Kenneth Woods- A View From the Podium

We’re reaching the end of application season for the Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop this year (Discovery Program applications are due June 7, and we have 2 spaces open in Emerging Artists due to cancellations). This means I’ve just finished watching a lot of videos of a lot of conductors.

Generally speaking, I think video is not a great tool for evaluating conductors because the vast majority of viewers (including some of the great and the good) don’t know what to look for, can’t separate cause and effect (this can be difficult even for the most knowlegable viewer), and have very simplistic ideas about what a conductor should look like. The old adage that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing- so many instrumentalists on conductor search panels took enough conducting in college to know what a first year conductor should look like, and throw out anyone who doesn’t conform to that idea. The irony of this is that few major conductors look like the model citizens we see on instructional videos. Can you imagine Gergiev, Rattle, Solti or Temirkanov getting an assistant conductor audition in America based on a video audition? Hah!

Of course, like all conductors, I probably have the hubris to think I know what to look for on a video, and I think I can tell a gifted conductor in about 15 seconds 9 out of 10 times. Still, I have been wrong. I once picked a chap for a difficult assignment based on what looked like a great video, but what I’d seen was pure choreography, plain and simple. The poor guy was as lacking in talent as anyone I’ve ever worked with. He must have videotaped his moves to that piece and critiqued it dozens and dozens of time.

Looking at your own video is a worthwhile and painful thing to do- it shows a lot of the ticks and habits that everyone develops. Still, the fixation on looks can drive conductors to do some crazy shit. I knew one young woman who would video herself over and over and over again conducting to a CD, until she looked perfect. She always had great audition tapes because that’s what she’d practiced, but her results with actual musicians were mostly disastrous.

Sadly, if you want to get ahead in this business, it’s important to be able to jump through the hoop of looking “correct.” Video puts pressure on us to approach conducting as choreography, not as communication.

Henry Fogel has some good advice on his website about assembling video. His opinion matters far more than mine  (and I agree with everything he says) by quite a bit. Still, it’s no secret what you should aim for on a video.  If you want to get into summer programs and job auditions, your video should  (and all of these are laudible qualities at all levels of work):

1-       Show you standing tall with good posture, feet below the shoulders, no knee bends or toe rises (dismiss Solti, Gergiev from your search here)

2-       Show you holding the baton as in the textbooks with wrist flat-ish to the floor. (Dismiss Bernstein, Karajan, Gergiev again (no toothpicks allowed)

3-       Demonstrate a clear, steady pattern (I won’t even start the list). You want everyone on the committee to recognize the pattern their teacher showed them in Intermediate Conducting at college.

4-       You should not look at the score, or, better yet, you should conduct from memory

5-       Don’t show the orchestra tuning or you bowing or any talking (please!).

I’ve recently heard several industry pros using the term “physically gifted,” mostly in reference to conductors who couldn’t get an orchestra to play together, but who looked good while not getting an orchestra to play together. These punditocrats seem to think that if only they can put these young idols of the podium in front of an orchestra that already plays together, they will achieve something miraculous.

 “He/she has a great technique” I hear when such conductors are discussed. That phrase is almost always used to imply that they look good even though it doesn’ t always sound good. The only measure of a good technique is their ability to get a less than world-class orchestra to play together. An orchestra playing together is not always attributable to a conductor, but an orchestra playing not together (unless they have the timpanist from Hell- you know who you are- playing for them) is always the fault of the conductor. If it’s not together, the conductor doesn’t have a good technique, no matter how bitchin’ they look up there.

The other thing one hears around the business from the classical Cowells is “she/he is so talented.” I have never, ever heard this expression used to refer to someone who was actually good, but instead, it refers to someone who really doesn’t know what they’re doing, but practices their ineptitude with tremendous flair and abandon. The assumption seems to be that once a conductor shows some competence, they can no longer be held to be “talented” because everyone knows that competent people never improve, so instead we should promote people with more “potential.” Funny, isn’t it….

Technique is about facilitating ensemble and SHOWING and BRINGING LIFE TO THE MUSIC, not about conforming to some completely arbitrary set of rules about posture, pattern and affect. When I look at a video, I want to see the conductor’s depth of understanding of the score coming across- every sf, dim, cresc, stacc and so on. I want to not only see that there’s an sf, but what kind of sf the conductor wants. That’s conducting, and it does take technique, but you don’t learn the technique (beyond the basics, which are important) in a textbook or a workshop, you learn it from trying to express what is in the music.

Also, remember that some conductors conducting from memory on their videos have not memorized the score, but have memorized their moves. Rehearsing from memory is more impressive than performing.

I once played the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra under an amazing (and well known) maestro, who never once opened the score in all the rehearsals. It just sat there on his stand. He knew almost all the rehearsal numbers, all the harmonies, dynamics… everything he wanted. In the concert, he used the score and turned every page. I asked him why, when he obviously knew it cold. “I don’t want to look like an asshole- showing off,” was his answer. I do enjoy conducting from memory every so often just to keep on my toes (call me an asshole), but I like it to feel effortless when I do so, not like I’ve practiced the memorization. I don’t want to give up time I could spend working on the music just work on the memorization. 

Anyway, I wasn’t going to write about the generalities of video at all today- this all just spills out of me every once in a while. What I prompted me to write is the fact that every year I have a few videos from otherwise good people who seem to be getting bad advice on the difference between a 6 pattern and a subdivided 3 patter. They are not interchangeable. Conducting the intro to Egmont in 6 (or the middle bit of the finale of Brahms 4) in 6 (ie Down-in-in-Out-out-up) makes no musical sense. 6 is a form of 2 (hence the two capitalized beats in my diagram representing the strong beats of the bar). A bar in 3 that has 6 beats in it is beat in a subdivided 3 pattern (Down-down-Out-out-In-up).

I know it sounds ludicrously basic, but It’s been bugging me for years because I keep seeing it. No all bars with 6 beats are in 6. 

So, only the last 2 paragraphs were what I planned to say today!

A view from the podium

A review of Sunday’s CSO concert from the Cheltenham Echo/Citizen by Roger Jones 

 

Kenneth Woods revealed a strong empathy for Vaughan Williams’ music in his introduction to the composer’s Fifth Symphony. He followed this up with a convincing performance of this major work which, although composed during World War II, seems to hark back to more placid times.

The slow movement was a profoundly spiritual experience while the closing passacaglia sounded decidedly upbeat as if confident of better times ahead.

While some may dispute Mr Wood’s contention that Schumann’s Second is the greatest symphony written since Beethoven, his tense and driven interpretation certainly confirmed it as as a work of stature. Schumann composed it after his first mental breakdown, and the monumental first movement mirrored his titanic struggle to recover his sanity.

A few rays of hope could be spotted in the bustling Scherzo but a dark mood underpinned it. Nor was there any respite in the Adagio which a strong performance from the string section rendered intensely moving.

However, in the final movement the shadows disappeared and the sunshine returned. Both orchestra and conductor joined wholeheartedly in the jubilation at the composer’s recovery, with the brass leading the way.

Read the whole thing here

Incidentally, I didn’t exactly claim that Schumann 2 was the greatest symphony written since the death of Beethoven, but that 100 years ago there was a broad consensus that it was then the greatest symphony since Beethoven. That said, I don’t disagree with the idea that it is the best, most miraculous and perfectly formed symphony since Beethoven. It’s not the sort of claim I would make, but it’s not one I disagree with either….

A view from the podium

Sunday May 24, 2009

Cheltenham Symphony Orchestra

Vaughan Williams- Symphony no.5

Tchaikovsky- Variations on a Rococo Theme

James Barralet, cello

Schumann- Symphony no. 2

This program isn’t an obvious one- I’m not sure many people would think to put Schumann and Vaughan Williams symphonies on the same concert. However, the more we lived with the program, the more I felt like the pairing was apt.

Both pieces are essentially about hope. Both were written in periods of extreme difficulty- the Vaughan Williams was written at the height of the war, the Schumann after the first severe attack of the illness that would eventually kill him. In spite of this, both pieces are full of optimism, often a tentative and fragile optimism, but the voice of hope is insistent and powerful.

Both pieces are also full of quotations and allusion to other works- the Vaughan Williams is full of quotes from his opera Pilgrim’s Progress and several of his earlier hymn tunes, the Schumann has quotations from Bach, Beethoven and Haydn, as well quotes from other Schumann.

And then there is the Tchaikovsky, which is in many ways a love letter to Mozart. James played the original version of the Rococo Variations, which has recently returned to the repertoire. We did have near disaster a couple of weeks ago- nobody had really realized what James meant by “original version” and the orchestra had ordered the parts to the “traditional” version we all grew up with which was assembled by Fitzenhagen, the work’s dedicatee. It cuts a few things and re-arranges the order of the variations, which means the two versions are essentially different pieces. As the original version works its way back into the repertoire conductors and librarians need to add this piece to the list of “make absolutely, positively damn sure which version we’re doing.” Other such pieces are the 1^st Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto, where the original and revised versions are incompatible, the Bruckner Symphonies and the Firebird, because not everyone does the 1919 Suite.

Poor James had a rough run up to the show- he was in a terrible car accident last night. He and the cello were unhurt, but the car was totaled. What a nightmare.

I spoke at some length to the audience about the two symphonies tonight, and afterward a few orchestra players mentioned that they would have liked it if I’d told them all that in the rehearsals. It’s a tough call- as I get older I feel more and more that I should let the music speak for itself, and let the musicians find their own way to the music, but we don’t live in a perfect world, and sometimes we need to facilitate the evolving relationships between players and the pieces they play. If there is something you can say that opens a door into a piece for a player, why not take moment to talk?

A few players were also mentioning they’d just discovered the blog, and I felt a bit guilty I hadn’t had time to write much of anything about this concert, so now I can at least say THANK YOU and bravo.

A view from the podium

A nice piece in today’s Newburyport Current on Ensemble Epomeo and our upcoming concert at the Newburyport  Chamber Music Festival.

It’s never easy getting face time with David Yang.

The artistic director of the Newburyport Chamber Music Festival since its inception seven years ago, Yang is also an in-demand performer, the leader of the storytelling and music troupe Auricolae, director of chamber music at the University of Pennsylvania and member of Poor Richard’s String Quartet.

But this is the start of an especially busy season for Yang. He’s on a plane with a laptop, dashing off a response to questions about Trio Epomeo, which will perform June 6 in Newburyport. He’s en route to Rome via Frankfurt, then off to the beautiful isolation of Ischia, home to the Festivale d’alla Musica da Camera d’Ischia in Italy, a weeklong chamber music festival and intensive workshop where he has been a resident coach and performer for years.

It’s also the place where he met first violinist Byron Wallis, concertmaster of the Orchestre de Chambre Français Albéric Magnard in Paris, and cellist Kenneth Woods, founder of the Taliesin Trio and the Masala String Quartet — making it the birthplace of Trio Epomeo. The name comes from the non-active volcano that dominates the landscape of the small, sun-drenched island in the Bay of Naples.

Read the whole thing here

The Newburyport performance, presented by the Newburyport Chamber Music Festival, takes place June 6, at the historic Carriage House, once an outbuilding of the Lord Timothy Dexter Home that Julia Farwell Clay and Walter Clay have transformed into a listening room and, on occasion, performance space. A reception featuring hors d’oeuvres and wine will follow the performance, and members of the audience will have the opportunity to speak with the musicians.

http://www.newburyportchambermusic.org/

A view from the podium

In preparation for my upcoming appearance at the Newburyport Chamber Music Festival, I did an interview with local journalist JC Lockwood. JC was particularly interested in my background in rock n roll, and my long descent in the dark groupie infested, drug crazed world of classical chamber music.  JCL- You know, I laugh every time I hear the line “If your husband survives the operation, he’s going to be a vegetable the rest of his life” in “M. Potatohead.” Dumb humor is forever, I guess. So you were studying cello by day and doing stuff like this at night?  

KW-I got my first rock album when I was about 12, which I suppose was pretty late actually. It was Queen’s News of the World, which, if I say so myself, is a pretty damn fine first album to have. I’ve always felt drawm to playing whatever kind of music I listen to, whether it was classical or the folk music my dad played and loved, so I suppose the die was cast as soon as I took the shrink wrap off the LP.

Within a year, I had my first electric guitar, and a year after that, my first band, which I played with off and on throughout high school. I had a broader range of interests when I was in high school- writing, science, stage crew and the rock playing as well as cello in all its guises of solo work, chamber music and orchestra. When I headed off to college I declared myself done with all that and was just going to focus on classical stuff, but in a moment of madness I packed a guitar “just to have something to relax with.” Practically the first guy I met at IU was a keyboard player with a great voice and his own PA system, so I was drawn back in and kept playing all through college.

JCL-There was no conflict in your mind?  

KW- No, there certainly was conflict. On the one hand, I was quickly becoming aware of how competitive the cello world was and that I really couldn’t afford too many distractions from praciticing. On the other hand, I found the orchestra experience at IU very, very depressing. In spite of a seemingly unlimited number of gifted players, the conducting faculty seemed to range from washed up to never was any good. Rock gave me a chance to connect to a visceral kind of music making I used to get from orchestra but lost there.

JCL- It was just “music is music?”

KW- It was in the sense that almost everyone I played with was a music major and brought the same training and seriousness to the band that they did to their lessons and recitals. On the other hand, particularly with the Watchmen, where I had a much bigger role as a song writer, it was also a question of the power of rock music as protest music.

I may sound like an old fuddy-duddy saying this, but I think the potential for true outrageousness in rock music still existed back then, more so than today. The 80’s were such a suffocating time to be a creative young person, and the rather corporate environment at IU was no place to break out of that. We were fed up with politics, with style, with mass media, with pointless war, with vacuous pop culture, and we still thought the sheer craziness of rock n roll could be a protest against that. There was just enough space left to carve out a bit of space that hadn’t been explored yet. It seems today like every possible kind of rebellion and angst has been used and re-used. Rock can’t shock anymore. 

JCL- Did you have a preferred ax, guitar or cello?

KW- My first good guitar (my first one was a really hunk o’ junk) was an Ibanez Roadstar, which I completely customized and love to death. It almost got burned to a crisp in a fire two years back, but somehow survived with just a bit of scorching around the edges, which actually looks kind of bad ass anyway.

My cello is mostly a Mariani from the 1600’s. It’s a bit of a mutt- it has been cut down and the top replaced, but I love it and have no desire ever to own another one. It’s my voice.

JCL- Did you think, or hope or dream that you would make it as a rocker?

KW- When I graduated from IU I planned to give the band a go- I didn’t apply to grad schools or take orchestra auditions that year. We were busy making demos and had just hooked up with high-powered management when the band imploded.

All the rest of the guys stayed in rock or related musics and some have been quite successful short of stardom, and I’m full of admiration for them, but my body took a real beating in the years I played. All those late nights, moving PA systems, smoke, noise. I still have back problems. I think I would have had quite a laugh if I’d ended up as the next Pete Townsend, but I’m not sure I would have survived as working indy rocker touring 320 days a year.

But, did I ever dream of stadium tours and living in a castle? Why not.

JCL- You said your rock bands got some notice from labels? What do you think would have happened, if, say, Watchmen were signed?

KW- Our agent was lining them up, and he had “a plan.” The band was racing against time- the kind of agressive, funky  rock we were playing was huge at that moment (it was the peak of the popularity of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Fishbone), but the 90’s would not have been kind to us. Grunge, in retrospect, is a very pop-oriented, neat and tidy style, and since then, it’s been mostly tecno-pop on the radio. We might have gotten a couple of albums out there, and we had a couple of decent singles, but the moment for that music was gone within a year of our breakup.

JCL- Did you understand the  band as a fling, a way to blow off steam, get chicks?

KW- It was definitely a way to get chicks.

 JCL- Are you still in touch with the old band?

KW- Barely- I’ve talked to each of the guys from Watchmen maybe twice in the ensuing 18 years. A couple of them I’d love to have the opportunity to play a gig with and catch up over a few cold ones, but our lives are all awfully full. I’m still very close friends with the lead singer of the Screaming Yaardvarks, who is now a Grammy nominated producer and enigineer.

JCL- Do you play guitar at all now, do you own one?

KW- I play a bit when I’ve got a quiet night around the house. I still have about 5 or 6 guitars, depending on what you call a guitar.

JCL- What kind?

KW- One nice acoustic, the old Ibanez beater, a jazz axe, a beautiful copy of a 57 Strat like the one Stevie Ray Vaughan played on with the V-shaped neck and a couple that sit in the cases. None of them are the sort of thing a collector would fancy. I had the best amp in the world, but it was ruined in the fire….

JCL-Do you listen to rock?

KW- I listen the the rock I know and love- Hendrix, P-Funk, Queen, Zepplin. Through my producer friend Sean I am made aware that there is a lot of nice stuff out there, but I can’t help but feel that rock has run its course. It used to be the ultimate music of protest- real outsider music. Now it is corporate, mainstream, mass-produced and market tested. The Stones used to be controversial, even outrageous. Now they’re  a nostalgia act you’ve got to mortgage your house to afford a ticket.

JCL- What do you like?  You said on your web that the funk band performance “came as a surprise” to people. How was it received?

KW- People really loved it. I think they really loved seeing the mixture of discipline and freedom from the kids in the band. They were totally at ease, yet totally unselfish and focused.

JCL- What did the funk band play at Oregon East’s summer music series?

KW- All originals- one on a vintage James Brown feel, one more of a slow-burn urban groove with a bit of late Miles Davis, one more of a Memphis vibe.

JCL- You directed, did you play at all?  

KW- I played piano and did a lot of shouting and grunting. Played a tiny bit of guitar on one song, but it was pretty minimal. I was afraid I’d get carried away.

JCL- Key concept here, I think, and I think it’s what you were getting at on the Rock page of your web: That there are certain expectations and entrenched positions, that classical is serious and everything else is silly, that you guys, you classical musicians, minuet when you go out to clubs? (Do you go out to clubs?)  

KW- Well, it’s complicated. Silly can be good. I think the point is that music should be honest- whether that honesty comes off as anger, tenderness, sarcasm, whatever. A plastic mentality, which exists in abundance in classical music and pop, uses music for the opposite of what it’s supposed to do.

Music is supposed to heal and enlighten. When we use it just to entertain and calm the nerves, it’s as if we’re masking our symptoms. If you’re depressed and you listen to banal music because it calms you down, you’re going to stay depressed longer, if you’re ignorant and you listen to plastic music, you’re going to stay ignorant longer.

These days, all classical musicians are supposed to like pop and rock- it is a way of branding yourself as normal and safe. How boring! How sad when a great player feels the need to say “I don’t even really listen to classical music.” I like music- all genres and eras, but I don’t like aural wallpaper.

Clubs- used to go when I was young, but my ears are my life and I can’t justify early deafness just to get access to a $14 martini. I’ve got lots of “regular guy” stuff I like to do- drink beer, argue about sports history, hike, eat. I’ve slam danced, polka-ed and stage dived, but I’ve never done a Minuet.

JCL- Or the opposite, that rock or pop music is real and that you guys are all stuffed shirts?

KW- I think the position has shifted 180% from when Hendrix was playing. Rock and pop is now the territory of huge, huge multinational corporations. No song makes it onto radio or TV until hat has been put through focus groups, marketing tie-ins have been negotiated, artists have been made over and on and on. Rock came from the poorest corner of America- the Mississippi Delta, but a young Chuck Berry or Elvis could never afford the hundreds of dollars to get in to a concert today.

On the other hand, classical musicians are out there now playing Bartok in coffee houses and night clubs, doing school concert and street performances. The concert master of the London Mozart Players just spent a year busking around the world to raise money for charity. Every orchestra and opera company has opened their doors to less-affluent listeners, and is making a point to get out into their communities and make a difference in children’s lives. Don’t get me wrong- there are still plenty of stuff shirts, but my generation and the next one know that the mega instutions that sustained previous generations so nicely are gone, and we’ve got to accept risk and earn a place for ourselves in this profession.

JCL- You think this is true? Is it an audience-identity thing, almost like a political position? 

KW- I try not to think in terms of an audience as a monolithic thing. One of the luckiest accidents of my professional life has been escaping the tribal mentality which to a certain extent permeates so much of our thinking about music. In my rock days, we were consciously making music for our peers, for our generation. 

Being a conductor and a teacher as well as a performer, I’ve gotten to be close friends with people from wildly different backgrounds, age groups and social strata. Without the tribe there, you find they’re all incredibly different- not the masses of clones we often think.

When I play or conduct, I try to remember that- that we’re not playing to “our audience” but to individuals, each of whom needs different things from the music, each of whom will respond to different things in the music. The more you respect those differences, and leave space for them, the common ground we find as human beings. What I want new classical listeners to know is that there is room for them, for their experiences and their needs and their tastes, in this music. It’s about creating space, not dumbing down.

A view from the podium

Ensemble Epomeo

Byron Wallis- violin

David Yang- viola

Kenneth Woods- cello

Sunday, 17 May, 2009

7:30 PM

Christchurch House, Rode

PROGRAMME Hans Krasa (1899 –1944) Tanec (Dance) for String Trio (1944)

Alan Hovaness

String Trio op 201

I. Adagio

II. Allegro

III. Lento

Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998)

String Trio (1985)

I. Moderato

II. Adagio

–Interval—

Gideon Klein (1919-1945)  

Variations on a Moravian Theme (From String Trio, 1944)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

String Trio no. 4 in C minor, op 9 no 3-

I. Allegro con spirito Movement

II. Adagio con espressione

III. Scherzo Allegro molto e vivace

IV. Finale. Presto

This evening’s programme brings together a diverse set of works which vividly demonstrate deep and powerful connections between concert and vernacular music. Written in the Terezin ghetto, Krasa’s “Tanec,” one of his last completed works, is a study of the emotional complexities of the dance worthy of Ravel’s La Valse. Alternately sarcastic, sensual, sinister, fragile and ultimately terrifying, it is a piece that resonates on many levels in a remarkably short time span of only five minutes. Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhanness was always fascinated with the folk music and mythology of his ancestral homeland, and goes to great lengths in his String Trio to recreate the twang of the oud and the plaintive cry of the duduk (a cousin of the Western oboe noted for its ability to seamlessly bend pitches) with the three classical string instruments. The evocative first and second movements feature stunning lyrical writing for the solo violin and viola, while supporting parts create a sense of natural atmosphere and place through a vivid collection of subtle sound effects.

If Krasa’s “Tanec” is a vivid demonstration of what can be done with dance music on a small scale, Alfred Schnittke’s epic String Trio of 1985 shows what can be done with dance material on a huge canvass. Written in memory of Alban Berg, Schnittke begins the piece with an innocent sounding baroque dance melody, reminiscent perhaps of Couperin. From this simple two-measure theme he is able to extract all of the thematic and motivic material for the entire work. The String Trio was written in 1985, the year of the first of the horrifying strokes which he suffered in his last years, and it is hard not to see a certain parallel between his health crisis and the violent and terrifying outbursts throughout the first movement, which alternate with periods of other-worldly stillness. Throughout it all, the dance theme remains the wellspring of all the musical material. The final Adagio is reflective and meditative, where the Moderato was dramatic. It begins with a transmutation of the dance theme into a funereal march, but it is reflective, not combative. It is surely some of the most heartrending music written in the last 30 years.

Also heartrending is Gideon Klein’s “Variations on a Moravian Theme” from his final work, the String Trio, completed only 9 days before his murder in Auschwitz. Klein was the youngest of the Terezin composers, and the extraordinary power of his surviving music is, among other things, a bleak reminder of what society lost when he was killed. Like the Krasa, this is a very short movement, a set of very classically proportioned variations on a Moravian folk-melody (one which Klein was very faithful to). Within this compact framework, Klein raises tensions to almost unbearable extremes while maintaining a high degree of lyricism, and the coda is truly unforgettable.

Finally, we end with another “last” work, the final String Trio of Beethoven. Beethoven was 28 years old when this trio was published in 1798, while Gideon Klein was only 26 when he was killed. Still ahead for Beethoven were all the nine symphonies, the 15 string quartets and 29 of the 32 piano sonatas. What would Klein have achieved had he lived? In the early years of his career, the String Trio was Beethoven’s favorite genre, but after the completion of this C minor trio, he never returned to the genre again.  Fortunately, this ending was a beginning, as after this wonderful summation of his development of the trio, he turned his attentions to the quartet and never looked back. It is striking how completely developed Beethoven’s artistic personality already appears in this work- his strong identification with the symbolic power of keys is very much on show, with the brooding and dramatic C minor of this work very close in spirit to the Fifth Symphony and the final Piano Sonata. The stunning slow movement also shows an uncanny resemblance to the deeply spiritual slow movements of his late works. Like the “Heiliger Dankesang” from his A minor String Quartet op 132, and the slow movement of the 9^th Symphony, this remarkable movement is in double variation form, a structure that seemed to allow Beethoven to express some of his most personal thoughts. After a sardonic Scherzo, the work concludes with a Presto finale, notable for its intensity and it’s rather ambivalent ending.
 

A view from the podium, Announcements and reviews

I’m back in the UK after a memorable week at the Ischia Chamber Music Festival in Italy.

For me and my colleagues in Ensemble Epomeo, the focal point of the week was our concert on Thursday in the Church of Mary Magdeline in Cassamicciola. It’s a stunning church, and we received a very warm welcome from the priest who has been in residence there for 42 years now.

Also warm was the air. I’m used to being hot during concerts when I conduct, but I’ve never been so hot playing as I was for the first half of this concert, with the possible exception of a few dodgy outdoor pops concerts. It was certainly a fiery program, and we could have been forgiven for breaking a sweat in a Manchester church in January-

Krasa- Dance for String Trio

Hovhanness- String Trio

Kodaly- Intermezzo for Trio

Klein- “Variations on a Moravian Theme” for String Trio

Beethoven- Trio in C minor, op 9 no. 3

Intermission

Mozart- Clarinet Quintet

I have wonderful memories of last year’s festival, and was a bit concerned that this year’s reality couldn’t match up to that of last year. Fortunately, the scenery, weather and food was as wonderful as ever, as was the clarinet playing of my colleague Giuseppe Caranante. He has an uncanny ability to bring a sense of rapt stillness to a performance. I don’t think I’ve every played the slow movement of the Mozart so softly, but it worked, and absolutely nobody coughed! On the other hand, the chamring padre talked through most of the Beethoven trio and the Kodaly.

Throughout the week, I’ve been struck again and again but how difficult it is to find a consensus about how participants were perceiving their experience at the festival. Some loved playing in the orchestra, others felt it was an intrusion on their chamber music time (and some just dislike orchestra and conductors). Likewise, some loved the acoustics of the church on Thursday while others complained bitterly about the reverberation. Many people loved the Beethoven, which I think we in the band all felt went the best for us out of the first half, but one participant HATED it! She seemed to particularly loathe our performance of the slow movement of the trio, the miraculous Adagio con espressione. Granted, I don’t think we sounded like any of the old LPs I expect she grew up with- we played the opening non-vibrato, like a sacred procession, and tried to not let the phrases die in the many silences. It may have been radical, but it was the one movement of the night that got spontaneous (and noisy) applause from the entire audience, and I think we all felt it was our most polished work of the evening. I guess some people just need to vent. That kind of reaction isn’t likely to change an interpretation born of many years of study and research, but it is likely to make you think a bit less of someone’s manners….

Her comments did bring into focus the question of interpretation and venue. She felt the churchy reverb meant we should have played much more slowly (although I’m doubtful she would have approved even in a carpeted living room).  Tempi are like neighborhoods- you can move around and adjust some, but you’ve got to stay relatively close to home. If you can’t make the piece understandable in a given space, it’s probably better to pick other repertoire (in this case, none of us knew the venue and we didn’t get a sound check).

In the end, none of us in the trio were looking at this concert as a summation of our work together, just a step along a road that may lead in any number of directions. Rehearsals have been pretty good this week, so I think we have a clearer than ever sense of what we would like to accomplish together. The kind of work we’ve been doing on the Beethoven, including lots of experimentation with vibrato (or the lack thereof) and bow strokes as well as tempi has us excited to put together all the Beethoven Trios, but we’re also discovering the kind of time commitment we’re going to need to make to do the kind of work we all want to do. String trio playing is damn hard work.

On the other hand, we got out the Schnittke Trio last night, which we played at last year’s festival and which is replacing the Mozart on our US tour next month. Even though we were bone tired and hadn’t worked on the piece in almost a year other than a read-through, it went well and felt in every way better than it did last year when we’d been playing it day in and day out. Hopefully this means the work we did on these last few programs has been paying off and that as we take on new pieces, we’ll be able to start working on things with a stronger foundation.

A view from the podium, Performing Life Beethoven, Ischia, schnittke

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Ischia Festival Chamber Orchestra

Elgar- Serenade for Strings

Mozart- Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola

Byron Wallis- violin, David Yang-viola

We had a very good crowd for this evening’s chamber orchestra concert. In fact, concert attendance has been good all week- a testament to Aldo’s tireless efforts to raise the profile of the festival.

On paper, this may appear to be only half a concert, but given the setting- an after dinner concert at 9 PM in the grand lobby of the Hotel Grazia, I think it was the perfect length.

I’ve been putting off conducting the Elgar for many years- it is often requested by UK chamber orchestras, but I just can’t stomach hacking away at it on 15 minutes rehearsal time, which seems to be the expectation most places. We didn’t allow ourselves much rehearsal time here either, but we did have enough rehearsal time, and I think it was a rather magical performance. The strings played with real tenderness and sophistication.

The Mozart was also wonderful to do and it is interesting to hear how David and Byron’s interpretation has evolved since we last did it a couple of months ago. That said, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve done the piece lately, so, unless the Chamber Orchestra of Europe asks me to record it, I’m putting it in the drawer for a few years. When you know a month before the first rehearsal what the problems are going to be in the first rehearsal, the last rehearsal and the concert, it ceases to be as fresh as it should be.

This was the first time in several years that there has been an orchestra concert as part of the Ischia Festival. Not surprisingly at a chamber music festival, reaction to playing in orchestra was somewhat mixed. For better or worse, many lovers of chamber music see orchestra playing as a lower form of music making. Of course, orchestra playing should be chamber music, whether it’s the Elgar String Serenade or Mahler 5. People may think of conductors as control freaks, and we may often be such, but we want to work with musicians who listen, react and play with imagination and intent.

Even for me, however, the question of orchestra is a somewhat complex one. Last year, I was able to come for a week and just be a cellist- nobody here even knew I was a conductor. This was wonderfully liberating for me, not only musically, but also in terms of simply being a musician and not an authority figure. As soon as you start waving a stick, people expect you to know when the next rehearsal is (I almost never do), where there music went, why we changed the program, what time the bus is leaving (I definitely never know this) and why their lunch was overcooked. It also sets you apart.

However, Aldo has the best of reasons for wanting a little bit of orchestra as part of his festival.It is the one time we all come together- all of the faculty coaches, the student fellowship quartet (who did a fine job yesterday playing the entire Schoenberg 1^st String Quartet on their concert) and the workshop students. Aldo said it was beautiful to see all the different members of the festival playing together, and he couldn’t be more right. We all pay a price to achieve this- I lose a little bit of my cello-guy-ness, people give up about 3 hours of chamber music rehearsal time (and they may even have to share a stand!), but, on balance, I think Aldo was right. I hope that orchestra doesn’t have to suck, and that being a conductor doesn’t have to make me a dick. I hope that we can erase the line between chamber music and orchestra and treat everything as a collaboration. Something special happened in the slow movement of the Elgar that brought together everyone in the festival.  What could be more “chamber music’ than that?

A view from the podium

As many of readers will remember, I’m working this week at the Ischia Chamber Music Festival. I’m in residence here with my colleagues from my string trio, Ensemble Epomeo.

(Mount Epomeo from the Covo dei Borboni, home of Ischia Chamber Music Festival)

Of course, we’re called Ensemble Epomeo because the group came together here on the slopes of Mount Epomeo, the stunning volcano at the heart of Ischia, during last year’s festival. Our original mission was just to play one piece- the Schnittke String Trio. What an unbelievable piece to start with! As last year’s festival drew to a close, David, our violist mentioned that, given how the rehearsals for the Schnittke had gone, we might actually have the makings of a trio and suggested we try to organize a few more concerts.

All three of us have played in a lot of groups over the years, so we all were more than aware of what the odds are of a group of three players, no matter how good and no matter how simpatico, being or becoming a “real” string trio. The odds of failure are pretty high. Still, if you’re lucky enough to play with good colleagues to fail is to still be pretty good, so we all agreed to give it a shot.

For me, the reason I was hesitant and the reason I decided to give it a shot is one and the same- the fact that we’re dealing with string trio, which I think of as by far the most challenging genre in chamber music. It’s more exposed than a quartet, the parts are more difficult (composers mostly think in four voices, so in trio, somebody is almost always playing 2 parts at once), and the repertoire is slanted towards the most difficult corners of classical music- big Mozart, early Beethoven and Schubert. Having just done Schnittke, there is no guarantee Beethoven will also click.

On the other hand, I’ve played in wonderful quartets and piano trios where we had enough time and opportunity to have a good run, find a sound and cover some repertoire. I’ve been pining for another quartet for over 10 years now since Masala finished up, and had ruefully assumed that ship had sailed, and had never really thought about string trio, but now that we’re at it, I’m excited to explore the genre.  There are some advantages to this genre over string quartet and piano trio. It’s amazing how much calmer rehearsals feel with 3 than with 4 musicians, and how much easier it is to play when all 3 instruments are string instruments, as opposed to 2 strings and a 9 foot cannon called a Steinway.

We’ve been doing some concerts here and there throughout the year, but this week has been our second big immersion since last year, and we’ve got a busy month or so of concerts in the UK and USA coming up. There are two things in particular I am enjoying- first, the repertoire. We’re playing the astounding trio of Gideon Klein, the last work he finished before he was shipped to Auschwitz, and the Krasa Dance for Trio, also composed at Teresenstadt just before his deportation. More and more, I hesitate to mention the circumstances surrounding the composition of these pieces because I don’t think they need any special sympathy or consideration as pure music. These are major, major masterpieces. I’m sure that had Klein lived he would have been one of the most important figures in 20^th c. music, on a par with Bartok, Shostakovich and Stravinsky.

I’m also enjoying the different ground rules that come with being in a group. Often at festivals, the rehearsal dynamics are alarmingly similar to the dynamics of an orchestra rehearsal. Expect good preparation, insist on accountability, but on the other hand, work in broad contours, don’t micromanage or nitpick, and try not to pick at scabs. In a “real” group you all agree that we’re not just focusing on preparing a given work, but on creating a shared concept of sound and interpretation- investing the next concert while preparing this one.  

What this really means is that we do a lot, a lot, a lot of tuning work. I’m like a pig in shit doing all this intonation. As a conductor, one has to remember you can only do so much tuning before revolt breaks out. Even then, the institutional dynamics of orchestra rehearsal mean that tuning work often feels (in spite of the best of intentions from the conductor) corrective and sometimes adversarial and punitive. The focus ends up being on the result. Also, with all but the best orchestras, there are always bound to be one or two unsolvable problems in a wind section…

In chamber music, the focus is on the process, and in particular on giving everyone a chance to understand the harmonic function of what they are playing. That means you’re not just getting things to sound “not out of tune,” but on getting to understand, at a very microscopic level, how each composer works with notes, intervals and chords. I can’t think of a better reason to call three musicians a group (other than the groupies).

A view from the podium

I was reminded tonight of why we try to avoid talking about metaphor and meaning in rehearsal.

As it happens, in the midst of a long and very happy day of trio rehearsals, one of my colleagues and I found ourselves in complete and profound disagreement about one passage. It’s not unusual for people to disagree, of course, but in a certain sense, chamber music disagreements are different, and often more intractable, because of the lack of a hierarchy. A 2^nd oboist may disagree with the principal oboist’s articulation in an orchestra work, and may well discuss it, but at the end of the day, the principal will win that argument.

Unless, of course, the conductor agrees with the 2^nd oboist.

But the real issue in our case is that we both had strong metaphorical constructs in mind, and that they were pretty antithetical. I was using words like “rarified, elevated and ecstatic,” and he was using “rustic, earthy and carnival.” It’s not hard to see why we got stuck.

But of course, although we have different sound concepts, I think the difference in sound concept is much smaller than the difference in metaphysical concept. This is the problem with rehearsing in terms of meaning and metaphor- when we agree, it’s wonderful, but when we don’t we cut off each other’s psychic room for perception and response. The whole beauty of abstract music is that a single piece, even a single performance, can be experienced spiritually in profoundly different ways. That experiential space is something very personal and very profound- it is us at our most honest. To take that away can be quite cruel. I never picture cathedrals in Bruckner, I picture the cosmos- the dances of galaxies and the destruction of stars. However, I don’t have the right to destroy another listener’s mental imagery. Likewise, people can disagree about whether the end of Shostakovich 5 is happy or sad, but only fools take it twice as fast as he intended it (see, even that makes you tense up, even if you know I’m right! Still, better a fool than a politician who splits the difference between Shostakovich’s tempo and 2x Shostakovich’s tempo).

So, we agreed to leave it for now and record it later. I have a feeling that when we listen to the playback, it will be obvious if it needs to be louder or softer, longer or shorter, more or less articulate. If you boil it down to “sounds-good/sounds-like-shit,” life gets easier.

Then he can have a carnival while I contemplate the fragile wonder of the undiscovered country.

A view from the podium

I’m feeling almost too busy to think this week, but I really, really wanted to share a few final thoughts on Shostakovich, Barshai and the op83a Chamber Symphony we performed in Guildford on Saturday.

I’m generally very open to arrangements and transcriptions, as were Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schoenberg, Liszt and Ravel. I see nothing at all wrong putting a string quartet into the more-public arena of an orchestra concert, or bringing a Mahler symphony into the parlor, or even to playing Elgar with a baroque orchestra.

In these and many other instances, we become aware of a conversation between the composer and the arranger- even when selflessly executed, a good arrangement does represent a creative response to the original work. What is fascinating about this particular arrangement of Shostakovich’s Fourth String Quartet by Rudolf Barshai is that Barshai, by this point in his life, had digested Shostakovich’s quartet and orchestral languages so deeply that he has managed to make his own contribution seem to disappear. It is an arrangement so idiomatic that it ceases to feel like an arrangement- the sense of dialogue between composer and arranger is lost, and we’re left with something that sounds and feels shockingly like original, vintage Shostakovich. No wonder he allowed Barshai to use his opus numbers.

(Interestingly, to those of you who know this arrangement through Barshai’s classic recording with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe on DG, you might have been surprised to hear some significant changes in orchestration. It turns out that Maestro Barshai’s thoughts have continued to evolve on this piece in the 20 or so years since that recording was made. Fortunately, I was able to track Barshai down and get some clarification as to his preferences, although there is one change I wouldn’t have made)

However, I think there’s more to the uncanny success of op 83 as and orchestra work than simply Barshai’s skillful transcription. Plenty of works fit into a particular genre because that is the only one in which the musical idea would work. Shostakovich’s own 7^th Symphony is the classic example- the musical content demands a huge orchestra, and would never work with smaller forces. Many of the chamber works also are suited exclusively to their home forces, like the Blok songs, the 2^nd Piano Trio and the Piano Quintet.

However, there were other works in Shostakovich’s catalogue that seemed to be assigned to a given genre not because of their musical content, but because of their extra-musical content. Shostakovich knew full well, and said, that the Jewish themes in the 4^th Quartet meant it could never be played during Stalin’s lifetime (and it was not premiered until 1953, despite being finished in 1949). He also knew that even post-Stalin, it’s message was too direct and too dangerous for the spotlight that always shone on his symphonies. A quartet about anti-Semitism might stir a bit of controversy among the Russian intelligentsia, but a symphony was sure to cause a firestorm. When he finally wrote such a symphony, the 13^th, just such a firestorm did occur, in spite of the much more lenient times it was written in.

After a nearly Shostakovich-free 2008, I’m doing tons of his music in the current year, and I can feel my old Shosty-mania coming back to the surface. As I learn the 6^th and 7^th symphonies, I’ve been spending a lot of time re-reading the 30 or so Shostakovich books on the shelf that survived the PDT fires. Sadly, this has not been a completely satisfactory experience. The “Shostakovich Wars,” as many call them, have not done performers and listeners any favors, and it would be lovely if some of these scholars would pull their heads out of their bottoms and do some real research and suspend the food-fights. What we really need is a systematic, bar-by-bar catalogue of all the use of quotation in the music of Shostakovich, referenced to all surviving letters, sketches and drafts. Arguing over who signed what is easy, real analysis takes time, patience and clarity. Every time I learn a Shostakovich score, or return to one I’ve studied before, I’m struck by how many more quotes I find, but I’ll never spot all the Russian drinking songs and folk songs, because I’m not from that culture. This is where scholars can be an invaluable support to performers.

Anyway, I’ll long remember the last note of the concert Saturday- a single thread of sound disintegrating into molecules, then atoms and finally quarks, and an audience for once not breathing, not coughing, not clapping, just waiting…..

A view from the podium, Performing Life anti-semitism, barshai, quotation, shostakovich

Hi Everyone-I’m frantically packing for Ischia (and trying to get my cello chops back after a busy few months of stick waving and not  much practice), and internet access in Ischia is unpredictable. New blog posts may be scarce for a while, we’ll see. Meanwhile, my colleague in Ensemble Epomeo, David Yang, has some wise and funny words about the program we’re touring with this spring. These were written for the paper in one of the cities we’re playing in in June.

Ensemble Epomeo  

Byron Wallace, violin

David Yang, viola

Kenneth Woods, violoncello

Hans Krasa – Tanz (Dance)
Alan Hovhaness – Trio
Gideon Klein – “Variations on a Moravian Theme” from his String Trio
Zoltan Kodaly – Intermezzo
Alfred Schnittke – Moderato from his String Trio
Ludwig van Beethoven – Rondo from String Trio, Opus 9, No. 3

I’m writing this while on the airplane en route to Roma via Frankfurt. There is a large German man to my left slumbering peacefully. I have to say there sure is a difference between a plane full of Germans from a plane full of Italians. There is always a bit of a festive atmosphere when Italians are headed home from vacation. But this flight is all business. Speaking of which, I guess I should write a little about the program my group, Trio Epomeo, is performing in June in the USA. Actually, the first performance will be in Ischia, the small volcanic island in the Bay of Naples in Southern Italy where Mount Epomeo sleeps in the blue seas off Naples, and where the trio was formed. Then we fly off to England where we are performing in Bath (having already tested out part of the program in Hereford). In June we’ll play in New York City in a concert and on Columbia University’s radio station before heading to Philadelphia for two concerts and then up to Newburyport and Exeter, MA. Actually, the travel seems quite relevant because this program is very much a journey from country to country. Specifically, most of the the program has deep roots in the folk music of the various composers’ cultures which, more than usual, gives these pieces their ethnic flavor.

The program is short – about an hour and a half - and we go right through without pause. It is based on old-time programs from the turn of the last century where someone like Kreisler or Elman would do selected movements instead of huge pieces. I find this a nice change for the audience, a bit like a taster’s menu. We sometimes call it a “Tapas Concert.” We’ll be starting with Hans Krasa’s “Dance” which is a driving work that conjures up images of some demon train hurtling towards oblivion. It takes on added meaning when you learn that Krasa, a Czech Jew, died in Auschwitz at the hands of the Nazis shortly after completing it. I’m not sure I can break down exactly what the sound of bitterness and sarcasm is but, for sure, it is in this piece from the first notes.

The next work heads to Armenia for a work by Alan Hovhaness. Hovhaness actually lived in America but this looks to his roots using ethnic scales and techniques to make these standard Western instruments create sounds utterly unlike anything one would normally hear in a classical setting. The piece is strange, lonely and oddly sparse. The romantic image it conjures up in my mind is of a shepherd on some barren mountain with his charges, out for weeks at a time without seeing another human.

After that we move into the central movement from Gideon Klein’s great string trio “Based on a Moravian Theme.” I actually have a recording of the theme which is sung in, well, I don’t know – Czech? or is there a language called Moravian? – and I’ll play it  before we perform. As otherworldly as the Hovhaness was, this piece goes through a huge range of tangible emotions in just 10 minutes of variations. It starts impassioned but swings to playful, sardonic, uncertain and fearful, not necessarily in that order. Klein was a great piano virtuoso and rising musical star in Weimar Germany. Alas, he, like Krasa, did not survive the camps.

Continuing with the folk music angle, we jump into a terrific early little trio by the great Hungarian composer, Zoltan Kodaly (who, happily, lived out a full life, much of it spent collecting folk tunes with his best friend, Bela Bartok.) I’m not sure how to describe it except listening to it you can practically taste the  bits of paprika and potatoes stuck in the thick white beard of the man sitting across the room slurping at his goulash.

After that we go right to a hard, ice-cold bottle of vodka. Alfred Schnittke was the “other” great Russian composer of the 20th Century after Shostakovich. He had a fascination with medieval music and his works reflect that at the same time having the angularity of the mid-20th Century combined with that passion that is so distinctly Russian. Actually, you know, it’s strange how Russian music is so romantic in the way a warm fireplace is comforting with a blizzard raging outside. This is very different from, for example, the hot-blooded passion of Italian opera or the earnestness of so much early 20th Century American music (think Appalachian Spring). Of course, you have to be careful about making silly national generalizations but at the same time, there is something that makes us different from each other. And it is the joy in sharing those differences that can lead to some very interesting things, indeed.

After the Schnittke sneaks in, yells for a while, and then skulks out, we finish with a quick and airy movement by the Maestro himself. Beethoven wrote his C Minor Trio when just a lad in his 20s (it is Opus 9) but this is a fully formed mature work. We’ll be playing the last movement, a Rondo, that whizzes and whirls and then disappears like a puff of smoke. What better way to end a concert?Of course, if everyone keeps applauding we might just have to keep on playing. But we’ll see about that.

David Yang

5 May, 2009

Rome, Italy  

A view from the podium

Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop

Discovery Program

Welcoming Composers, Instrumentalists, Vocalists, Music Librarians, Undergraduate Conductors, Amateurs, Music Educators, Scholars

www.rosecityworkshop.org

Priority Application Deadline June 7, 2009

We all know that the conducting world is very hard to break into- there are scarcely enough opportunities for current and would-be full-time conductors to get experience and feedback. However, it is not only full-time conductors who can benefit from a solid conducting technique, and understanding of rehearsal dynamics and a deep grounding in score study.

Composers, who often end up conducting their own music and that of their peers, music educators, who often find they want a bit of tune-up after a busy and draining year in the class room, and instrumentalists who may even just want to develop a better understanding of what they’re seeing on the podium in their orchestra are all among the broad cross-section of musicians who often find themselves looking for opportunities to increase their understanding of the art of conducting. Committed amateur conductors, who are often deeply frustrated trying to find an opportunity to develop their passion for conducting without a conservatory education have often spent many, many years studying scores and yet have never been able to find a workshop that would give them a chance to stand in front of professional players.

Unfortunately, when many new or part-time conductors start looking for training programs, they find that a first-class violinist or teacher or composer can only hope to get into a second class program.

When the Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop initiated the Discovery Program three years ago, our first goal was to create a program where composers, players, teachers and undergraduate conductors could get the same quality of training as their full-time counterparts in the Emerging Artist program, most of who are well into or have completed their graduate studies in conducting. Discovery Program students work with the same faculty as their EA counterparts, and are treated as equals in all seminars and discussions. The get to work with the professional musicians of the Rose City Chamber Orchestra on the same full-orchestra work as the EA students, and they get to work with concert pianist Rick Rowley. Most importantly, they get to work with all the members of our conducting faculty.

In recent summers, we have seen DP students progress on the EA program, and others have parlayed their experience into admission to grad school in conducting. All DP teaching sessions are professionally recorded in CD-quality audio. Others have taken their new insights into the classroom or the recording studio.

Conducting sessions include

·             Piano reduction session·             Chamber Ensemble session

·             Chamber Orchestra session

and-

·             Classes in score preparation

·             Stick technique

·             Movement, breathing and posture

Repertoire-
Debussy (arr. Schoenberg)- Prelude a l’apres midi d’un faune

Haydn- Symphony no. 99(with full orchestra)

Beethoven- Symphony No.4, Mvt I (piano reduction with Ricky Rowley)

Tuition- $660 (2 payments of $330)

A view from the podium, Announcements and reviews, Study with Ken

I was reminded during the concert tonight of one of the luckier days in my life as a neophyte conductor.

I was at the Round Top festival as a cellist, but had put together a group to play the 13 instrument version of Appalachian Spring. It was the second piece I’d ever conducted in concert.

One week Stefan Sanderling was the main conductor and I asked him to come to one of my Copland rehearsals. Afterward, he went through the video with me and lots of helpful insights- actually one of the more specific and useful conducting critiques I ever got.

Anyway, the morning of the dress rehearsal, Stefan pulled aside me and the other young conductor there, Edwin Outwater. With a smile on his face, he asked if either or both of us would like to conduct a movement of Bruckner Four that morning. Edwin, predictably, was first to leap in- “I’ll do the first!”

”Fine” answered Stefan, “Ken- what do you want to do?”

”Well, I’ll do the last movement.”

Stefan looked at me and gently reminded me that the Finale is orders of magnitude harder to conduct than all the rest of the piece. I looked him in the eye and said I was up for it.

After this brief chat we launched ourselves into the first part of the rehearsal, which was the Beethoven 4^th Piano Concerto. At the break, Stefan pulled me aside and went through the entire last movement of the Bruckner in 5 minutes, just reminding me what was in 2, in 3 and in 4. Then he said something funny

”When you get to the coda, you’re really going to suffer.”

Anyway, Edwin ran the first movement, Stefan the 2^nd and 3^rd then I did the last. Considering I’d conducted full orchestras for about 2 hours in my life, doing an entire movement of Bruckner was with a killin’ band, to say the least, a LOT of fun.

Afterwards, Stefan was pleased. “Did you suffer in the coda?” he asked.

”Not really- it’s so wonderful.”

“Well, it was good, but if it had been slow enough, you would have really been in pain by the end. The tension of that coda should make you hurt to your core.”

Anyway, we had worked very hard to find the right groove, the right degree of weight, resistance and friction in the last movement of the Shostakovich all week, and, as I wrote earlier, I never felt like we quite got there. The orchestra kept getting to the front of the beat. Tonight I wasn’t going to let that happen, and somehow, I think we held it in place with the kind of slow-burn intensity it needs.

And I did suffer. In the years since that Bruckner, I’ve learned that sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do with your hands, you just have to sort of stand there and pay the price. About twenty bars into the march, I remembered Stefan’s smile when he told me about the power of suffering, and would have smile had the music not been ripping a small hole in my soul. It was sufferin’ time….

But in a good way. Sometimes, there’s no other way.

A view from the podium

Intermission

So far so good- Ives really came together. I think it would be even better with a bigger string section- it’s very much a chamber orchestra work, but I think the end could be softer with 16 firsts than it can with 6 or 8. This is a fundamental truth that most people don’t realize- bigger string sections can play softer than smaller ones.

Schumann was rather rockin’- what a team Mick Nagle, our principal, assembled. Richard Lewis on 1^st was doing his 7^th Konzertstucke, and it showed- nerves of steel. Don’t tell him, though, but my favorite part is the 4^th horn, too often under-played (except on Gardiner’s recording, which is wonderfully swarthy). Andy Osbourne ripped it (which is good) as did Mick and Andy Feist on 3^rd. Fun piece.