Kenneth Woods- a view from the podium

There are plenty more books to be written about musicians and pain. It’s easy to forget when you see people on stage in penguin suits and evening gowns that music is a form of athletics, and your body can take a beating.

I’ve been comparatively lucky with pain over the years. I had a spot of tendonitis my first year in college caused by trying to change everything about my playing while practicing five times as much as I ever had. Since then, I’ve been lucky to have very body-wise teachers, especially Lee Fiser, who was a genius in teaching body awareness.

Some of my friends have not been so lucky, and the medical establishment is often painfully under-equipped to deal with the injuries musicians suffer. As a result, I’ve seen many friends and colleagues get bad advice early in the onset of physical problems which meant that things continued to get worse, sometimes, tragically, to the point of being career ending. I’ve also seen a few friends go through some truly ghastly surgical procedures, not to get back to playing, but just to be able to brush their teeth without pain.

For some years, my one area of concern has been my back. Cello playing can take a toll on tall guys when we sit in chairs that are too short, and it’s easy to twist your torso a bit. In my case, my early years in rock bands meant way too much reckless heavy lifting, so I’ve had a an intermittently recurring back injury for about 15 years.

Back problems for conductors are not to be trifled with, because when standing and waving your arms, your core muscles are put under a lot of stress. Karajan had such terrible back trouble for the last 12 years of his life (following a skiing accident) that he told his biographer that his tombstone should read “he died in great pain.” Celibidache had similar problems late in his career, while Mikko Franck has been confined to conducting in a chair since about 19 years of age because of a spine condition.

Fortunately, my back injury was never anything like that. It was something that would flare up about 3-4 times a year for a week- I’d be uncomfortable, occasionally miserable, but functional.

Last night I felt it coming on again, and, although I was not pleased, I was not panicked. After so many years, something like this becomes something you are accustomed to working through. By bedtime, however, I was concerned that it was probably the most acute discomfort I’d ever had from this. Then, around 4 AM I woke up in back spasms. Really, short of childbirth, kidney stones and having your arm ripped off by a blunt-toothed Bengal tiger, I can’t imagine anything more painful. Within an hour I was in such misery that I called Northwest to see if I could change my flight- because this is pre-existing condition, my travel insurance doesn’t cover it, and I thought it likely I would need medical care.

It took me about 90 minutes of struggle to get out of bed so I could wake my host to ask him to get the ibuprofen out of my suitcase- there was not question of my bending over for it. With those ingested, I decided to walk around the block and see if anything loosened up. I was reminded of Tim Roth’s performance in Reservoir Dogs- the sort of gurgling/screamtalking/moaning sound he makes throughout that film was something I always thought was cool but not realistic, until I heard my self making it over and over today.  In my 5 AM condition, I couldn’t have traveled anywhere without help, my hope was that with a few pills and a stretch I might either able to get myself on a flight home to Cardiff, which meant canceling our concert this week, or perhaps even tough out the gig. I’ve never missed a conducting gig for illness or injury, including checking myself out of a hospital in 2001 just to conduct a concert, but I couldn’t have conducted this morning to save my life.

As the morning progressed, the Portland network kicked in and I was able to get an appointment with a respected osteopath. His manipulation didn’t seem to help much, in fact I partially blacked out standing up from the exam table, but he prescribed bountiful quantities of pain killers, muscle relaxants and homeopathic remedies. He’s at least cleared me of a slipped disc or anything spinal, but I would still seriously swap this feeling for the Bengal tiger experience. Once this blog post is up, the plan is to try to sleep all day then hope the pills will get me through rehearsal.

The doc was sweetly concerned that I might not be musically at my best on a maximum dose of muscle relaxants, but that’s a chance I’ll have to take. I do have fond memories of playing for David Zinman when he was doped up for kidney stones- it was the only week I’ve ever seen him be uniformly pleasant with people…..

Anyway, watch this space….

By request, the “true” story of Haydn’s Symphony no. 59 in A major.

This is a fact free pre-concert lecture.

Listen here….

I’m enjoying a fairly quiet day between concert sequences- Our redneck Mahler 4 is now history and tomorrow rehearsals start up for the Rose City Chamber Orchestra performance on Sunday. Later today I’ll take the evening to study and make sure I’m focused on the right Haydn symphony.

It was a really great weekend in Pendleton- lots of new faces, as always, and old friends on hand, and I was really proud of the orchestra. In the end, we had (predictably) very little time to rehearse the Haydn 59, but I thought they played it with great precision and spark. For those of you who were keeping track, yes, I did make up a completely false story about the genesis of the work, and yes, it seems about %20 believed me in spite of my best efforts to make clear that I was telling tales.

Interestingly, nobody but me seemed to notice that the Haydn and Mahler have first movements built on repeated pitches. I love funny overlaps like that….

Mahler 4 is one of those works that stays with you after the concert- my small talk was way off par at the post concert party, because I kept feeling myself drawn back in to the piece. Really, the piece is like a long seduction- gently drawing you into another world, making you forget yourself and your surroundings more and more until all you are aware of is this vision he’s created in the lied. It’s not , by any means, a romantic seduction- his purpose is metaphysical, not physical…. I’ll miss working on it- it’s certainly one of my favorite scores of all time.

A special shout out goes to the cello section, who everyone feels were absolutely superb. They get the silver spur award this week. Also, Redneck Mahler props to Esther Mae Moses, our soprano, who was magnificently eloquent and understated in the finale.

We now seem to have accrued quite a number of conductors in the orchestra- quite a change from the old days there. I’ll have to start really looking both ways when I cross the street and maybe hire a taster when I’m conducting Mahler in Pendleton from now on….

Again, I want to thank the Kinsman Foundation, who continue to support the Redneck Mahler project.

Now, I’m enjoying the better coffee of Portland (we still miss the Pendleton Coffee Bean out East), and looking forward to a week of Schubert and micro-brews with friends. Still nursing a sore back and a bit of fatigue, but with perfect weather on offer, I’ll pick up quickly. 

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods

It’s generally accepted that if you want an orchestra to improve, you should rehearse and perform a great deal of Haydn and Mozart. True!

However, one thing I’ve been surprised at is what an effective orchestral etude Mahler 4 is. Perhaps it’s not surprising, since stylistically it’s his most classical work, but I think there are other reasons as well.

In particular, Mahler’s dynamic and articulation requests are so detailed and unusual that it forces everyone on stage to examine and think afresh about every aspect of their playing. With every possible variety of swell, lift, accent, sforzando, diminuendo and staccato on offer, and a mark on almost every note of the piece, players can’t simply descend into habit. Everyone has to think extra hard about how they use their air or their bow, or the markings don’t happen, and then I nag them.

The natural reaction of musicians under pressure is to adopt a triage approach- it’s easy, almost automatic, to say “this is so hard, so I have to leave out those dynamics or not try so hard to make a phrase so I can play the notes in tune.”

The problem with this is it always has an affect other than the one intended. The more you do what the music demands the more aspects of the sound you are attuned to, which means your sound, your intonation and your rhythm improve. Mahler 4 takes players about as far in this direction as a piece can while still maintaining a rather transparent, classical texture.

Still, every few minutes I can see there’s someone who seems to be thinking “this marking is wrong. Mahler couldn’t have meant that.” Well, there are a number of mistakes in the parts, but odds are, whatever is causing you to wrinkle your brow in confused disdain is exactly what the great man wanted, and I can pretty much guarantee is version is cooler than yours or mine would have been.

All this, and we’re doing Haydn too!  

Friday morning and I’m moving a little slower after a long rehearsal last night. We’ve now got about %95 of the out of town players here, so we’re starting to get a good sense of what the issues are going to be this week.

The Fourth may be the hardest Mahler symphony to rehearse even though it is far from the most technically difficult. It’s the piece in which Mahler seems to have announced himself to the world as a great contrapuntal composer. The vast majority of the piece is made up of overlapping, independent motivic cells and themes, and there is almost no doubling in the work. That means the best way to rehearse it is for everyone to really know it, because the piece lives or dies on how vividly each gesture is characterized. Absent that characterization, there’s not much a conductor can do but resort to coaching solo players or single sections, something that leaves much of the orchestra sitting around.

Of course, the conductor’s first job is to show as much as possible of the detail and characterization with one’s hands. Even here, though, there are problems because Mahler asks for so much independent dynamic detail that in showing a forte to one section, you can easily confuse the section next to them that are marked pianissimo.

Ah…. Pianissimo.  An orchestra’s pianissimo is the tangible manifestation of the musician’s shared musical conscience. Players can hate being nagged to play softer, softer but once the sound really clicks, you never have to ask again (at least for that concert). I could feel that progression throughout the evening last night, but we’re still not there. A real pianissimo from an orchestra is a beautiful paradox- everything gets softer and starts to disappear and in doing so, the room becomes more electric.

I was listening to the documentary “Remembering Mahler,” which follows on the CD I have of Mahler’s piano roll performances (including the last movement of the Fourth Symphony). In interview after interview, musicians who had played for Mahler 50 years earlier talked about the force of his personality, his musicality, and how he towered over Toscanini as a conductor and a man, and how he always let rehearsals out early….

Hey- we had a very polite, professional email from Breitkopf about the lost Bruckner. Still no word from Schirmer…

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods

A few things I’m smiling about this week-

1-       Any time you can do Haydn symphonies in consecutive weeks, life is good. How is it that the even the classical music world doesn’t seem to realize just what a badass he was! His music is never what it seems- the simpler it sounds, the more ingenious it is. This week it is no. 59, the Fire Symphony. Nobody seems to know why it’s called the Fire Symphony, but we needed a fire symphony for the opening concert of our fiery symphony. My current plan is to make up a blatantly false story about the work for my pre-concert lecture. Attention world, musicological fraud is being planned even as these words are written

2-       Pendleton is place you can get things fixed. This town has the best tailor on the planet- someone who can fix anything, not just do the easy and profitable jobs. We also have a great leatherworks master craftsman named Claud Smith. His shop burned down in the fire last year, but he’s back in business and is currently working on my briefcase, which nobody in the UK seemed able to fix.

3-       Our principal percussionist and stage manger John continues to be a mensch. Having decided the orchestral sleigh bells sounded too much like Leroy Anderson, he’s gotten actual sleigh bells from an ACTUAL SLEIGH. They’re covered in horse hair and about 100 years old from the look of it, but they sound fantastic, and look way cooler than the bells on a stick you usually get.

4-       My long-suffering Pendleton cello is really playing well now, almost as good as ever and is completely recovered from the crappy repair job done on it last winter. I’m making myself a promise to play a lot more cello in my next decade than I did in this one.

This reminds me- a cellist in New Mexico emailed me last week asking for help with artificial harmonics. My advice- don’t ever play a piece with artificial harmonics!

Seriously, here’s what we’re all told about these when we first come across them… “You play the lower-notated pitch by pressing down firmly with your thumb, then touch the upper pitch, usually a fourth above, lightly with your fourth finger.” Here’s my trick….. Ignore everything they taught you. Play the lower pitch with your thumb as lightly as possible. If you use the fleshy part of the thumb, you don’t need to even push the string to the fingerboard. Then, don’t be too tickly with your fourth finger- make sure it’s wedded to a clear spot on the string. So, rather than a thumb that’s 100% down and a fourth finger that’s %1 down, go for a thumb that’s 51% down and a fourth finger that’s maybe %30 down. You’ll find you can shift much more easily and the hand doesn’t get tired and shake. Also, make sure your right wrist isn’t cocked back but straight so that the fourth finger doesn’t have to stretch.

Sorry non-cellists. Boring stuff!

What is making me not smile?

1-       The rather good new coffee house at Hamley’s (NOT as good as the old, incinerated Coffee Bean, and not nearly as good as Stump Town in Portland) has taken to playing god-awful corpo-country music very loudly all day, every day. Background “music,” how do I hate thee…..

2-       The keg of TG at one of the few places in town that serves it is off and probably won’t be changed before I go. People- I only get this beer for a few precious weeks every year!

3-       Schirmer…. 

Just for those of you curious about these things….

 It’s now one day short of a week since the wrong edition of Bruckner 7 arrived at the offices of the Rose City Chamber Orchestra. In spite of daily calls and emails to the Schirmer office informing them of the problem and then informing them of our cancellation of the piece the number of messages from Schirmer remains the same…

 Zero…..

 How long do you think they can keep this streak going? I’m betting someone senior will eventually get word of this and step in sooner rather than later, but failing that, I doubt we’ll have a response in less than a month.

One of the coolest things about life as a travelling musician is getting to experience the unique quirks and qualities of different communities.

I’ve worked in Pendleton for what seems like a very long time, but the community remains mysterious in many ways. Pendleton is the kind of town  where someone can move her at the age of 10 and die here 75 years later and be eulogized as a “pretty likeable newcomer to our town.”

This morning I was having my first coffee downtown- a time of day that I am singularly unlikely to seek out human company. While just settling down with my newspaper a chap rolled up and sat down across the coffee table from me and started gassing away. My initial impulse was to make an excuse like “oh goddness, I’ve just been texted that my herd of musk oxen have foot and mouth disease!” and run for the exit, but he had me blocked in.

However, as we got chatting, I realized I was actually enjoying myself and learning a lot. Eastern Oregon is a land of old families, and only a few old families. I’ve known for sometime that the great ranches and wheat farms and the various small towns around here are all the work of a few great dynasties.

From these great clans, reach long tentacles of history and influence. One might drive through a tiny, destitute Eastern Oregon village thinking it is completely cut off from the world, but in fact there may be a patriarch of the town whose power and influence is felt regularly in the corridors of D.C..

Today I learned more about the epic cycles of decay and rebirth in the small-town west, and quickly came to understand more of the huge behind the scenes revolutions in neighboring communities that allowed them to bring those places back to life.

Pendleton is a town in an existential crisis. Historic opportunities beckon, but there are old and powerful voices who don’t want to see the town change, but without change, this town is dying. Surely the wise path is to let the town heal and grow while maintaining its historic character, to make restoration and preservation central to regeneration, but I fear there are those who don’t want that. Actually, I know there are those who don’t want that- I’ve seen the debates here.

In our conversation this morning, my new friend told me about another, even smaller, even poorer town further East. I’ve driven through there many times. He said that that it was actually a center of a powerful corporation that is involved in huge environmental and land use issues affecting the entire West. They are there because the town is so poor and the population so uneducated- when they have to post notice of intent for public record they do it in this tiny, unread local newspaper, an nobody says anything.

Is that the future of this community, or are we destined to become a quality of life community where our economy is our culture in all its forms- local architecture, history, food and wine, the arts? Do they build a future, or let the living museum crumble? It is an uncomfortable but incontrovertable fact of human existance that there will always be those who are not content to be rich- they must also know that others are poor. Is it their agenda that will carry the day? Which path will this town choose?

Only time will tell.

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods

Things are a little chaotic this week with the OES Mahler 4 coming up, so this post will be rather random.

First- thanks to everyone at Wilmslow Symphony for a great first concert together on Saturday. I appreciated the friendly vibe, but I really appreciated the quite smokin’ performance of Pictures. Well done, everyone!

Second- for those of you coming to next week’s Rose City Chamber Orchestra concert in Portland, Oregon (and for those of you playing in it!), Schirmer’s continuing uselessness has necessitated a change of program. We’re now replacing the Bruckner 7 with Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet as arranged for string orchestra by Mahler and me. I’ve expanded and altered the bass part quite a bit from Mahler’s version, and added a few more divisi to clean up some balances. It’s nice fit with the Haydn 92 on the first half of the program. And no, nobody from Schirmer of Breitkopf has yet responded to any of the phone or email messages we’ve left them since last week about the wrong set of parts we received. G Schirmer—J’accuse!

I’m nearly recovered from my concert and trip exploits of the past weekend, and I now have my suitcase. There’s really nothing more aggravating than finishing a trans-Atlantic to find you have no clean clothes…. Monday was mostly spent trying to sort out last minute logistics for the Mahler and organize the program change for RCCO and then doing lots of hectic cello practice before my first rehearsal with Sheila for our recital next month. We’ll meet a couple of times this week then not again until the day before the show. Great program- Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich and Prokofiev sonatas, but after not playing much for several weeks, my hands felt like they’d been hit repeatedly with hammers at the end of our rehearsal yesterday. November 9 in Pendleton, mark your calendars.

My first rehearsal on the Mahler is tonight. They’ve already had one string sectional led by the principals and a read through with our cover conductor, Erik, on Thursday last week. I don’t mean to scare anyone playing, but I do think it’s the most difficult of all the Mahler’s because of its transparency, need for contrapuntal clarity and intimacy. Hopefully we’ll  really benefit from the extra prep time.

Now, back to the cello!

The plucky little chamber orchestra is a labor of love for the musicians, who started it themselves so they would have a chance to do interesting repertoire with conductors they wanted to work with.

One project they’ve latched onto is performing all of the major arrangements of the Society for Private Musical Performances founded by Arnold Schoenberg. We’ve already done Schoenberg’s magical arrangement of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and the chamber version of Debussy’s L’apres midi d’un faune. This time, it was to be the 10 player version of Bruckner’s Symphony no. 7.

For those of you lucky enough not to deal with music rental, here’s how it works…. Music that is under copyright is availably only from one distributor in any country. You call the rental company or fax them and ask for a quote. Getting an answer might take a week or so (more than once I’ve called for a quote and just had the music show up weeks later without ever having gotten a response or having actually ordered it). Often at this point you gulp and change the program. Then you order the music via both fax and email. Then you wait. Sometimes you get a contract back, sometimes the music just shows up with a contract in it. In this case, nothing happened. However, once an order is shipped, the rental company usually won’t respond to emails- I suppose they assume that we don’t need the reassurance if the music is on the way. Still, absent a response, we start calling and writing. The silence remains deafening.  

Finally, two weeks before the concert, we get though. Oops, they haven’t done anything with our order in over a month. They didn’t “get” our emails, or the original fax. There’s more, but I’ll skip it…

After much discussion, it’s agreed they’ll fed ex to Portland. Music arrives on Friday…. Hooray!

Here’s where it gets good.

It’s the FULL ORCHESTRA VERSION edited by Haas. They’ve sent Bruckner’s glorious original work, replete with Wagner tuben to the Rose City CHAMBER ORCHESTRA.  Can people not read?

Of course, we re-checked the contract- yes, we did have a contract for the right piece. Our poor librarian on Friday emails the distributor for the gazillionth time on Friday- can they call us first thing today at let us know if the correct parts can be sent to arrive by tomorrow? Well, it’s noon on the West Coast, which means its 9 PM in Germany. I don’t think they’re going to be sending any music today….. Hmm, what else can we pull out of our library ten days before concert for strings, clarinet, horn, piano four hands and harmonium????

There’s a reason why we got rid of monopolies over 90 years ago. I’m sure if there was more than one place you could get this piece, both would have adequate numbers of staff to cope with their orders. 

So, next time you’re listening to the 100^th performance of some hackneyed old warhorse, thank the publishing industry and the copyright laws for making it not only ridiculously expensive and cumbersome, but apparently ACTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE in this case, to do interesting and unusual repertoire.

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods

UPCOMING CONCERT

Oregon East Symphony

Sunday, October 21, 2007

3:15 PM, Vert Auditorium

Pendleton, Oregon

Haydn- Symphony No. 59 in A major “Fire”

Mahler- Symphony No. 4 in G major

Esther Moses Bergh, soprano

The best goddamn redneck orchestra in the world begins its 22^nd season this year. I remember my 22^nd year- it was the year I gave up rock ‘n’ roll for good and found my calling in life. (Okay, maybe not for good…. there may have been some backsliding) 

We’re delighted to be presenting the third program of our Mahler series at the Oregon East Symphony- a project generously sponsored by the Kinsman Foundation.

Joining the OES for this performance is my fellow CCM veteran, Esther Moses Bergh. One day, Cincinnati alumni will rule the world (although the cheese head mafia is also gaining in strength).

What else could we begin the season with after last season’s office fire than Haydn’s Fire Symphony? Never heard of it? Don’t worry- that’s what we love about Haydn- never a bad piece! It’s fantastic music (and quite a blow for the poor horns)….

Be there

Esther Moses Bergh

Soprano Esther Moses Bergh is a new member of the Oregon music community, having joined the Young Resident Artist Program and “Portland Opera Works!” this past year at the Portland Opera, under the direction of Robert Bailey and Diane Syrcle. This summer, she was selected to participate in the International Vocal Arts Institute. Moses relocated to Portland from Cincinnati, Ohio, where she completed her Master of Music degree under the instruction of vocal master, Barbara Honn. Her training also includes a music education degree. She has performed at the Tanglewood Music Center, the Opera Theatre of Lucca in Italy, in her home state of New Mexico, the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) and here in Portland. In 1999, she came to Oregon for the first time performing the title role in Puccini’s “Suor Angelica” with Bel Canto Northwest Vocal Institute. Performances have included soloist in Haydn’s “Lord Nelson Mass” and the American premiere of Vivaldi’s first opera, “Ottone in Villa” at CCM, under the direction of Sandra Bernhard. Most recently, Esther performed the role of Violetta in “La Traviata” Preview Concerts for the Portland Opera. Last season, she made her debut with the Oregon Symphony in Portland.