT points out how Shostakovich structures the symphony using all sorts of film editing techniques: cross-cutting, fading in and out, dissolves, close-ups, etc. In the very beginning of the symphony, an angular, leaping figure cries out furiously in the strings, before moving off into the distance. MTT acted the whole thing out for us, becoming this angry, contorted figure first in close-up then out on the horizon. Those far-off howls and grimaces are heard in the lower strings, fading into the background as a new character emerges in the violins.

MTT will speak in detail about the symphony at the Discovery Concert on Friday (and next Wednesday in New York). Tomorrow evening at the Lincoln Theatre you can see a documentary film on the same topic, "Shostakovich Against Stalin: The War Symphonies". Check out the New World website for more information.

"Live from Miami Beach!"

This image was lifted from Critical Miami, which has covered the plans closely.

This week New World Symphony's musicians are unusually busy - preparing for a Shostakovich festival and concerts on Friday and Saturday, a master class with Yo-Yo Ma on Thursday, and a tour to New York's Carnegie Hall next week. It's hard to look beyond the next week when you have so much stuff to do.

The administration and staff are looking much further though, launching an ambitious project to build a new hall, designed by Frank Gehry. They've been planning the hall for several years, and occasionally inviting musicians upstairs to show off these fantastic blueprints and artist's renderings, like the one above. Last week, they brought the show and tell to the Miami Beach City Commission chambers, on 17th and Convention Center Dr., for a workshop meeting over a proposed $15 million grant. Tomorrow at 5 pm, the City Commission will meet there again and vote on the proposal.

As the Miami Herald reported yesterday, last week's meeting featured speeches by president Howard Herring, project manager Grant Stevens, and board chairman Howard Frank (the Herald mistakenly called him "Frank Howard"). The most illuminating speech, though, was by artistic director Michael Tilson Thomas, and wasn't mentioned in the Herald's piece.

MTT acknowledged congratulations for the two Grammy awards he had won the previous evening, then tied that into the larger missions of both the San Francisco Symphony (which received those Grammys for a recording of Mahler's 7th Symphony) and the New World Symphony. Both organizations are developing new relationships between classical music and the larger culture, and empowering their orchestral musicians to take an active role.

He described how the new hall would develop and enhance that role. He contrasted the Lincoln Theater, which for all its charm and history (music and porn, as Dan Wakin noted) is basically a "one-room schoolhouse." The new space would offer possibilities for broadcasting, multimedia, and engagement that we probably can barely imagine. He mentioned the use of video projections and Internet 2, and the dream of hearing "Live from Miami Beach!" all around the world. The design of the space is like a traditional concert hall turned inside-out, facing the community and the world through the use of new technology, and a very old tradition.

The whole presentation was really impressive - I was one of those NWS musicians packing the balcony with handmade signs - and it made me realize that what we do here does have a larger impact. Most of us won't be around in 2010-11, when the hall is slated to open, but I still came away thinking orchestral music might be about changing the world, not just earning a pension. When the hall does open, I'll definitely be tuning into my iPhone, VistaDoohickey, or whatever other newfangled gizmo is broadcasting that first "Live from Miami Beach!"

symphonies ahoy

It must be the Miami Beach Boat Show this weekend, because there is definitely a nautical vibe in the air around here. These enormous yachts have been filling the streets and parking lots, as well as the waterways, and this morning I saw a guy walking around in his life jacket. Maybe he just wanted an extra layer, since it's been cold by Florida standards - mid-50s this morning.

We haven't launched into any sea chanties yet at the symphony, but we have been lining up big symphonic warhorses, sort of like those behemoth yachts on the intracoastal waterway. MTT is around, and we've had some conducting workshops with young conductors. They take turns on the podium to read through big standard repertoire pieces like Brahms 1st, Beethoven 3rd, and Tchaikovsky's 5th, with coaching and advice from MTT. The conductors taking part this week are all very talented: Philip Mann, Jonathan Yates, NWS conducting fellow Steven Jarvi, and Daniel Stewart, a member of our viola section.

Playing the first movement of Tchaik 5 yesterday, MTT asked us to sound more like pirates, making all those 6/8 rhythms more "swashbuckling". It's actually been a lot of fun, playing through all these big pillars of symphonic literature, and though there's not the pressure of actually performing them, MTT gets into a lot of interesting details and ideas. And the young conductors get the orchestra on its best behavior, since MTT is walking around and looking over all of our shoulders.

Yiddish theater revival

I just listened to a radio interview with writer Stefan Kanfer, on NPR's Fresh Air. Kanfer talked about the history of Yiddish theater, which he wrote about in a book called Stardust Lost: The Triumph, Tragedy, and Mishugas of the Yiddish Theater in America. Among the major figures they discussed were Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, the grandparents of Michael Tilson Thomas. This NY Times review of Kanfer's book describes Boris' popularity and ability to captivate audiences:

The audience demanded Acting above all — large emotions, dramatic gestures. This was a blessing for many in the Yiddish theater who were mainly entertainers. Thomashefsky reveled in mesmerizing the crowds. A matinee idol and ladies’ man, he enthralled a generation of young women, apparently inducing one to begin tearing her clothes off at the sight of his famous calves. This woman was just one of scores of “patriotn,” or fans, who passionately followed their favorite actors, engaging in heated arguments and even fistfights over who was the Yiddish theater’s supreme artist.

Kanfer talks quite a bit about how Yiddish theater has influenced popular culture - from the musical Fiddler on the Roof (based on a Yiddish play called Tevye the Milkman) to a less obvious influence on Cole Porter. Even Pablo Casals asked his students to sound "more Jewish," Kanfer says, asking for a lamenting, plaintive quality that Yiddish theater performers perfected. Even as such sounds entered our popular culture, and spread into vaudville, the Yiddish theater itself has all bit disappeared, along with a great deal of plays, music, and performers.

Next week our orchestra will be revive a bit of Yiddish theater, with a program called The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a life in the Yiddish Theater. Michael Tilson Thomas will conduct a small orchestra and several singers on two concerts, January 12 and 13. I'm not playing, but I'm looking forward to hearing it from the audience, since it seems like a rare chance to hear some fascinating, whimsical songs.

Robert Levin's class on Mozart

Last week I listened to pianist Robert Levin give a master class on Mozart's wind concerti, at which several New World fellows played. I didn't take notes unfortunately, but a few things stick in my mind.

First, he listed three books on performance practice that every musician should own:

Leopold Mozart's A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing

J.J. Quantz' On Playing the Flute

C.P.E. Bach's Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments


I haven't read any of these completely yet - I'm thinking of making it a new year's resolution. I did begin Leopold Mozart's book last summer, having found it in a university library. I really enjoy the stuffy old-fashioned language of pedagogical treatises, and the funny stories and observations about performing life that get told in passing. Leopold Mozart definitely goes on some silly tangents - even reading his chapter on basic notational principles was hilarious. It might not look like light holiday reading, but I'm pretty sure you'll find this stuff as amusing as it is worthwhile.

Robert Levin was constantly challenging the wind players to articulate the character of the music. I sometimes feel constricted in music of the classical style - even the word classical feels constrictive! But watching Levin sing, sigh, giggle, and hum through a Mozart concerto really opened my ears to some of the possibilities of this music. His whole body just seemed set free when he demonstrated a passage - demonstrations which were as often with singing and gestures as playing on the piano. On a few occasions I have seen Michael Tilson Thomas 'perform' an orchestral score in this way, acting as though he's been possessed by all those symphonic themes and rhythms.

One of the thoughts Robert Levin left us with was this: the problem with Mozart's music is that it's too easy for children, and too hard for adults! Lately I feel like one of those adults, furiously obsessing over all the complexities and complications of making music. Sometimes I wish I could forget all this stuff, and just go back to the child-like wonder of putting together beautiful sounds. Somehow a musician like Robert Levin balances the two, or finds a way around the paradox. He has so thoroughly analyzed all this music, and studied its history down to specific manuscripts and performances, and reached his very thoughtful conclusions. But then in front of an audience, or just a bunch of fellow musicians, he makes it come alive in a way I can't possibly convey in words.

"holding up all this falling"

While coaching a clarinetist's Mozart Concerto in a master class the other evening, Michael Tilson Thomas brought up a Rilke poem, which I think was this one:

Autumn

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up, as if orchards were dying high in space. Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no." And tonight the heavy earth is falling away from all other stars in the loneliness. We're all falling. This hand here is falling. And look at the other one. It's in them all. And yet there is Someone, whose hands infinitely calm, holding up all this falling. Rainer Maria Rilke

He made the point that every leaf falls in its own individual way - even though they all might be saying "no", it is a slightly different no in each case. And so he challenged the clarinetist to explore different ways of executing the graceful falling gesture of the first phrase, and to find one suited to his own personality and his conception of the piece. He quickly came up with something that was very different than what MTT had sung - but delightful nonetheless.

It was an interesting exchange, and a reminder of how idiosyncratic the performing arts can be. I often find myself trying to make things "right", meaning in tune and in time, among other things. I think much less often about how to make things "right" in mood, in gesture, or in psychological terms - even though all these are aspects we respond to immediately. It's why that poem speaks to us in such a beautiful way.

This also reminded me of a passage from Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, in an essay called "Nothing Special":

Of course, whatever we do is the expression of our true nature, but without this [Zen] practice it is difficult to realize. It is our human nature to be active and the nature of every existence. As long as we are alive, we are always doing something. But as long as you think, "I am doing this," or "I have to do this," or "I must attain something special," you are actually not doing anything. When you give up, when you no longer want something, or when you do not try to do anything special, then you do something. When there is no gaining idea in what you do, then you do something. In zazen what you are doing is not for the sake of anything. You may feel as if you are doing something special, but actually it is only the expression of your true nature; it is the activity which appeases your inmost desire. But as long as you think you are practicing zazen for the sake of something, that is not true practice.

I think it's wonderful to think that just by acting in a mindful, unaffected way, one can manifest one's true nature - something entirely unique to oneself. And of course it is true that just as no two voices sound alike, no two hands fall quite the same way, and no two musicians sound the same. This is the magic of musical performance - while we may have our standards, and follow standard practices and forms, no live performance needs to sound standard.

It's worth reminding ourselves of this, I think, in a world where too many things have lost any taste of individuality. Just yesterday I was reading Eric Schlosser's essay "Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good", which appeared originally in the Atlantic Monthly. In answering his title's question, Schlosser penetrates the secrets of the "flavor industry" and reveals that a great deal of the flavors we crave and consume daily are synthesized by a few little-known chemical companies; not only that, but these companies all seem to be located along one stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike. They work to insure that every french fry tastes pretty much the same as any other - as does every box of cereal, cup of yogurt, or can of soda. Lest you think I've strayed too far from the subject, here's a bit from the article:

One flavorist compared his work to composing music. A well-made flavor compound will have a "top note" that is often followed by a "dry-down" and a "leveling-off," with different chemicals responsible for each stage. The taste of a food can be radically altered by minute changes in the flavoring combination. "A little odor goes a long way," one flavorist told me.

They may be sophisticated artists in flavor manipulation, but reading this article was a bit like finding I had been living (or at least eating) in the Matrix, a world entirely manufactured and designed to deceive my sensory perceptions. It's a bit disconcerting but well worth reading - an excerpt is available online, and Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation may cover some of the same ground.

Many might argue that we live in a musical matrix as well - and one of the prime culprits they would point to is Muzak. I have a slightly more positive view of the company though, after reading another recent article, "The Soundtrack of Your Life" by David Owen. This appeared in the April 10th New Yorker, and it explains the company's development from a producer of aural narcotics to a much more sophisticated use of music in "audio branding." They're still piping in music that might not even catch your attention - but it's being used to communicate a definite mood, concept, or even physical activity.

I suppose all this audio branding seems a bit nefarious and evil, at least until you are aware of what's being done. Once I realized how they do it, I was almost grateful to these clever people who design these ingenious sound messages. I guess the differences between the chemical companies' "flavorists" and Muzak's "creative managers" may not be all that great; but I would much rather unknowingly consume a Beatle's song than a ground-up insect. Given the choice, of course.

Thanks for reading!

Shostakovich's savage Seventh

People often say about a film that it has to be experienced in a real movie theater, with the massive screen, the pounding speakers, the gasping crowd, to be properly appreciated. I think of Shostakovich's 7th Symphony the same way - I never much liked it until I got to play it and experience the epic sweep of the thing. It can be long-winded, unwieldy, and sometimes comically banal - Bartok famously mocked its first movement march in his Concerto for Orchestra - yet it all fits together very powerfully in a concert hall, where you can't turn away from its triteness or its pathos.

Before our first performance last night, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas described meeting Shostakovich on a visit from Soviet artists to Southern California. Even in that sunny clime, MTT said, Shostakovich seemed perpetually under a cloud, a distant, haunted man whose suspicious gaze wasn't softened by American teenagers requesting autographs. I suppose it's still a miracle to me, no matter how often I see it performed, that a few pages of dots and dashes, abstract symbols, can take flight and convey something powerful and unspeakable 60 years later.

MTT described Shostakovich as a composer whose natural inclination was towards the kind of avant-grade modernism being written in Paris, spare and ironic in the manner of Satie or early Prokofiev. He was a citizen of an authoritarian regime, though, and he was compelled to write grand symphonies in the Austro-German tradition - ironically, those same nations whose army threatened Leningrad at the time Shostakovich wrote his Seventh. Shostakovich was a master of irony, and his first movement is interrupted by a long march, the passage that inspired Bartok's scorn and many others' confusion. It begins as merely an asinine, repetitive tune, accompanied by snare drum, but gradually builds to a terrifying climax, the same insidious melody now rising over shrieks and moans - like an evil psycopathic cousin to Bolero, never losing its maniacal grin.

I think for a long time I shared Bartok's derision for this march, and for the symphony as a whole. Its whole history seemed to suggest the composer selling out, quickly throwing together a patriotic anthem, intended to build up morale and excite foreign support for the Soviet cause. It seems to have done the trick: as the seige of Leningrad was halted, the symphony was an immediate popular success around the world.

With Shostakovich, though, you're never quite sure if there is another layer you're missing. Listening to it now, I hear the message that not only is war cruel and ugly, but the patriotic faces we put on in response are just as horrifying, and disfiguring. Along with the morbid, political themes, though, there is music so graceful, so innocent and nostalgic for beauty and purer pursuits - like the third movement waltz that inspired MTT to do an ice-skating demonstration on the podium during rehearsal. Maybe there's a whole other level I'm still just missing.

I wrote a little review for my Friendster profile as well:

Why did Shostakovich trivialize his 7th Symphony with one of the most idiotic themes ever written? Written during Leningrad's resistance to the Nazi invasion in 1942, the symphony contains some of Shostakovich's most rapturous, profound music - and a march so dumb that even the greatest orchestras sound silly playing it.

I think of it as the atomic bomb of thematic motives, a tune that stays in your head longer than the half-lives of most radioactive isotopes. Maybe the idea was not only to defeat Hitler's army, but send them back to Berlin humming a melody that would make their friends want to kill them as well.

Our orchestra will play two performances of the symphony this weekend, under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. Take cover, this is music at its most brutal and senseless!

"making of the moment something permanent"

What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other; herself and Charles Tansley and the breaking wave; Mrs. Ramsay bringing them together saying, “Life stand still here”; Mrs. Ramsay making of the moment something permanent (as in another sphere Lily herself tried to make of the moment something permanent)—this was of the nature of a revelation. In the midst of chaos there was shape; this eternal passing and flowing (she looked at the clouds going and the leaves shaking) was struck into stability. Life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay said. “Mrs. Ramsay! Mrs. Ramsay!” she repeated. She owed it all to her.

-To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, p. 161

At one point during Michael Tilson Thomas' audition masterclasses he began talking about manipulating the quality of time's passing. Thinking about suspended time sent me searching for this passage in To the Lighthouse, a novel which to me is all about beautifully captured moments. As musicians, we also have a magical ability to make "life stand still here," to give shape and stability in the midst of chaos.

One violinist played a Mozart concerto, and while her performance was hardly chaotic, it may have been a bit tense. MTT talked about the experience of 'now,' and how it differs between the performer and the audience. The performer's experience might be a merciless procession of anxiety-inducing events - "now change the stroke, now make the shift, now emote!" Whereas the audience member's sense of now is more "wobbly" - therefore more yielding and relaxed. So we can engage with that audience member more successfully if we can find our way to a more breathing, "springier" sense of time. This can give us more space to execute all those merciless events , and perhaps ease some of the anxiety. Probably every performer has been told countless times to "relax!" - but I thought MTT managed to convey this advice in an unusually helpful way.

Of course, each musical idea has its own quality of pulse, and not everything should sound like a sunny, relaxed Mozart violin concerto. MTT expressed this by saying that every pulse has a 'what' and a 'how' as well as a 'where.' We create the what and how with articulation, resonance, energy, direction - all the nuances that can make two works in the same tempo sound infinitely different.

During one New World Symphony rehearsal, MTT was describing Toscanini's rehearsals with the NBC Symphony, and how Toscanini would cajole and plead with the orchestra, "legato, espressivo, con amore..." Then they would play it, full of all that juicy expression, and he would scream "MA IN TEMPO!" For Maestro Toscanini, apparently, those wobbly 'now's were a little too wobbly. Our challenge is to fit nuance, style, shape and life into the eternal passing and flowing of time. It may not be the great revelation to that simple question from To the Lighthouse, but it's a pretty interesting problem to work on nevertheless.

For more on MTT's musical ideas, read this post about Strauss' Don Juan.

MTT and Strauss' Don Juan

I know it's still a little early for Thanksgiving, but lately I've been quite grateful to be among brilliant musicians and to get the opportunity to hear and learn from them. One of my favorites is pianist Jeremy Denk, who this weekend wrote a captivating blog posting on fortune cookies and chamber music.

Also, I've been intending for a while to set down some of my favorite moments from the past few weeks' visit by New World Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas. MTT is one of the most inspiring musicians I know, so I try to keep my ears open whenever he's around.

I thought I would divide my collection of wisdom culled from MTT's rehearsals and seminars into three posts, with one for general musical advice and one specifically for bass players. In this first post, though, I want to share some ideas about one of his most brilliant interpretations, Richard Strauss' tone poem Don Juan.

"a musical evocation of the desire to party"

The opening of Don Juan contains some of the most exciting, frenetic, instinctual music ever written for orchestra. It's also among the most technically demanding, a reminder that "the enjoyment of classical music is inseparable from analysis." That was a lesson MTT's teacher Ingolf Dahl taught him, a challenge to never get so carried away by the impulsive momentum of a piece that we lose track of its intellectual framework. In this case, MTT described the opening as a melange of hyperactive overture styles from Wagner, Weber, and Berlioz.

If music is a delicate balance between instinct and intellect, most of us naturally fall to one or the other side. Only very rarely can someone ideally combine thought and passion without careful training and practice. And that practice doesn't only involve technical ability, but our emotional makeup as performers. Within the whole heirarchy of technical knowledge, musical understanding, and instinctual emotion that we bring to a piece of music, there is a level of personal involvement which MTT emphasized quite a bit. He encouraged us to develop our own associations to the music we play - a dizzyingly fast slew of triplets might trigger memories of a raucous party and the rush of tossing a friend into the pool.

"amorous snarls"

That's how MTT describes the muted horn part in an early section of Don Juan, just after the maniacally thrusting opening. It is just a brief moment, but a representative one in a piece he calls "a musical character study in selfish male sexuality." Finding the right colors and characters to make it all work is a challenge for the whole orchestra (not just the sexually selfish males!)

I find his approach to developing a musical character really fascinating. He talks about taking things apart, finding the right feeling in your head and heart outside of the musical context. When he demonstrates this, he will sing a fragment repeatedly, often just an interval or a short motive, in a strange and very expressive voice - he sounds like some kind of moaning animal at times, and yet he finds just the element of longing or despair or amorous snarling that he wants us to capture.

"the bruise you keep on poking"

There is a long, plaintive oboe solo midway through the piece which spins out around one repeated note. MTT had a great extramusical description of that obsessive quality: it is as though you've developed a bruise on your arm, a sensitive spot that hurts every time you touch it. And yet just can't stop poking at that spot, compulsively reliving the painful sensation again and again.

Melodic repeated notes often demand our most imaginative efforts to avoid sounding dull and prosaic. I love the analogy of the poked bruise, because it suggests how each repetition might carry a new painful twinge. MTT suggested treating a repeated note as a singer might, giving a different word to each repetition. Just as one can never step in the same river twice, we should hopefully never reproduce the same note in the exact same way!

on Beethoven's art and heroism

I sometimes think that in approaching Beethoven, we emphasize his greatness so much that we forget his humanity. This week the New World Symphony has been rehearsing Beethoven's Third Symphony, the "Eroica," and our music director Michael Tilson Thomas made some comments about the composer's Heiligenstadt Testament that got me thinking about the emotional alchemy of artistic creation.

Beethoven wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament at the age of 32, in a state of nearly suicidal despair. His hearing had been in steep decline for four years - yet Beethoven's lament was not for his abilities to perform and improvise, or the fame that came with them. MTT emphasized a subtler reading, and a loss that Beethoven felt even more keenly:

My misfortune is doubly painful to me because I am bound to be misunderstood; for me there can be no relaxation with my fellow men, no refined conversations, no mutual exchange of ideas. I must live almost alone, like one who has been banished. I can mix with society only as much as true necessity demands. If I approach near to people a hot terror seizes upon me, and I fear being exposed to the danger that my condition might be noticed.

We don't shout our innermost thoughts and wishes - we whisper them intimately to someone we trust completely. I think of being at a loud party, or with a hearing-impaired grandparent, and how in speaking at the top of my voice I seem to be limited to the most banal and boring subjects. Even then, there is no guarantee that any real connection has been made, or that any sort of communication has transpired. For me this may be a trivial frustration, but for Beethoven it was to be his life - banished to wretched isolation even among friends, forced to pretend he had heard what he couldn't, and to hide what he most longed to express.

Of course, he did find an outlet for that expression through his art, and a means to communicate not only with his immediate contemporaries but with people of all times and places. His music was fiercely original, passionate, and uncompromising - it is also deeply, stirringly human. He wrote his "Eroica" symphony soon after the Heiligenstadt Testament, and to hear the one and read the other is a startling reminder: he may have addressed those lines to his brothers, but he was writing for all humankind, and his message was very much intended for people of the future like ourselves.

Russian new music concert

Tonight our orchestra is playing a program of new music by Russian composers - we've just finished our dress rehearsal, so I thought I would write my thoughts about the concert, and then I can link to the newspaper if it gets reviewed so you can get the critic's take.

The first piece on the program is for solo violin and a chamber orchestra without violins - it is called Aftersight, by a composer named Kissine, and I don't play on it. I listened to a bit of the rehearsal though, and it sounded good. The soloist, Alexander Barantschik who is concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony, plays it very convincingly and there are a lot of interesting orchestration effects to listen to.

In our system of string seating rotation, I got to be principal bass for the next piece, called Stufen by Sofia Gubaidulina. I was initially a little concerned, because much of the bass part is divided into 8 parts, and we only have 7 bass players. I quickly realized, though, that the intent was less like a Bach 8-part invention and more like a bunch of insects chirping on a summer evening. The effect is to sound just random and independent enough that there could be an infinite amount of people playing. While the notes and rhythms are a bit tricky, the effect is actually quite easy to pull off, I was pleasantly surprised to discover. I think the piece should come off very effectively, as long as the tape of Russian poetry starts when it is supposed to. The end of the piece features seven deep male voices reciting the same poem with different speeds and intonations, so that you can barely pick out more than short phrases, even if you understand Russian. It is kind of a spooky, mysterious way to end a piece, as long as the orchestra doesn't crack up listening to it.

The other piece for full orchestra is by Alfred Schnittke, and it is called In memoriam. In memoriam to whom, I'm not sure, though playing it I can't help thinking about Shostakovich all the time. It has a simple little theme that recurs in each of the five movements, including a beautiful waltz movement with solo clarinet. Another movement has a little aleatoric section - MTT, the conductor, said today in rehearsal that the reason for this is that "everyone goes ape a little differently", which I thought was a strangely profound thought. The bass section doesn't really do much, other than some solo harmonics and low B's. Our lowest note is normally a low C, so in cases like this we have to tune our lowest string down an extra half step, and try to remember so we don't play the wrong pitches in the rest of the piece. This isn't too difficult in this case, though - in one of the movements, we only play a single note. I was joking with my stand partner that I really disagreed with our interpretation of this movement, we need to sit with a slight more forward tilt to express the intensity of our 47 bars of rest. The last movement is a beautiful passacaglia with a 14-bar organ theme repeated 14 times.