Bass Blog

Marcello sonatas recording project, part 14

2011-07-24T08:09:00.000-05:00

It is difficult to get anything done in the summer, with the infernal temperatures and interminable rehearsals. However, the recording project continues to creep along.

The second movement, Allegro, begins with a similar 'theme' to the other sonatas in the minor keys, no.s 2 and 3.

It is interesting to see how Mr Marcello took the material and went off in different directions with it. This movement has more legato to it than the others and, rather than ending with a flourish, sort of dissipates with the descending chromatic figure. Perhaps I'm betraying the paucity of my musicianship, but that's about all I have to say about it, other than that the continuo player got an unusual workout in the movement and was not at all happy about having to (try to) play this passage.

click below to listen

Sonata no.4 II Allegro

all the movements released so far are here

Endless Summer

2011-07-22T00:04:00.000-05:00

Last week, we played two programs at Ravinia.

A) Brahms, Piano Concerto no.1; Symphony no.2

B) Brahms, Symphony no. 3; Piano Concerto no.2

Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor

Emanuel Ax, piano

(There were six two-and-a-half hour rehearsals for these two concerts.)

In preparation for the two programs of familiar pieces, we managed to squeeze the work of three rehearsals into only six – any efficiency expert who happened to look in on the proceedings, including listening to the final result, would have gone away seriously scratching their head. If the point of rehearsals is the preparation for a concert, I can't say the majority of the time was well spent. However, if it is to indulge the urge, latent in many who fancy themselves 'leaders' of one sort or another, namely sadism, then the week must be chalked up as a roaring success. The Marquis, peering down from heaven (or wherever he ended up), must have looked at the fifteen (15!) hours of rehearsal time with a horrific kind of glee.

Arriving at certain rehearsals is akin to stepping into the doctor's office, hearing the snap of the gloves going on at the same moment one realizes the jar of Vaseline is long ago empty. Any positive reasoning about what is about to happen in the next two-and-a-half hours might understandably be replaced with a kind of dread. And after fifteen hours of probing, merciless, relentless, and ultimately pointless - “You were here for a headache? Terribly sorry!” - if the patient, when asked to sashay down the hall, proves a bit unsteady on his feet, it should surprise no one.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

2011-07-12T07:40:00.000-05:00

The {redacted}SO season at Ravinia got underway last week. As all things Ravinia go to short term memory only, I can't say if it is unusual or not to begin a season without the music director on the podium, but it seemed like it. At the stroke of the new year, you're supposed to grab your SO for a kiss, not your ex.

Things went as well as could be expected through the first two concerts. A decent rendition of Symphonie Fantastique (except that the sluggish second movement could have been renamed from Un Bal to Medicine Ball) followed an all Lang Lang first half, which I did not play – comments about his hairdo from players coming off stage at intermission made me even more happy with my lot. The following night, omens (like the piano soloist having to stamp his foot to keep things together in rehearsal) foretold of rhythmic accuracy being on the sacrificial altar later that evening. But the gods smiled on us, and the Rite went better than it had a right to.

On the third day of Ravinia, things changed.

In the NFL, one of the most important elements under the control of the head coach is 'clock management', knowing how many minutes are left in the game, how many timeouts are left and when to use them, which plays eat up the clock and which save time, etc. Conductors have similar issues in the way they allot rehearsal time when schedules are made and, more importantly, how they actually spend the time once rehearsals begin. This is true especially in a situation like Ravinia, where tight schedules make it always seem like the fourth quarter of a close game. The clueless coach who squanders timeouts early, sending in the old Statue of Liberty play, or the Flea Flicker, only to watch helplessly as the clock runs out in the final quarter, down by 2 points, with no time to get the field goal unit onto the field, this hapless time-manager is like the conductor who works too long on the pieces that don't need rehearsal, lets players out early at one rehearsal only to run out of time at another.

There is a provision in our contract to bail out the chronologically challenged conductor, but at a price. (Come to think of it, if a conductor is not so good at managing hours and minutes, how are they doing with beats and measures?) 'Extraordinary Overtime' is supposed to put pressure on the time managers and schedulers to get their act together. The criticism leveled at players is often that since the management side are all people of good will, a little more flexibility on our part might be in order. I have no objection to stipulating to the good will. However, good will, too easily overridden by bad planning, sometimes needs the help of a fiscal incentive to fully manifest itself. So, in cashing my overtime check, I feel content in the knowledge I'm helping some folks realize their better nature.

You might think of extraordinary overtime as something like that scene in the Batman movie where, as the Joker, Jack Nicholson and his merry band parade through downtown Gotham City showering the amazed citizens with cash. (I think they then spray everybody with poisoned gas, BTW.) EO is not a demand by greedy, avaricious musicians. All somebody higher up the food chain has to do is say 'no' to the conductor and both money and time are saved. The $16 bottle of Bud Light in the mini bar looks ridiculous when you check in. In the middle of a sleepless night, it may even begin to seem like a reasonable solution to a problem. Opening the bottle demonstrates a failure of will. These, and other boondoggles tend to stick in the mind during contract negotiations when the quadrennial pleas of poverty come out.

Marcello Sonatas recording project, part 13

2011-07-06T21:30:00.000-05:00

After taking some time off, then coming back to listen to what I'd done before, it struck me I had probably messed around, trying to 'engineer' too much (tweaking the EQ and levels, etc.) with Sonata no.3. I also was experimenting with placing the microphones a little farther away from the instruments. I'm not so happy with the sound of that, so for no.4, I went back to the close mic placement, and other than a very slight reduction of high frequencies on the room mics, which seemed to pick up some hiss, most probably due to sub par preamplification, I did nothing but pan the tracks left and right.

A brief note on how I've gone about making these recordings. The image above is the tempo track for this movement. A click track came in handy at the beginning, as well coming out of the fermata. The midi version of the continuo part followed the various nuances in the tempo track and provided a guide while recording the solo part. The continuo part was recorded listening to the click track as well as the pre-recorded solo part. That probably sounds needlessly complicated...

click below to listen

Sonata no.4 I Adagio

all movements released so far are here

Marcello sonatas recording project, part 12

2011-06-25T13:04:00.001-05:00

halfway done!

In addition to the folly that is trying to play anything of musical value on the double bass, this movement added the extra layer of trying to play imitative counterpoint on instruments with different tunings, which meant I had to learn the same passages in two different keys and then try and make them sound the same. Every plan has its flaws, I suppose, although doing a little extra work certainly didn't kill me, and this is a pretty cool movement, so maybe worth the effort.

click below to listen

Sonata no 3. IV Allegro

all movements released so far are here

Marcello sonatas recording project, part 11

2011-06-23T15:06:00.002-05:00

Please forgive the lengthy gap between the 2^nd and 3^rd movements of this Sonata. I really needed a vacation.

The 3^rd movement, Largo, a simple affair at first glance, with almost nothing to it, nonetheless gave me some food for thought. Largo should be faster than the first movement, Adagio, or so I have read, but what to make of the long note values? Just looking at something written all in minims make me want to play it slowly, perhaps out of nothing more than some sort of 'received musical wisdom'. Also, the simplicity of this movement left it wide open to all sorts of ornamentation. But when it came time to play it, I just couldn't do it. Maybe the fact the orchestra was playing Mahler 9^th that week and I was desperately longing for something understated to play had a role in my decision to jettison all ornaments.

click below to listen

Marcello sonata no. 3 III Largo

all movements released so far are here

Marcello Sonatas recording project part 10

2011-06-08T20:56:00.002-05:00

Since, in my experience, few things a have proved more malevolent than the musician with political aspirations, my heart sank when I discovered that in addition to his musical career, Benedetto Marcello practiced law and served on the venerable council of forty in the city-state of Venice, before becoming regional governor at Pola, Istria. Saving his reputation, in my estimation at least, is the fact that after a few years he retired to Brescia. The claim his health had been 'impaired' by the climate if Istria, which I think of as a kind of idyllic Adriatic resort destination, might indicate some dissatisfaction with political life, or at least the modesty to acknowledge the Venetian Republic could continue to function without him in office. Further evidence Marcello might not have suffered from taking himself too seriously is the satirical pamphlet Il teatro alla moda (The Fashionable Theater), a scathing commentary on the state of Italian Opera in his day.

The 2^nd movement of this sonata all but did me in. At some point, I decided I had to take a fast tempo – fast enough to be considered Allegro even for a normal-sized instrument. The section below probably needs a few more decades of practice. The lightning bolts show the parts that gave me the most trouble. Harmonically, Marcello throws in a bit of a curve ball here as well, the Neapolitan 6^th chord. I don't know how many theory lectures I slept through (why are they always at 8 AM?) to get to the point where I could actually spot one of those.

The bass blog will now go on holiday for a couple weeks. Expect the rest of this sonata and the others to follow.

click below to listen

Sonata no.3 II Allegro

all the movements released so far are here

Marcello Sonatas recording project part 09

2011-06-04T13:38:00.000-05:00

Sorry to disappoint anyone who might have hoped I quit after two sonatas (there are six in this set). This is a busy time of year, musically, so it has been difficult finding time to get time in the room where I'm making these recordings, not to mention practicing. As it was, the amount of noises, interruptions, and distractions during the recording of this sonata became almost unbearable. Numerous takes were ruined by people barging in “Uh...sorry..” and slamming the door on their way out. Someone seemed to be joy-riding in the freight elevator, and then a radio started up in the next room. On top of that, I discovered the continuo player had not adequately prepared his part, so after recording the solo line, I decided to fold up my tent and come back another day.

A few people expressed disbelief at my assertion that it is often very difficult to hear oneself while playing in the orchestra. During the rehearsals for Mahler 9 this week, during the cacophonous Rondo-Burleske movement, I realized my D-string had slipped one whole tone below pitch. The thing is, I have have no idea how many lines (pages) I'd played after it happened and before I noticed. How about that?

I read somewhere that in the Baroque period, Adagio was a slower tempo than Largo. That little tidbit of information, whether true or not, has given me some guidance in choosing tempos for the slow movements. The rolled chord on the first and last notes of this movement was not written by Marcello, but cadged from a recording of the piece as played by a cellist.

click below to listen

Sonata no.3 I Adagio

all the movements released so far are here

Why do they Laugh?

2011-05-28T23:50:00.001-05:00

With Muti now safely through his latest residency and back home, or wherever he went, I can finally exhale, uncross my fingers, and put my voodoo doll and Virgen de Guadalupe back in the closet. The Marcello recording project has hit a slowdown due to scheduling difficulties at the venue. The next installments should begin again in a week or so.

Lately, I've been thinking about audience reactions and behavior during concerts, in part motivated by our Music Director's conspicuous negative responses to distractions from the audience, which seems to have made an unfortunate jump to certain members of the orchestra who feel they have the green light to smirk or scowl in the direction of errant coughers. The ill-timed cough really seems to get our Maestro's ire up, so much so that we stopped and restarted Death and Transfiguration in response to a particularly loud episode of phlegmatic ejection during the first measure. This was by no means precedent setting. During the Solti era, after the collapse of the recording industry, when most of his concerts were converted to live recording sessions, I recall him stopping during a take (previously called a performance) of the Háry János Suite in response to an unfortunately timed cough. Astonishingly, near the very opening of (I believe) Debussy Images, the great Maestro stopped the performance, turned and admonished a paying customer to either be quiet, or get out!

Although somewhat ambivalent, I am almost embarrassed to admit siding with the coughers – to a degree. Expecting a couple thousand people to sit for two hours in absolute silence is probably unreasonable, and from my perspective, a performance isn't 'ruined' by noises indicating the presence of live human beings. Then again, I'm not paying top dollar to sit where I sit, and chances are, I will be playing the piece again anyway, so I can sympathize with the person in the audience who might get peeved hearing a cough instead of their favorite passage on the one night in months they've shelled out hard-earned money to attend a live concert. But my fear is that making the concert hall, already something of a mausoleum, resemble also the domain of the stern, frowning, shushing librarian, won't do much to change our image as an 'elitist' and unwelcoming institution.

Another interesting bit of audience behavior was the reaction to Lélio, where judging by the maestro's expression, both the New York sophisticates as well as the local rubes laughed at inappropriate moments. Quite possibly, modern audiences simply don't identify with the hyperbolic romanticism of Lélio, or worse, find it funny. The WTF? looks Muti threw the orchestra brought to mind a number of similar instances when our former music director, bewildered at an audience reaction to something, would turn to the orchestra and ask, why do they laugh? In many of those instances, I could understand the audience reaction, in that it didn't necessarily surprise me, although I'm not sure I could answer why do they laugh? succinctly, which makes me wonder if there is some sort of cultural difference at work. There are a wide variety of things that make people laugh, many of which have nothing to do with humor. Stress, or nerves, surprise, relief, are all things which can cause laughter. And what makes people in groups laugh is probably even more complex. Another thing to consider might be that in certain demographics, laughter (along with applause) is the only socially acceptable sound an audience member can make. In some instances where laughter seems a puzzling response, I think the audience is so uptight, so unsure of what kind of reaction is permissible, the laughter is triggered by a kind of release of tension when everyone realizes they have 'gotten' something, or an intense emotional moment has passed.

For reasons still unclear to me, I once found myself at a screening of the film The Joy Luck Club at a theater in a part of the city far from where I lived. Even during the coming attractions, it became clear I was in the midst of a boisterous and vocal audience, quite different from the crowd I normally found myself part of when going to the movies. As I remember, The Joy Luck Club is something of an emotional roller-coaster, and the people around me were not at all shy about expressing themselves out loud. The scene couldn't have been farther removed from the symphony, the theater, or even the places I usually went to see movies. My first reaction, annoyance that these noisy people were ruining the film, faded as it became clear the expressions from the audience were not not the sort of cynical observations blurted out by the pimply-faced teenager, immediately looking to his peers for affirmation, rather, they were spontaneous responses to what people were feeling, expressed in a way that actually enhanced the communal aspect of watching a film with a bunch of total strangers. By the end, I wondered what was wrong with me, that my reactions were so muted in comparison to the people around me.

That experience left me wondering about what is expected of an audience member at a so-called 'high culture' event – sitting in the dark, silent, motionless, trying one's best not to become a distraction, praying everyone else does the same – where many of the shared, or communal aspects of the experience have been pared away. In the spectrum of human behavior, if one were able to look at the sum total of how everyone on the planet listened to music, watched live theater, or films, I wonder if the oddballs would be the folks who, listening to some musician's emotional outpouring, watching images of people fornicating or dismembering each other, simply sit there with sticks up their rear-ends, shushing the person in the next row. Some arts organization somewhere (it might have been my own...) had the slogan “...be moved” which I thought should have come with the caveat, “...but don't move!”

Of course, the antics of the cellphone toting boor are execrable, the clueless cougher who makes not the slightest attempt at muffling his outburst is villainously rude, and the inter-movement clapper a cad not even worthy of our contempt. I am not advocating anarchy in the audience, and as I am not a regular audience member, I can't speak from that perspective. However, common courtesy to one's fellows ought to be enough to channel public behavior appropriately. And the courteous person on the receiving end of a discourtesy is supposed to courteously ignore it. Maybe if audiences were a bit less up tight, they would feel more free to express feelings spontaneously and the odd, why do they laugh? reactions would go away. As always, I am very curious to hear what audience members think.

Marcello Sonatas recording project part 08

2011-05-14T08:34:00.008-05:00

The joke about Vivaldi – that he wrote the same concerto a hundred times – might, at first glance, apply to these six sonatas. On closer inspection, they each reveal their individual characteristics, and none seems more idiosyncratic than the 4th movement of the sonata no. 2. The marking of Andante is unique for this set, and, I think, unusual for one of the 'fast' movements of a Baroque Sonata. But this seems to fit with my feeling that the tempos of the final movements should be somewhat slower than the second movements, which I've arrived at through nothing more (or less, I suppose) than my own intuition and a bunch of listening.

The slurs are also an intriguing feature of this movement. The bass arrangement I have seen most often, and from which I began learning this Sonata, mostly follows the pattern of three notes slurred, three notes separate, which gives an interesting 'three against two' feel. When I first got hold of the facsimile, the slurring was a matter for no small amount of consternation, since I was loath to change the way I had been playing, and the intent of the markings in the source seemed somewhat unclear. I fantasized about confronting the copyist, grabbing him by the lapels and asking why the heck he didn't make the markings a little more clear.

The slurs as marked make for some pretty awkward string crossings and shifts, but after speaking to a cellist, who informed me that although they were pretty unwieldy on the cello as well, he would still try to follow them, I decided to bite the bullet and try as well. As with many things, although I hated those slurs at first, I eventually became very fond of them. They fit with the overall quirkiness of the movement, and as is often the case, trying to impose some sort of false uniformity onto the music is not always the best course.

some examples from the facsimile (scribbled measure numbers, mine):

looked like this in the edition for double bass:

click below to listen

Sonata no. 2 IV Andante

all the movements released so far are here

Marcello Sonatas recording project 07

2011-05-10T23:07:00.002-05:00

The project continues with the 3rd movement, Largo. I'm quite fond of this little movement. It brings to mind a scene of extreme torpor, if that is the right word to describe the feeling one might have on a long, lazy Italian afternoon, with the heat shimmering out over the fields, while you sit in the relative cool beneath a Roman arch, a bottle of wine slowly draining as the day settles towards evening.

I'm not sure if two double basses can bring something like that off, but, hey, I tried.

click below to listen

Sonata no.2 III Largo

all the movements released to date are here

Marcello Sonatas recording project 06

2011-05-06T07:46:00.028-05:00

Blame it on Bruckner

Not much to say about this movement. I had a faster tempo in mind, but as the 'recording session' took place immediately after playing a Bruckner Symphony for the fourth day in a row, my fingers were something less than fresh. So, instead of a fast Allegro, I settled for something a bit more more jaunty.

In the bass edition I used until I found the facsimile, the F-sharps in measures 5 and 6 were 'corrected' to F-naturals. By the time I got hold of the facsimile, I was pretty much playing from memory, and so it wasn't until I started to do some layout work for my own edition that I spotted the F-sharp and realized, just in time, I'd been playing a wrong note all along.

This movement has some curious slurs, which I took to be phrasing indications, rather than bowings, coincidentally, in the same measures with the changed accidentals. Mostly, I just didn't feel like slurring those notes, so I didn't.

mm. 5-6, slurs and F-sharps

Also, one passage became inordinately difficult due to the tuning of my lowest string (D, rather than F-sharp, or E) – a small price to pay for getting rid of the 'wolfy' A-string.

a pain to play with a low 'D' string

click below to listen

Sonata no.2 II Allegro

all the movements posted to date are here

Marcello Sonatas recording project 05

2011-05-03T18:46:00.003-05:00

The Marcello Sonatas have been in the double bass repertoire for quite a while. I'm not sure when the first transcriptions were published, or if all six of the sonatas in this set (opus 2) are available, but I have come across no.s 2, 3, and 6, fairly regularly in the repertoire of junior high and high-school students.

When I began this project, I worked from one of the widely available editions for bass already in my library. After practicing for a while, I remember showing my part to Sonata no.2 to a harpsichordist, who, holding the paper in hand as if it were a wet piece of tissue, informed me there was something 'very wrong' with it before scolding me for not either, 1) finding a better edition, or 2) consulting a more original source. I'm not sure '1' exists (for double bass, at least), and so I went to step '2' and resolved to make my own edition based on an original source.

Slurs, articulations, and dynamics are usually the most suspicious elements when dealing with a modern edition of a baroque piece. Some of the changes are simply an editor trying to bring a measure of consistency to the variations of an old, sometimes hard to read, handwritten manuscript from the 18th century. On top of that, editors sometimes feel the need to 'modernize' the music, adding slurs and articulations that, while common today, were not in use at the time. Beyond that, often dynamics and phrasings, largely absent in original sources, have been added as an aid to the modern performer, perhaps unfamiliar with the style. Another complicating factor is when, as in this case, the piece is also being transcribed for a different instrument, and there are numerous editorial decisions about what is idiomatic.

The edition I am working from for these recordings, and the one upon which I will base my arrangement for bass, to be published at the conclusion of this project, is the London, c. 1732 edition, available in facsimile form. (The title page is above) The edition, while highly legible, seems to contain what at first glance by the modern eye look like numerous inconsistencies and small errors (although there is what appears to be a rather egregious error in the second measure of the first Sonata – see below). As I have had it explained to me by various authorities, the markings (or lack thereof) which may appear curious to our modern eyes have various explanations, from the shaky hand of an underpaid copyist, to the notion that everyone (at that time) would know the correct way to play the music, obviating the need for comprehensive instructions to the performer, and so on. The main thing I've taken away from my investigations into the matter, is not to jump to any sort of conclusion, and it is not always the best idea to impose a false consistency. There will be more to say on the subject, I'm sure, as the project progresses.

My recording of the first movement of Sonata no.2 contains a couple of willful departures from the manuscript that deserve explanation. The first is the addition of the small cadenza in the thirteenth measure. I have no idea if this is the sort of thing that would have been done at the time, or if what I have done is even remotely passable as stylistically acceptable. Chalk that up to rebelliousness, or call it an ornament that got way out of hand. The smaller digression, but the one that provides me with an immense amount of glee, is the low 'B' played as the penultimate note in the continuo. Of course, the cello does not go down to a low 'B' and Marcello wrote no such note. However, since there are so few things the bass can do that the cello cannot, and playing notes below the 16 foot 'C' is one of them, and in many passages with similar figuration, the bass line drops down an octave at just such a place, I decided to be unfaithful at this point.

There is also a more sinister reason for throwing in a note out of the range of the cello, which is the source of my enjoyment. In the course of my career, I have learned much of what I know about baroque music from the fine cellists, bassoonists and keyboardists with whom I have shared continuo duties. With these noble people, I have no quibble. However, there is a certain species of cellist, often found dominating the continuo, towards which I have a degree of animus. I'm speaking of those who have perfected the art of the over-the-shoulder scowl, the barked admonition, the affected air of superiority, those who make unilateral changes in the part and play without once giving thought that there are others playing the same line along with them. To those bad actors, I dedicate this one low note, as a kind of 'up yours' gesture on behalf of any and all bassists who have suffered.

I fiddled around and tried some different EQ setting for this movement, a bit darker, I think.

click below to listen

Marcello Sonata no.2 I Adagio

All of the movements released so fare are here

My Bad!

2011-04-29T23:32:00.001-05:00

After listening to the MP3 files I'd posted, I realized something was amiss. The files were converted at the lowest possible bit rate, rather than the highest. This whole project is a friggin' learning experience for me in the worst possible way. Anyhow, I reconverted and re-upped all the tracks this evening, so they should sound a bit better. Nothing to be done about the out of tune notes, unfortunately.

The links in all the original posts should work for the re-upped files from this point onward. All the tracks can be accessed on one page by clicking below.

Marcello Sonatas

Marcello Sonatas recording project part 04

2011-04-29T18:44:00.008-05:00

A few people asked about the equipment used to make these recordings. When I began, I was an absolute novice at recording and used stuff I had accumulated over the years, an odd assortment of mismatched components that included a microphone that cost more than one of the basses, an audio interface that ultimately proved effective at nothing more than keeping my studio door from swinging open, all 'controlled' by a laptop computer so old, rather than by mouse or keyboard, input was by cuneiform tablet, the 'battery', in reality, a grumpy little hamster, running endlessly in a tiny wheel.

So, I'm recording everything on my laptop (I did get a newer one) running Cubase software that came with the Lexicon 'Omega' interface which, before wasting hours of my time, ended up as a doorstop. The “Omega' was replaced by a Presonus 'Firebox', which has run smoothly from the get-go. Close micing of the bass is with a Neumann U47 (which is a story in itself), the room mics were a pair of Neumann K 84s, lent me by a very generous friend, which, after the failure of the Lexicon 'Omega' to even function as a stereo pre-amp, was reduced to to one.

The initial idea was to record in my studio at home. That way, I could record a take whenever the spirit moved me. To record in a small room, I had to place the microphone close to the instrument, about six inches off the bridge, in order to avoid getting nasty reflections from the room. A friend who knows a thing or two about recording came over, took one look at my setup, and told me there was no way I could get a decent sound in that space. So, I've been lugging my instrument(s) and all the gear to 'an undisclosed location' and making the recordings there. Even in the larger room, I still like the sound of the close mic placement, where some of the bow noise is audible. Recordings that are too 'smoothed out' sound fake to my ears and makes me sort of sleepy listening to them.

Editing the finished recordings consisted of mixing the signals from the close and room mics. In the future, I might try moving the close mic a bit farther away. It seems like the farther away from my bass you get, the better it sounds. My family, on the west coast, think my playing is quite good, while my wife, sitting in the next room, is not so impressed. The attached picture shows some of the EQ settings I've experimented with: rolling off the high frequencies to get rid of hiss, the lows, to eliminate rumble.

Of the four movements, this is the one I'm most happy about the recording I ended up with. Right near the beginning, you might be able to hear a very audible gasp for breath, and I'll be darned if I didn't do it again on the repeat as well. Eliminating all sort of noises made while playing, groans, sighs, gasps, and whatnot is actually another element I had to work hard on. Believe it or not, it was much worse before. Never the less, there is nothing quite so pathetic as a middle-aged bassist sweating and gasping over a piece of junior-high level music, but there you have it.

click below to listen

Marcello Sonata no.1 IV Allegro

Marcello Sonatas recording project part 03

2011-04-26T22:59:00.010-05:00

Like a good short-order cook, I've got to start knocking these things out a bit faster, or I'll never finish.

The 3rd movement gave me the most problems, and I'm least happy with the final result of the three movements released so far. Predictably, at the outset it seemed to be the simplest, and so got the least amount of practice time.

My original plan for this project was to record the continuo (or accompaniment) part first, and then lay the solo part over it. After a few test recordings, I realized this was more difficult than I had imagined. Making the solo part conform to the less than perfect playing of the continuo line ended up being more difficult than doing it the other way around. In hindsight, it seems obvious; the more difficult part, technically, is harder to be flexible with. So, for the first two sonatas at least, the solo parts have been recorded first, and then I came back and played the accompanying line underneath.

My favorite science-fiction author, Stanislaw Lem, wrote a very memorable short story about a space traveler who, falling into a series of gravitational vortices, encounters multiple versions of himself, in the immediate past or future. In the hands of Lem's sardonic wit, of course the situation turns farcical, with our hero engaging in a series of verbal and physical conflicts with his alter egos. And every time the protagonist deals out a blow or an insult, he finds himself on the wrong end of it as he progresses through time.

Since I'm using two different instruments to make these recordings, and because it has been difficult to reserve time in the room where I am making these recordings, the solo and continuo parts were recorded about 2 weeks apart. After recording the solo lines, I listen to determine if I have recorded any useable takes or not. The biggest lesson learned to date has been that it is one thing to listen to something and think it is good enough, and another to try and play along with it, matching pitch, rhythm, and phrasing. This third movement proved vexing, in that I thought the solo line was pretty consistent, until I took out the other bass and tried to play the continuo part along with it. Then it seemed like the pitch wavered from note to note, and it was a real challenge trying to play an accompaniment that didn't make the solo line sound awful. As in Lem's story, I found myself seriously at odds with, maybe even hating an earlier version of myself.

Playing along with something robotic and inflexible might well be an essential skill for playing in an orchestra. Never the less, making a workable accompaniment for the top line as I recorded it proved trying in the extreme, and I found myself loathing the person I had been two weeks earlier as I struggled to play along.

click below to listen

Marcello Sonata no.1 III Largo

P.S.
I encourage anyone interested to pursue the work of Stanislaw Lem. His most well known work, Solaris, would go on my list of 'must read' works for those not only interested in sci-fi, but who share a sense of, if not despair, wariness about what the inexorable march of 'progress' and technology actually mean for the human condition. The Soderbergh-Clooney film version, while not as awful as I feared, is a pale shadow of the Tarkovsky masterpiece, but both, in their own ways miss the point of the original. The adventures of the everyman, cosmonaut, Ijon Tichy, in The Star Diaries, of which the story cited above is one small part, is another essential component of Lem's output.

Marcello Sonatas recording project, part 02

2011-04-25T15:55:00.007-05:00

My wife may well have the second movement of Sonata no. 1 in her nightmares. I found this movement particularly difficult to master and spent many hours actually practicing it, to the point where it almost ceased to exist as a piece of music and became simply a way to torture myself with daily reminders of my shortcomings.

This might be a good time to describe some of the equipment I'm using for this project. To make my life a bit more difficult, I decided to use two different instruments, with different tunings, to record the solo and continuo parts. The 'solo' instrument is tuned to more or less standard 'solo tuning' while the continuo uses the common tuning used most often in the orchestra.

solo tuning

orchestra tuning

The odd tuning of the 4th string in solo tuning only serves the function of eliminating a 'wolf note' on the top string, by sympathetic resonance with the second partial of the lower string. In this sonata, there are no notes on the 4th string anyway. In sonata no. 2, the alternate tuning actually made my life more miserable (as you will hear in due course).

A few words of clarification about tunings and transpositions might be helpful at the outset. The double bass is a transposing instrument. When you give a bass player a part that reads

the sound you get back will be

When bassists complain about having to 'transpose' something, take it with a grain of salt – they've been doing it their whole lives! [Don't even get me started on harmonics. There are hours and hours of my life I will never get back, wasted trying to figure out what register a composer wanted a harmonic to sound in. Composers: forget about markings like 'real sound', 'at pitch', '8va', '8vb' and all the instructions about what string and in which position to find the note. Write the harmonic like the rest of the bass part, one octave above where you want it to sound. Any decent player will be able to figure out where to play it...]

The examples of the tunings cited above actually sound one octave lower. In addition, parts written for solo tuning are transposed down another whole step, making for a 'D' transposition (which simply means when a player plays a 'C' it sounds like 'D') To avoid confusion, hereafter, any musical examples cited will be at concert pitch (which is the pitch and in the octave in which they sound). When I publish my arrangements of these sonatas, I will of course make the necessary transpositions so bassists everywhere can play them without (believing they are) transposing.

Some time during the process of practicing these sonatas, I had the bright idea of using a baroque bow. I'm a bit leery disclosing this, because where I work, 'period instruments' might be even more despised than modern music. Never the less, I endeavored to learn to use the baroque bow, and eventually came to love it. Mastering the grip took quite a while before I was comfortable holding the stick in my fingertips without squeezing. Much of the challenge playing these sonatas has been trying to avoid the tendency for the bass to sound lugubrious. For me, using the baroque bow has been entirely worth the effort in the lightness and clarity of the sound it produces.

Baroque bow with grip

This movement contains passages like the following

which will immediately remind a lot of bassists of similar passages in the Mozart, Symphony no. 40. I imagine any bass player with an orchestra job has spent a few hours cutting their teeth on those cross-string passages. At first, after picking up the baroque bow, I became dismayed at the prospect of having to relearn the technique. In the long run, things I learned using the baroque bow paid off on the 'modern' bow as well.

click below to listen

Marcello Sonata no.1 II Allegro

Marcello Sonatas recording project, part 01

2011-04-21T18:19:00.001-05:00

What this is all about.

A major complaint among bassists is the difficulty hearing oneself while playing in the orchestra. Some of this is due to the shape of the instrument – sound-box down near the floor, ears up in the air (unless the bassists' slouch has permanently disfigured the spine) – and some of it due to the dark timbre of the instrument. Another cause, namely the volume at which other instruments play, is the third rail of describing life in the orchestra, which I will not step on just now. So, many notes go by, if not completely unheard, possibly insufficiently scrutinized. At this point, you might wish to consider what can happen to the human voice when the facility of hearing has been lost. Practice time, the obvious answer to this dilemma, can be difficult to come by in sufficient quantity in the midst of a busy schedule of rehearsals and concerts. As an under appreciated student, most of my playing happened in the practice room, where I was painfully aware of my deficiencies. As an highly appreciated professional, on a lot of days I'm lucky if I can get my practice time up to half of the total playing time, which means a fair amount of what I play every day, I don't hear. The result is that keeping tabs on how one is playing, while not impossible, can become challenging.

Over the years, when students have come to me for private lessons, whether for posterity, or to provide themselves with another chance at deciphering the tortured verbiage used by the teacher, they have often asked to record the session. After gaining permission by signing the customary waivers, they unveil one of a number of devices to do the job which have grown in sophistication while shrinking in size, from the 'portable cassette recorder' ubiquitous early in my career (horribly named by present standards at about the size of a loaf of bread) all the way to the digital gizmos of today, some of which are little bigger than a pat of butter. Sometimes I've asked to listen to the recordings, usually while the student packs up their instrument, both as a way to keep up with the technology, and to avoid the awkward chit-chat at the end of a lesson. The student who came to me with techy cred far outstripping ability to play the double bass inadvertently provided me with the much needed wake-up call.

After spending an hour covering a movement from one of the Bach cello suites, de riguer for the college student or other 'serious' aspirant to mastery of the instrument, I spied the tiny mp3 recorder and asked if I might listen a bit. The miniature device excellently captured the poor quality of the playing assaulting me when I put in the ear-buds. This fellow is worse than I thought, I recall remarking (to myself). Of course, the next thing I heard on the recording was the sound of my own voice, proclaiming the student ought to play just like that. Unawares, I'd been listening to my own playing, not liking what I had just heard.

In response to such a rude awakening, I resolved to try and rehabilitate myself by practicing my double bass more diligently. I began by resolving to practice every single day, which I quickly modified to resolving to practice often. In the cool light of reason, I once again modified my resolution and promised myself I would practice occasionally. Since practice without performing is like singing in the shower, and without some sort of end in mind, I knew I would never apply myself with sufficient diligence, I also posed a challenge to myself, using fear as the ultimate motivator.

The basic outline of the project, which I will describe more in detail as it progresses, is to record the 6 Sonatas for Solo violoncello with a thoroughbass for the harpsichord, by Benedetto Marcello, arranged for two double basses (by me). Since the point of the exercise is to see for myself whether or not I can play the instrument, the recordings would be of complete takes of each movement, and I would not resort to any sort of editing, pitch correction, or other digital wizardry to make the end product more palatable to the ear. The only nod in that direction would be the use of overdubbing, which would allow me to play both of the parts, and some EQ to compensate for deficiencies in my equipment and the location(s) where the recordings would be made. The end result would be something of a cross between a studio and a live recording – I would 'perform' each movement for the microphone three or four times and use the best take. If in three or four tries I couldn't come up with a useable take, then it would be back to the practice room to try again another day. Work on the project began in earnest during the fall of 2010, with the goal of finishing the first of the Sonatas by year's end. Obviously, I'm behind schedule for various reasons, some of which were out of my control. Never the less, I am now ready to proceed.

Click below to listen.

Sonata no.1 I Largo

Great Men of Music

2011-04-10T11:26:00.002-05:00

My fingers are crossed for the success of this visit by our music director. I don't want to jinx anything by even thinking the wrong sorts of thoughts, so I'll write about something else for now.

Over the past month or so we have been host to some venerable maestros. The floorboards have been groaning under the collective gravitas of these great men of music. Some of the concerts have been pretty good too.

Choral icon Helmuth Rilling led enjoyable performances of Mendelssohn's Elijah in front of thousands of rabid choir directors here for a convention, and for whom the esteemed German maestro could do no wrong. In fact, I think to many of those conventioneers, the instrumentalists were something of a nuisance, or at best, a necessary evil. Of the school I've had passing acquaintance with in the early music world, Rilling seemed used to an instrumental ensemble prepared to fend for itself while he tended to the needs of the chorus. For the most part, we were content to sit off in a corner and play nicely with our toys while the singers did their thing. My memory might be failing me, but this kind of blockbuster choral concert used to be a more frequent occurrence around here. Perhaps they are too tired from the Christmas shows to do more.

Whatever else he brings, Charles Dutoit always seems to pack his suitcase with plenty of excitement when he comes to town. Although this time I wonder if he left his bag unattended for a moment and somebody slipped in a couple of strange items, namely The Enigma Variations, and Sibelius Suite from Karelia, both of which seemed at odds with his francophilic tendencies. This iteration of the Elgar brought to mind the master French chef who holds his nose and whips up a shepherd's pie merely to show how truly awful food from across the channel is.

The Elgar also served as subject matter for another Beyond the Score presentation. Since one of my colleagues all but dared me to write about it, I have to confess to being thoroughly engrossed listening to stories about the dog who jumped into the water, the man who slammed the door on his way out, the sudden thunderstorm, and the lady who took a boat ride (or did she...?!)

Dutoit stayed for another week to lead us in Petrushka, along with the Grieg piano concerto and the aforementioned Suite from Karelia, bringing some elan to the Stravinsky, reminiscent of nail-biters from the Solti era, with 'excitement' as the byproduct of a spasmodic modal expressivity, and the hyperbolic extraneosity of gestural vectors emanating from the vicinity of the podium. Anyone scratching their head trying to follow that last sentence has taken the first small step on the road to empathizing with the occasional plight of an orchestral musician.

The Grieg piano concerto brought to mind an egregious omission from my previous post on the subject of memorable outbursts from the audience. To set the scene: a number of years ago (more than 10?). On the podium, a conductor nicknamed 'Santa' (as in Claus). At the piano, the son of a Russian dissident. After a lackluster performance of the Grieg, from the balcony came lusty booing from a single, very agitated audience member, followed by confetti as torn pages from a program book were tossed in the air. My eagle-eyed stand partner identified one of our local critics as the perpetrator. How that slipped my mind, I have no idea.

Bringing Bruckner 4 to our concert hall is like showing up at a party with a bottle of wine only to discover your hosts have a case of it under the back stairs. But we are always ready to uncork another Bruckner Symphony, no matter how many times we've had it before. With a reputation for testiness preceding him, Kurt Masur's mostly gentlemanly demeanor came as something of a pleasant surprise. Although, noticeably less chipper than the last time I saw him, it is hard to say if the bonhomie was intentional or a side affect of advancing age. His getup – concert attire in name only, since it was a a concert and that was what he was wearing – goes down as one of the most talked about outfits we have seen in quite some time.

Conductors who try and foist a sense 'drama' onto Bruckner often end up highlighting some of the idiocy in the music, or in themselves. Masur managed to find the grandeur of the thing without becoming ponderous, the lightness without it becoming an embarrassingly unfunny joke, which is a pretty fine line to tread. Kudos to him. Somebody remarked that if he (Masur) didn't understand the piece, nobody would. I guess if coming to a deep appreciation of Bruckner is another byproduct of the aging process, I'll hold hold out for a deathbed conversion.

Rex Tremendae!

2011-03-08T22:19:00.006-06:00

This is probably as good a time as ever for the Bass Blog to shift back to something lighthearted. The concert on Saturday {actually Thursday - see comments} evening was notable for the return of the audience member (affectionately) dubbed by orchestra members as 'Thesaurus Rex'. I'm referring to the gentleman in the terrace seats who manages to yell out something at the end of a piece, in the split second before the applause or shouts of 'Bravo' emanate from audience members with normal reflex times. 'Thesaurus' refers to the content of his utterances, usually some adjective of praise.

I wish I had a record of all the weird things audience members have voiced at the end of pieces over the years. For me, the gold standard still has to be the person at the University of Illinois Krannert Center who sat through an entire lengthy Symphony by Georges Enescu (can't remember which one) and enunciated a perfectly well-formed, loud “BOO!” before anyone else in the room could react. A close second goes to the audience member who, right before the very quiet ending of Mahler's Das Lied Von Der Erde, groaned aloud, “Oh...God...!”

At the very end of the concert this past Saturday, with the last note of the Bruckner 7th still ringing in the hall, Thesuarus Rex managed to yell out “Awesome!” before any other audience member made a a sound. However, at the end of the first work on the concert, the Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (which one of my colleagues, in response to the increasing volume at which the piece was played each night, dubbed the Overture to The Bombing of Nürnberg) Rex yelled out something a bit more lengthy and complex, which nobody I spoke with could quote with absolute certainty since the normal applause had drowned out most of it. The best guesses I heard were “Dudamel would be proud!” which makes sense since Salonen, Dudamel's predecessor in Los Angeles was on the podium, or else “Why do you play so loud!” which, when you think about it, could apply to almost any concert at 220 S. Michigan Ave.

If anybody heard that and knows (or has an entertaining guess) what was said, please comment here or email me. I'm dying to know.

Be True to Your (Second Viennese) School

2011-03-06T09:28:00.006-06:00

The responses to my last couple of posts were impressive; I truly appreciate the all of the thoughts and their passionate expression. And since I became hopelessly bogged down writing a dull post about Muti's replacements (Slatkin, every-ready, dependable; Sakari Oramo, another talented Finnish conductor? Yes! {Purple bow tie and cummerbund oddly out of character}; Noseda, inspiring, entertaining in rehearsal, world's sweatiest conductor?) I thought it might be interesting to feature some of those reader's thoughts, along with my typically ill-considered replies.

As expected, the subject of retirement generated a fair amount of passion. Out concern for my thumbs, kneecaps, and other regions anatomical, I should leave this alone except to reiterate it is a difficult issue on both a personal and on an institutional level. Every player is left to come to terms with it on their own. Some days, instead of counting rests, I find myself counting years to retirement, like the kid who can't wait for Christmas. When the date arrives, I wonder if I will still feel the same and make a graceful exit. Right now, it is impossible to predict. My fear is that, like the drunk sidling up to the bar for 'just one more', I'll wake up hours later at closing time, as they're pushing me out into the street.

Resistance to change seems an integral part of the human condition. Considering recent events in the middle-east, one might draw the conclusion that someone in a job for too long can lose perspective on when it is time to leave. Perhaps societies only change when collective power tips some sort of balance away from the strong individual desire for stasis. Many of the 'great' orchestras of Europe have thrived with a mandatory retirement age, as I understand it, applied equally to all, from the exalted principal to the lowly section drone. Certainly, nobody wants to institute the 'Logan's Run Symphony Orchestra', where at age thirty the flashing jewel imbedded in the palm indicates one's time is up, but there is probably something short of that which might prove workable.

Dimsky posted a lengthy comment, part of which shifted the focus from retirement to education:

I don’t think we can talk about this subject (retirement) without talking about another unsavory aspect of why there are too many players for too few jobs: some responsibility for the glut of players has to be born by the overzealous recruiting of Colleges and Universities...

It is truly depressing sometimes, to see the number of talented music students and then think about the number of jobs available. Colleges and conservatories filling teaching studios and school orchestra rosters becomes a bit of a rat-race, to be sure. The brutal truth is that a certain amount of oversupply of music students might be a necessary evil in order to insure the talent pool is sufficiently large. A more humane approach might be some system of apprenticeship, but I have no idea how that would be implemented.

When talking about the retirement of symphony players, there is often the implication that for every older player, a younger, 'better' one eagerly waits in the wings. In some places this is the mantra of orchestra managers and boards of directors, who, seeing younger, fresher, (and most importantly) cheaper faces, become enamored with the idea. This viewpoint devalues the traditions of an orchestra and denigrates the accumulated years of experience assembled on stage. Filling every chair in the orchestra at all times with the 'best' player available would create a sort of All-Star team, and anybody who watches sports knows All-Star squads aren't really teams. Nobody cares about them as teams per se, and besides, they don't play defense. (At certain concerts, I feel as if all I do is play defense...) The strength of an orchestra lies in large part with its continuity, which is actually a middle road between renewal and stasis. All parts of the whole are replaceable, but replace too many and the continuity is lost. In this country, the profession needs to consider at least acknowledging the issue, which would be better coming from the musicians themselves, otherwise we might find it imposed on us.

In response to my lamentations about the conservative nature of our institution, nocynic seized the opportunity to take (another?) swipe at the hapless Second Viennese school:

The reason 100 year old pieces are still considered "modern" is not entirely the fault of the conservative nature of the institution. "Modern" has come to be defined as "not accepted". Unlike earlier masters, who came to be loved in time, there is still not much of an audience for the Second Viennese School. In that sense, it is likely that they will always be modern, the last statement of a road not taken.

You are probably correct in asserting Schoenberg et al have a small following, but after watching the grammies the other day (Hey, I was under the weather, too feeble to lunge for the remote when it came on...) and seeing all sorts of musicians who are loved in their day, I wonder if the same could (should?) be said about classical music in general. Our society seems to have largely turned its back on us, when the lowliest pop diva on her most drug addled night still kills any orchestra at the box office. Some may blame the serialsists, as if they hijacked the bus of classical music and forced it down a road nobody wanted to travel, but I'm not so sure. The Soviet era repression of composers has been something of a recurring theme at our Beyond the Score presentations. However, in the 'free' West, nobody was ordered to write 12-tone, or any other type of music. So what happened? To invoke an ideology even more hated and discredited than the second Viennese School (Marxism) it might be insightful to consider the forces of the 'marketplace' and the emergence of music as a commodity. It is probably no accident the experiments with atonality and the widespread availability of the phonograph record happened about the same time. In the battle between the living and the dead, the dead always win. Perhaps the most enterprising musical minds, rather than cowering at the back of the hijacked bus (“Take me to P0!”) simply got off at an earlier stop, in search of the other five letter word that begins with 'm', money.

sjid wrote...

Typical enlightened programming by progressive music directors includes a composition of new music sandwiched between two war horses, with the new music most often taken from a group of a dozen or so favored living composers in acts of blatant cronyism.

Ah, the 'shit sandwich' as it is affectionately known in the business. Sometimes getting an audience to hear new music is harder than getting a cat to swallow a pill. The 'acts of blatant cronyism' should surprise no one. To have a new work commissioned and performed by a major orchestra, composers need political savvy as much as musical acumen to earn one of the rare prizes. The frustrating part is that after, if not creating, at least complicity in maintaining an atmosphere unwelcoming to new music, players feel free to complain about the few works that trickle through.

tom wrote several interesting things...

The iPod has superseded the radio. If all you ever listen to is 'your' music, what chance does the unfamiliar have?

Declining role of the pre-packaged subscription in selling orchestra concerts...

Not long ago, I had a quasi argument with a classical music neophyte in another city who had purchased his first subscription to the local orchestra. Looking over the programs he had signed up for, he asked me about a number of pieces which were unfamiliar to him. Rather than allay his fears, my descriptions prompted the response, “Why should I pay for something I'm sure I won't like!” My argument that attending the concerts could be regarded as an educational experience, where exposure to something initially unfamiliar and possibly even momentarily unpleasant could lead to a deeper understanding, did little to persuade him his money should go towards anything he was not already in support of.

This attitude probably did not exist when most of the so called masterworks of the repertoire were created, under the system of royal and aristocratic patronage. There is a huge difference between 'the Customer is king' and 'my customer is The King.' Nowadays the tendency is to to equate aristocracy with philistinism, but in the days of the great masterworks, many of the patrons had what we would consider today an extraordinary level of musical education. (I wonder who was the last U.S. president to play the violin, Jefferson?) I don't think our current notions of mass appeal and marketability had anything to do with the creation of much of what we hold dear today. Part of education is learning to recognize those who have a deeper understanding than our own. The person who knows nothing, or very little, is today empowered to weigh in on any subject, or at least ignore whatever falls outside of their current world view.

On the subject of narrow minded programming, Lisa Hirsch said...

Overfocus on the few, the great, means that we lack context for their music.

The fact that there isn't an 'action painting' hanging in every dentist's office and bus depot has not prompted museums to declare abstract expressionism a failure (a road not taken, if you will) and throw their Jackson Pollocks in the trash. Giving a listening public less knowledgeable about classical music than their counterparts in the past more choice over what to listen to than ever before, rather than fostering broadmindedness, probably has a lot to do with the shrinking range of what gets programmed. Orchestras have become the primary source of music education for a lot of people, who in many cases, are hungry to know more. I'm often chiding our Beyond the Score presentations, although I think this is just the sort of activity we should engage in. My main critique is, as always, the programming, which for BTS skews even more conservative than the regular concert offerings. I would like to see us, however gently, try and broaden the interests of our audience rather than provide continuing, smug affirmations of the status quo.

A Country for Old Men

2011-02-13T10:11:00.007-06:00

Aeneas picked up a rock, a heavy lift,
which no two men now alive could do,
although he managed it with ease all by himself.
-Homer, The Iliad

Last week, one of my colleagues retired after 49 years in the orchestra. The feat is something that, the more I think about the particulars of it, the more astonishing it seems.

The last time we went to Japan, I met with a rabid fan of our orchestra, and incidentally, a reader of this blog, who ended up taking me out and buying me quite a few drinks. At some time during our evening together, after at least our second bottle of sake, he said, solemnly, “The {redacted} bass section is all very old men.” His English, although better than my Japanese, was not great. Assuming we were suffering from both linguistic and cultural miscommunication, I have no idea if he meant that as a compliment or a not so subtle put-down.

One of the first things a new player in the orchestra learns is that talking about age and retirement is a VERY touchy subject for some people. I remember, when suggesting that, rather than expecting another raise, players with forty (or more) years experience could possibly be incentivised to at least consider the possibility of one day entertaining the idea retiring, a colleague ordered me to perform an act on myself that, while possibly pleasurable (if you're into that sort of thing – and nothing wrong with it if you are), is most probably physically impossible, even for the most limber among us.

[Translator's note: the author, having suggested the possibility of providing incentives for long-serving members of the orchestra to retire, was told to go f*ck himself.]

Our former music director, not always the most adept at dealing with personnel issues, nevertheless got off what has to be one of the the greatest comebacks on the subject. When said music director asked one of the crusty old-timers when he might be thinking of retiring, the player replied defiantly that he intended to die in his chair, to which the music director answered that the orchestra could arrange for the chair to be delivered to the musician's home.

When I joined the orchestra, the first violin section was something of an actuarial marvel. Now the tables have turned somewhat. My cursory statistical analysis of the string sections shows the viola and bass sections to have the highest median age (this does not include our recent retiree), followed (in order) by the cellos, second, and first violins – quite a reversal, and a bit of a sobering fact, finding oneself on the side of the teeter-totter that's getting heavier.

Like fibers of a rope, not a single one of which runs the entire length, the overlapping career spans of musicians carry on the traditions of an orchestra. An orchestra without this linkage to the past isn't really an orchestra in the way we currently think of one, it is merely a group of musicians, a pickup group. The attitudes of managers and boards of directors in some places, where they assume musicians are easily replaceable from the stocks of eager conservatory graduates (who, most importantly, would work for less money) are misguided at best, destructive, and not in the interest of the institutions they serve. Cut too many fibers, and the rope frays and breaks; braid in too many, and it becomes thick and inflexible.

However, the aversion to change has become so institutionalized, the concert hall of today might be one of the few places where something 100 years old is still called 'modern', where, if somehow miraculously reincarnated, a dazed Schubert could probably wander the halls for a week in his tailcoat and spectacles without drawing any attention (who was that little German-speaking fellow, the new violist? Shrug). The past, obsessively glorified, with its stranglehold on the present, is in no serious danger of being forgotten any time soon. For the sake of the future, the bonds might need to be loosened a bit.

The Greatest of All Time

2011-02-05T14:57:00.003-06:00

{Not to ignore the elephant in the room, I join my colleagues in wishing for our music director's good health and speedy recovery. The desire to seek an explanation, or at least, information about what happened, while quintessentially human, does nothing to ameliorate the situation, although it may satisfy our own desires for immediate resolution. At the moment, compassion for someone who has suffered misfortune, or at very least the right to privacy, might be the most appropriate response.}

Last week, I played an awful lot of Mozart, at the {redacted}SO and with Ars Viva. Two different people reminded me his birthday was coming up (on January 27th) but I forgot, and so enjoyed the sensation of being surprised by the same news twice.

Some years ago, overcoming what had been a longstanding aversion, I broke down and attended a double bass convention in a distant city. While there, I encountered a colleague who specialized in music of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Elements of our discussion have remained with me over the years, even though as a naïve first-time conventioneer, I had yet to fully realize the primary function of such events, to facilitate marketing and commerce, and the thinly veiled motive behind our conversation was to get me to buy some sheet music. Nevertheless, the gist of what he had to say – very briefly, that our fixation with only performing and listening to the 'greatest' works by the 'greatest' composers does a disservice to listeners and performers alike – has stayed with me ever since, that, and the score to the piece by Franz Anton Hoffmeister I bought from him.

While engaged in this most interesting conversation, we were interrupted by someone bursting in, breathlessly informing us of an impromptu lecture presenting the 'discovery' of the Haydn double bass concerto. As all bassists know, the Haydn concerto has been considered lost for about 200 years, probably ending up lining Mozart's birdcage, or else carelessly tossed aside by some slovenly bassist, a loss felt keenly to this day, a missed opportunity for a marginalized instrument to gain some degree of legitimacy. Looking back, I still cannot decide whether it was in confirmation or in refudiation of the point he had just made, but the mere possibility of a work by Haydn was sufficient to banish thoughts of Hoffmeister back to oblivion and send my colleague dashing off (with me right behind) to hear about this new 'great' addition to the double bass repertoire. Imagine our disappointment then, finding ourselves victims of a bait-and-switch, the lecture really nothing more than a trumped up sales pitch for a new edition of a concerto by Johann Matthias Sperger, the bassist in Haydn's orchestra at Esterhazy. The 'lecturer' seemed genuinely surprised by those in attendance who, being offered Haydn but receiving Sperger, expressed disappointment. “This is not as great as Haydn? No?” is when I remember people starting to walk out. I vowed right then and there never to attend another bass convention.

[n.b. I am actually quite fond of Sperger as a composer of numerous concertos and other pieces for solo double bass. One of my life's major disappointments has to be the failure of the admittedly ill-initialed Sperger Society to more successfully champion his works.]

Last week , between the two orchestras I played with, seven works of Mozart were on offer, all of which I had performed before except the Piano Concert no. 11. Regrettably, I was downsized from that piece – the last player or two in each string section being expendable in the name of 'lightness' or 'transparency' even though, one on a part, the winds continue to play as loudly as before. So it came to pass that I ended up playing nothing but old favorites.

At some point during the week, I tried to recall all of the Mozart Symphonies I had ever performed and could only come up with no.s 1, 25, 29, 35, 36, 39, 40, and 41 off the top of my head (the bottom of my head being buried in the blizzard of '11). There might be a couple of others that, possibly due to some sort of trauma induced amnesia, I can no longer recall having performed, but not many. This interests me because it seems almost impossible to hear or read about Mozart without mention of his untimely demise and, as if somehow related, his prolificacy. When presented with these facts in a pre-concert (or during-the-concert) lecture, audiences usually murmur, or you hear a sigh wash across the auditorium. “So sad...So young...Damned shame, really...” And then you are either told outright, or your mind follows the suggestion on its own, to imagine a world, a world with ten, twenty, thirty, forty more years...of Mozart! What a world that would be! But alas, the world limps on, cruelly denied. The other composer with a birthday last week, Schubert, gets pretty much the same reaction, although, cutting a more pathetic figure, and as yet not the subject of a major motion picture (imagine the box office possibilities of “Peter” ), Schubert probably wins in the sympathy department.

So, there seems to be something askew here. Mozart and Schubert: prolific geniuses who died young, far too young. We wish they had lived longer, written more music. Yet, much of the music they did write (at least in terms of the symphonic) molders on library shelves, unplayed. The late works may indeed be the 'greatest', whatever that means, but is the rest really rubbish by comparison? I wonder if someone at the Ars Viva concert looked at the program book during Mozart Symphony no. 25 (a delightful piece) and harrumphed, “Symphony 25? He wrote 16 more for God's sake! Why aren't they playing number 41?!” And then we move on to the point my fellow bassist-conventioneer made. Are there other composers, other pieces worth hearing? Would hearing them, at least once in a while, give us a better understanding, a perspective on the era, the style, on the supposed 'genius' of the 'great' composers, the 'great' works? I don't presume to know the answers to any of these questions. As a performer, with zero input as to what gets programed anywhere, I feel a certain amount of frustration at the repetitiveness of programming, with the focus on the 'greatest' men and their 'greatest' creations, to the exclusion of all else, and I have an inkling this is somehow related to the growing irrelevance of so-called 'classical' music today.

The not-so-constant Gardiner

2011-01-26T11:41:00.001-06:00

Without keeping statistics, I can't say if this season has had more conductor cancellations than usual or not. After the most famous one back in the fall, we've had two in a row the past couple weeks, so at the moment it feels as if nobody wants to come here and conduct. Perhaps the fact that the high temperature one day last week was 10 degrees (Fahrenheit) had something to do with it.

News of a conductor cancellation is not always met with disappointment among musicians. In fact, sometimes it is cause for a minor celebration. This old joke (which I actually heard for the first time told from the podium by a last minute replacement for an ailing conductor) could refer to any number of maestros although it deals with something a bit more permanent than a cancellation.

The day after a great maestro died, his widow widow took a phone call from a violinist in the orchestra asking to speak with him. The widow informed the musician the great conductor had recently passed away and hung up the phone. The following day, the same musician called again asking to speak to the maestro, to which the widow repeated that the great conductor had expired. Over the next several days the violinist continued to call, each time asking for the maestro. At last, exasperated by the continuing calls, the widow reminded the violinist she had repeated the same news to him every day for a week. “I'm sorry,” he replied, “I just can't hear it enough times.”

Although Jaunjo Mena did a fine job in replacement of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, we missed out on the opportunity to evaluate the relatively unknown music director-designate of another orchestra. In America, music directors do not guest conduct each-others orchestras very often, limiting the opportunities to see the latest in the new crop of dashing young maestros. Seeing someone else's music director as a guest conductor is sort of like meeting the significant other of a rival. Along with natural curiosity, there is a certain amount of schadenfreude when he or she turns out to be frumpy, or vapid in some way.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner has been our guest here before and does not fall into the categories of young, or rival music director. Nevertheless, I was still keenly disappointed at the news of his cancellation – not to take anything away from his capable and ever-ready replacement Leonard Slatkin. The oil-and-water interaction of our ensemble with any of the 'early music' types is always entertaining and a shame to miss out on. Gardiner's program of three 20th century works, a potential gold-mine of blog posts which will, alas, for now go unexplored, looked intriguing on paper – a kind of daring-do parachute drop behind enemy lines in the war between 'period' and 'modern' performance. I can only wonder how we might have received him – snap a hood over his head and off to Guantanamo, a truly modern and up to date reaction, replete in its paranoia and intolerance, or, as in the more genteel days of the early flying Aces, a cigarette, perhaps some champagne, and with a good-natured pat on the back, send him packing across no-man's land, the trenches, back to the 18th century.

Now Serving...WAR!

2011-01-17T08:37:00.002-06:00

2011 began with something of a bang – the Beyond the Score program devoted to Prokofiev Symphony no. 5. Although I have mixed feelings about the BTS shows, I'm happy any time one of them features music less than a century old. We've got to drag our audience (and probably a number of musicians) kicking and screaming into the 20th century before the next one ends.

It came as something of a letdown that the pro Stalin heckler did not make an appearance. I mean the fellow who took extreme umbrage at the Shostakovitch 4 presentation and yelled “Long Live the Third International!”among other things. I suppose he is on some sort of 'do not fly list' at our concert hall, unless of course he is being detained, incommunicado, in the secret warren of interrogation cells beneath the stage. But the disposition of such a rare commodity as an ardent Stalinist in this day an age merits careful consideration. They might consider writing him into the show next time we do another one of the Soviet area masterpieces.

As I am sure to have mentioned previously, it is hard to get an accurate idea of the BTS show from the stage while sitting in the dark, fending off sleep, stealing glances at the screen, and trying to keep one's place in the cues. We have little number displays, like at your local bakery, telling us which number is coming up next. It may seem obvious that the cues run in numerical order, but if you have three or four off in a row, the possibility of miscounting is very real. That said, it was difficult to follow the narrative thread of the presentation. Germany seemed to invade the Soviet Union three different times during the show, then Peter and the Wolf got involved somehow. However, in the end, the audience was justifiably appreciative, Socialist Realism (at least temporarily) won the day while, routed from its entrenched position, Liebestod, turned tail and fled the concert hall.

Now, where was I...

2010-12-10T09:54:00.008-06:00

[an additional apology is in order here: the first attempt to post this had the second paragraph inexplicably deleted: I guess I'm a bit rusty after all. So if the old bass blog seemed to make even less sense than usual, that is the excuse...]

No excuses, but a number of reasons kept me away from the blog. Skipping a few months has left me with a nice backlog of anecdotes to draw on during the lean weeks that are surely coming. The member of the orchestra who brought up the option of breaking my thumbs if I didn't start writing again made the decision easy.

Leave it to one of my favorites to provide material to write about. Pierre Boulez seems to have rigorously pared down the art of conducting to its barest essentials – a flick of the wrist here, a curt nod there. Pithy remarks to the orchestra often combine the didactic with the hilarious in masterful fashion. “That was, in fact, horrible...” I believe I heard him say recently – the sort of thing that gets you chuckling until you realize maybe you're supposed to be indignant. When he is in town, I'm always watching pretty closely for signs of hidden or underlying meanings, like someone from the ancient world might have watched the flight of birds, or examined sheep entrails in an attempt to fathom the divine order of the world.

The other day, unhappy about how we had executed some tempo change in the Glagolitic Mass, the Maestro showed what at first glance seemed to be uncharacteristic exasperation. “Did I really conduct so badly?” he asked, rhetorically, showing us again the simple wave of the wrist sufficient to wrench an orchestra out of Moderato and into Presto.

The rest of the rehearsal had me puzzling over that one. I wondered if having thrown a a wild pitch, a major league hurler had ever called his catcher to mound and asked, “Did I really throw the ball over there!?” pointing to the dugout. Strange how with conducting, the basic rules of cause and effect seem less than straightforward. In the minds of the public, to be sure, they are turned completely on their heads most of the time. Leave it to Boulez to challenge a bit of received knowledge in creative fashion.

panem et circenses

2010-09-29T06:10:00.013-05:00

My apologies for not writing sooner. I felt the need to get at least a couple of the season opening extravaganzas under my belt first.

We have often started seasons with a tour of one sort or another. The itinerary – Wheaton, Pilsen, Millennium Park – did not take us to the Czech Republic and back. I wonder what the folks at Wheaton College thought about a bunch of gringos showing up to play a concert of Mexican/Spanish favorites {along with Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streich} to honor the appointment of their new president. Then again, I've brought guacamole to many a backyard barbeque without giving it a second thought, and I'm about as Mexican as Richard Strauss. We repeated the same program in Pilsen the following day (September, 16 – Mexican Independence Day) with the sensible omission of the Spanish El sombrero de tres picos. For those out of town folks who might be wondering, Pilsen is formerly Czech, currently largely Mexican-American neighborhood in our city.

All of this served as a warmup to the grand “Free Concert for [insert orchestra/city name here]” in Millennium Park. I admit to a somewhat (OK, hopelessly) jaded attitude that makes me cringe any time I notice the words gala, festive, celebratory, special, or other superlatives attached to a concert. Usually I'm hoping for little more than to escape from one of these events without humiliation or a profound feeling of degradation.

Much to my relief, the “Free Concert...” and its attendant drumbeat of publicity seemed to do a good job of building up the hype surrounding the orchestra and its new music director without becoming an embarrassment. The advance PR blitz had 'the man on the street' aware something was happening to our normally marginal organization. Muti seems to have pretty good instincts when it comes to dealing with the public. The program

Verdi Overture to La forza del destino
Liszt Les préludes
Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet
Respighi Pines of Rome

seemed to be right in the wheelhouse of mass taste in what a 'classical music' concert ought to be. I found myself sitting on stage during the concert imagining our orchestra doing this type of performance a number of years ago, perhaps offering Elliot Carter's latest commission, followed by some lengthy, static scenes from Parsifal; or else a 'celebrity' would have been engaged, with the orchestra relegated to playing backup. All in all, it was very nice not finding ourselves on the wrong end of a fumbled opportunity for good PR.

Muti made an interesting choice for his first subscription concerts – Berlioz, Symphony Fantastique paired with its sequel, Lélio, together billed as The Berlioz (uh, oh) Spectacular. Our previous music director (forgot his name already) put on the Mozart/DaPonte operas in his first season. The change of music director is something that probably doesn't happen nearly often enough, so nobody has much basis to compare one transition to another. But it seems as if the position wasn't already similar to running a three ring circus, a new maestro feels the need to make a statement of authority, like the lion tamer who shows the audience (and, probably more importantly for his health, the lions) he can bring not one, but six! ferocious beasts to heel all at once, or the strongman, who lifts not only the barbell with one arm, but the bathing beauty with the other. Although more modest in scale than an opera, Lélio employs a large orchestra, chorus, vocal soloists, narrator, and includes directions for stage and lighting effects. In fact, it seems more of a Spectacle than a piece of concert music – over an hour in length, I think the orchestra plays less than half the time.

The 19th century Italian physician Giovanni Morelli developed a system for correctly attributing the works of master painters. To put it briefly, his method concentrated on supposedly minor details in a painting – hands or ears of background figures – things things the painter had thrown off more spontaneously and which forgers would less likely reproduce faithfully. The notion that minor details and spontaneous gestures might hold important clues to identity were of interest to criminologists. The great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes (the creation of another physician) uses Morellian attention to minor details to arrive at his often startling deductions. Morelli's method also interested Freud, who saw analysis of the minor details of his subjects' thoughts and actions as a window into the unconscious.

All of this is in response to the frequent questions I've fielded about Muti recently, most of which seem to be something similar to “So, Muti, what's he like?” questions probably best answered by each in their own way. For me, the grand gestures and spectacle are most interesting as collections of details rather than as statements outlining a new approach or a different artistic vision. In fact, the musical spectacle seems the perfect milieu in which to make these sorts of observations, when the maestro's authority and control are stretched somewhat thinner than normal. Perhaps the hidden subtext of spectacle is really self-revelation after all.

The 23.8% solution

2010-07-31T07:59:00.004-05:00

Many thanks to those who came to the Gunnelpumpers CD release show. Also, many thanks to those who wrote heartfelt comments about the Ravinia Festival. For those who haven't given up on it entirely, I would encourage you to make your feelings known to someone higher up in the organization (which is just about anybody but me, honestly). Hopefully the opinions of past, present, and possibly future ticket buyers might carry some weight.

My apologies for the dearth of posts this summer. I really couldn't bring myself to do what might be taken as the moral equivalent of strolling through a hospital ward and making snarky comments about the patients: “Geez dude, you're looking a little pale there.” However, since today (Saturday, July 31) is my last at the festival this summer (the Operas next week and the Musical the following use small orchestras) I struggled mightily, trying to come up with some sort of closing remarks to put the whole thing in perspective. Last night I woke in a cold sweat (the best sort of sweat, really) and hurried to my computer to check a few things and make a couple calculations. If my numbers are off, blame it on a lack of sleep.

Here are some Festival Fun Facts:

Percentage of our concerts this summer featuring Patti LuPone: 23.8 (5 of 21)
[A caveat is in order here: I have not looked closely at the rosters for the Mozart Operas next week. I'm assuming them to be LuPone free, but who knows....] I've got nothing against Patti LuPone, in fact, she's great, but that seems excessive.

Number of concerts without a soloist: 0

Number of concerts on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday: 13 (including two matinees, see below)
All {name redacted} concerts used to be on weekends. Now when somebody asks me when we're playing next week I can only shrug, “Tuesday?”

Number of concerts lead by our music director: 12

Number of concerts on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday lead by our music director: 4 (including the two matinees)
The Saturday and Sunday Mozart Opera concerts are at 1 PM in order to make way for the Temptations/The Four Tops, and the BoDeans. I wonder if one lawn ticket covers both shows each day, or if truncheon wielding, Segway riding security guards will clear the park of classical music buffs after the Opera is over.

Number of concerts canceled: 1.
The Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy show died as a result of our contractual limit on the number of 'Pops' concerts we can play in a summer.

Number of disappointed FanBoys slinking back to parents' basements: unknown.

After the cancellation of the video game music show, we were interested to see an extra rehearsal for the Sondheim: 80 show (with Patti LuPone!) pop up on the schedule. This could only be described as a 'punitive' rehearsal – sticking in an extra service where none was needed, bringing the scheduled rehearsal time for the 90 minute Gala performance to seven and a half hours. (The 3-hour long Operas the following week each get eight and a half hours of rehearsal, BTW.) The poor fellow on hand to conduct the Sondheim show found himself looking down the barrel of a pretty testy orchestra at the first rehearsal. After the break he came out and hastily announced a 'deal' had been struck, canceling the punitive rehearsal. I once struck a similar deal with dubious character on a darkened street: I agreed to give him my wallet and he agreed not to beat me. Sometimes you have to cast something aside just to save your skin.

the nth wave

2010-07-19T12:56:00.009-05:00

Gunnelpumpers CD release show

Tuesday July 20, 8 PM
Martyrs'

(3855 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago IL tel. 773 404 9494)

The Gunnelpumpers will perform this week to celebrate the release of our first CD, the nth wave. The CD is available on iTunes and CD Baby. A few videos of us in performance are also available on YouTube. I believe we have Facebook and Myspace pages as well, although I'm not really in touch with the social networking thing.

A Kick in the Crown Jewels

2010-06-29T22:31:00.003-05:00

Monday evening had to go down as one of the strangest opening concerts of the Ravinia season I can recall. As the number of concerts we play at our summer 'home' has dwindled over the years, the amount of times I've heard us referred to as the 'Crown Jewel' of the festival (or other similar things) has gone up exponentially – the sort of endearments a guy who wants to continually step out on his wife but is fearful of having her leave him might offer up.

The slightly goofy scenario began with a heartfelt and I have to believe sincere welcome from the chairwoman of the Ravinia board, who seemed to be going out of her way to assure everyone the orchestra was appreciated, welcome, essential, and all that. The line that 'summer does not begin until the {insert orchestra name here} comes to Ravinia' had an interesting counterpoint for me earlier in the day when a neighbor who saw me getting on my bike asked me where I was going. When I mentioned (erroneously, as it turned out) I was going to Ravinia to play the opening concert, she dismissed me with a wave of her hand. 'No way, the festival has been going on for weeks,' she said.

After listening to words of welcome and assurances of our importance to the festival, the smallish orchestra on hand to play the two Chopin piano concertos bravely performed our national anthem (without trombones, the piece seems to represent some lesser vision of our once-great nation). Then we all vacated the stage (which we were told to do 'quickly') to make way for the opening selection of the concert – a solo piano piece. The audience actually laughed at that point, making for sort of a cringe-worthy moment. The second half of the concert began with more solo piano music while the mighty orchestra waited in the wings.

I'm interested to know what readers think about Ravinia – the number of concerts we play there, the days of the week and times we play, as well as the repertoire, soloists, and conductors, or anything else while you are at it. Of particular importance to me is what everyone thinks about the (in my opinion God-awful) white coats we have to wear.

Hear the CBE

2010-06-24T22:37:00.000-05:00

The Chicago Bass Ensemble will take part in an interesting collaboration with artist Cheri Reif Naselli this Friday, June 25 from 6 to 9 PM at the ARC Gallery and Educational Foundation (832 W. Superior St. #204 Chicago, IL 60622 Phone: 312.733.2787) More information about the performance and the the artist can be found here.

Anyone attending this performance who can prove they are readers of the Bass Blog might receive some sort of prize, or at very least, a hearty 'Thank You' from the author.

The tail-end of the fest

2010-06-19T14:25:00.003-05:00

During my student days I once went with a friend to look for a cheap apartment in a sleazy area of Los Angeles. A few minutes in the dingy place were enough to tell us we had no intention of living there. So merely out of politeness we listened while the landlady went through the details of first and last months' rent, when the garbage went out, and so on. With her back to the arch separating the living room from the kitchen, she was completely unaware of the large brown rat, about the size of a small dachshund, nonchalantly strolling across the kitchen floor while she address us. For some reason neither of us called her attention to the creature. In fact, we seemed reluctant to discuss it with each other after we left the place. An uncomfortable silence pervaded the car on the way home until some minutes later when we were crawling along the Santa Monica freeway and my friend and I blurted out in unison, “Holy crap, did you see THAT?!”

The preceding has nothing to do with anything, except perhaps a reflection on the tendency to fail to comment on the rat-in-the room while it is still there – in this case the Beethoven Festival, all of which has disappeared from the archway of the present and is safely in the past as I write this, except for the tail end, two more performances of the mighty 9th Symphony, paired with the not-so-mighty Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. The comparison of the Beethoven Fest to a rat crossing room might strike some as untoward, or perhaps a sign of dissatisfaction. Quite to the contrary, I view the rat story as something that turned out well for me. It's not like I ended up living with the rat, after all.

Maestro Haitink has been in excellent form throughout the festival. A while ago, he suffered some sort of back ailment that slowed him down and, to be honest, had me a bit worried for him, but he seems to have bounced back and has been about as spry as I can remember seeing him. I have enjoyed his approach to all of the symphonies – particularly the not-too-slow slow movements (3rd and 6th symphonies most of all).

Another source of pleasure is the new set of parts we are using for these concerts – the Bärenreiter Urtext edition edited by Jonathan Del Mar. It has been enjoyable to observe the composer's markings, which is not the same a playing them, but at least we can see what he wrote. Another good thing about these parts is that the bass part is separate from the cello part. The old set had the two combined. To be honest, I'm not that interested in what the cellos are doing, and I feel pretty good about not having them know what I'm supposed to be playing. Some mysterious bowings have been marked in all of the otherwise brand-new parts, mysterious because since we are without a principal player right now, nobody can really say where they came from. Some of them look cribbed from the old Kalmus parts we've used in the past, which is a pity – sort of like trading in your old clunker for a a shiny new model only to discover the dealer has welded on the used, rusty muffler.

The pre-concert musician announcements exhorting patrons (and I suppose orchestra members) to turn off cellphones and whatnot have changed for the Beethoven festival. Gone are the little bits of humor or witty turns of phrase. I guess it is well known that Beethoven, like all the great classical musicians, had no sense of humor whatsoever and would have approved of our efforts to maintain the solemn dignity of these concerts.

Another change instituted for the festival is the setup of the orchestra, flat on the stage rather than atop the risers we normally use. I'm curious to know what audience members think about it. The orchestra is fairly well divided on the issue. Haitink must like it this way, hence the original request. Also, originally the risers were to be used for the concerts of the 9th Symphony (due to the presence of the chorus, I believe) but after the first week of concerts we learned the idea had been scrapped.

One minor regret is not to have played any of the rarer pieces: Creatures of Prometheus, Christ on the Mount of Olives, hell, Wellington's Victory (never played it). Missa Solemnis (OK, not so rare) would have made an excellent season-ending concert instead of the over-played 9th. Not a big deal though.

All in all, the atmosphere has been, in a word, festive. Audiences seem pretty excited about what is going on, which is always nice to see. My favorite audience member seems to have bought several tickets to these concerts – I'm speaking of the gentleman who yells out something very positive and encouraging at the end, usually a single-word adjective (Beautiful! Powerful! - one of my colleagues dubbed him Thesaurus Rex). Keep up the good work, sir! We'll keep trying our best to earn your praise.

there there

2010-05-28T07:11:00.007-05:00

One was quite certain that for a long part of his being one being living he had been trying to be certain that he was wrong in doing what he was doing and then when he could not come to be certain that he had been wrong in doing what he had been doing, when he had completely convinced himself that he would not come to be certain that he had been wrong in doing what he had been doing he was really certain then that he was a great one and he certainly was a great one. Certainly every one could be certain of this thing that this one is a great one.

Some said of him, when anybody believed in him they did not then believe in any other one. Certainly some said this of him.

He certainly very clearly expressed something. Some said that he did not clearly express anything. Some were certain that he expressed something very clearly and some of such of them said that he would have been a greater one if he had not been one so clearly expressing what he was expressing. Some said he was not clearly expressing what he was expressing and some of such of them said that the greatness of struggling which was not clear expression made of him one being a completely great one.

Some said of him that he was greatly expressing something struggling. Some said of him that he was not greatly expressing something struggling.

He certainly was clearly expressing something, certainly sometime any one might come to know that of him. Very many did come to know it of him that he was clearly expressing what he was expressing. He was a great one. Any one might come to know that of him. Very many did come to know that of him. Some who came to know that of him, that he was a great one, that he was clearly expressing something, came then to be certain that he was not greatly expressing something being struggling. Certainly he was expressing something being struggling. Any one could be certain that he was expressing something being struggling. Some were certain that he was greatly expressing this thing. Some were certain that he was not greatly expressing this thing. Every one could come to be certain that he was a great man. Any one could come to be certain that he was clearly expressing something.

Some certainly were wanting to be needing to be doing what he was doing, that is clearly expressing something. Certainly they were willing to be wanting to be a great one. They were, that is some of them, were not wanting to be needing expressing anything being struggling. And certainly he was one not greatly expressing something being struggling, he was a great one, he was clearly expressing something. Some were wanting to be doing what he was doing that is clearly expressing something. Very many were doing what he was doing, not greatly expressing something being struggling. Very many were wanting to be doing what he was doing were not wanting to be expressing anything being struggling.

There were very many wanting to be doing what he was doing that is to be one clearly expressing something. He was certainly a great man, any one could be really certain of this thing, every one could be certain of this thing. There were very many who were wanting to be ones doing what he was doing that is to be ones clearly expressing something and then very many of them were not wanting to be being ones doing that thing, that is clearly expressing something, they wanted to be ones expressing something being struggling, something being going to. be some other thing, something being going to be something some one sometime would be clearly expressing and that would be something that would be a thing then that would then be greatly expressing some other thing then that thing, certainly very many were then not wanting to be doing what this one was doing clearly expressing something and some of them had been ones wanting to be doing that thing wanting to be ones clearly expressing something. Some were wanting to be ones doing what this one was doing wanted to be ones clearly expressing something. Some of such of them were ones certainly clearly expressing something, that was in them a thing not really interesting then any other one. Some of such of them went on being all their living ones wanting to be clearly expressing something and some of them were clearly expressing something.

This one was one very many were knowing some and very many were glad to meet him, very many sometimes listened to him, some listened to him very often, there were some who listened to him, and he talked then and he told them then that certainly he had been one suffering and he was then being one trying to be certain that he was wrong in doing what he was doing and he had come then to be certain that he never would be certain that he was doing what it was wrong for him to be doing then and he was suffering then and he was certain that he would be one doing what he was doing and he was certain that he should be one doing what he was doing and he was certain that he would always be one suffering and this then made him certain this, that he would always be one being suffering, this made him certain that he was expressing something being struggling and certainly very many were quite certain that he was greatly expressing something being struggling. This one was knowing some who were listening to him and he was telling very often about being one suffering and this was not a dreary thing to any one hearing that then, it was not a saddening thing to any one hearing it again and again, to some it was quite an interesting thing hearing it again and again, to some it was an exciting thing hearing it again and again, some knowing this one and being certain that this one was a great man and was one clearly expressing something were ones hearing this one telling about being one being living were hearing this one telling this thing again and again. Some who were ones knowing this one and were ones certain that this one was one who was clearly telling something, was a great man, were not listening very often to this one telling again and again about being one being living. Certainly some who were certain that this one was a great man and one clearly expressing something and greatly expressing something being struggling were listening to this one telling about being living telling about this again and again and again. Certainly very many knowing this one and being certain that this one was a great man and that this one was clearly telling something were not listening to this one telling about being living, were not listening to this one telling this again and again.

This one was certainly a great man, this one was certainly clearly expressing something. Some were certain that this one was clearly expressing something being struggling, some were certain that this one was not greatly expressing something being struggling.

Very many were not listening again and again to this one telling about being one being living. Some were listening again and again to this one telling about this one being one being in living.

Some were certainly wanting to be doing what this one was doing that is were wanting to be ones clearly expressing something. Some of such of them did not go on in being ones wanting to be doing what this one was doing that is in being ones clearly expressing something. Some went on being ones wanting to be doing what this one was doing that is, being ones clearly expressing something. Certainly this one was one who was a great man. Any one could be certain of this thing. Every one would come to be certain of this thing. This one was one certainly clearly expressing something. Any one could come to be certain of this thing. Every one would come to be certain of this thing. This one was one, some were quite certain, one greatly expressing something being struggling. This one was one, some were quite certain, one not greatly expressing something being struggling.

-Gertrude Stein

Old Brown-Shirt

2010-05-11T14:49:00.001-05:00

Thanks to all who sent comments and emails in response to my questions about pre-concert activities. A quick trip to the lobby to snag a program revealed the startling information that there really are fellows named 'Max' and 'Brant' in the orchestra. The things I learn writing this blog...

The almost unanimous support for the onstage warmup and the recorded announcements came as a minor surprise. Usually at least one person hates almost anything and loves to tell everyone else about it. I'm not sure what to make of all the positivity.

Not everyone all over the world approves of our pre-concert routine, to be sure. Once while in Salzburg I caught sight of a sour-face old gentleman scowling at the orchestra during our onstage warmup. I'm not sure what made me notice him – perhaps the laser-beam of his disapproving glare drew my attention (I'm a pushover for negativity). When the orchestra finally quieted down, I happened to be looking in his direction as he loudly (and if I may say so, with extreme sarcasm) slowly clapped four times. Clap!...Clap!...Clap!...CLAP! His disapproval rang out in the now quiet Festspielhaus. I remember thinking that old fart probably hadn't brought hands together so vigorously since the Anschluss.

On the subject of repressive regimes, my favorite audience control technique observed to date has to be the ushers in Beijing outfitted with laser pointers, which they used to blind anyone they caught taking a photograph.

The Hello People

2010-05-01T10:38:00.003-05:00

Recently our orchestra changed the recorded pre-concert announcements. I'm curious what people think about it.

Some history for those not in the know. A few years ago, the orchestra began using a recorded announcement before each concert to remind audience members to turn off cellphones, refrain from taking photographs or making recordings. The announcements ended with the wish that people enjoy the performance (oddly, this last item outraged at least one of my colleagues – yes, we are home to some weird points of view). These recorded messages, played when the lights went up and the orchestra quieted down, before the emergence of the concertmaster, featured voices of various musical 'celebrities'. The quality ranged from witty, perhaps chuckle-worthy (Ax, Bronfman) to the cringe-inducing (Lang Lang). Whatever agreements were made to allow the use of these recording must have run out, because earlier this year (maybe before that, I can't remember) they were all replaced with one standard message read by someone on staff

A few weeks ago new recordings featuring orchestra members appeared. After introducing themselves and making some sort of witty or engaging remark, the musicians go on to make necessary reminders about cellphones, recording, and concert enjoyment. I admit to complete cluelessness about how people are chosen for this – as part of a New Year's resolution I stopped checking my orchestra mailbox months ago – but I have a feeling it is being done on a volunteer basis. I don't think I've heard all of them yet, and perhaps more are being produced as I write, but so far there have been two string players, two or three woodwinds, and a percussionist. I have a feeling if the 'musicians' had been put in charge of finding people, we would have had three bass players and a librarian to start with, so in the beginning at least, the balance seems pretty good.

As with anything, there is some debate as to the value of these announcements. I think I've heard people (well, musicians anyway) claim they undermine the dignity of the concert, but I have a feeling some of the same folks who make that argument will switch sides and battle against our Music Director when he asks us to warm up offstage and then file on, letting the music emerge from a very dignified silence. This is an idea I've opposed in the past, more for my own sense of comfort than any thought to the audience experience. I like to get onstage a bit early, line up my cough-drops, catch up on a bit of the practicing I didn't do at home, and see what sort of audience we've managed to draw that evening. But I suppose if I considered the audience perspective, I might feel differently. It would be strange indeed to arrive at a theater half an hour before curtain to find the stage roiling with activity. Hamlet and Polonius strut about, trying their lines. The ghost, adjusting his sheet, chats with Ophelia, who is clipping her nails. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern obviously have more substantial roles in the next production because they are loudly reciting lines from Henry V. Completing the scene, a few of the soldiers have formed a line and are bellowing, BAH! BAH! BAH! repeatedly at the top of their lungs. Where's the dignity in that?

Anyhow, I'm curious to hear if anyone has thoughts about pre-concert rituals.

A Random Post

2010-04-23T08:41:00.004-05:00

Pleasant conductors are all alike; Every insufferable conductor is insufferable in his own way.

My apologies to Tolstoy, but that is certainly how it seems when I'm sitting through an interminable rehearsal under an insufferable maestro. As time rolls along, I find myself more often preoccupied with the bad and not noticing the good, especially when dealing with conductors, where it has gotten so that the maestro who can avoid irritating me one way or another is like the thumb-tack I didn't step on – completely unremarkable. It sure feels as if I've been pulling a lot of tacks out of my toes lately.

What I really wanted to write about is obliquely related and amounts to little more than a few random thoughts I wish someone better equipped than I would expand upon.

Several weeks ago now we played concerts with Mitsuko Uchida, who led two Mozart piano concertos from the keyboard. Also on the program was the Mozart Divertimento in F major for strings, which we played sans conductor. The piece is such a part of the gigging musicians' repertoire – weddings, receptions, etc. - I'm not sure I ever played it fully sober before.

Playing without a conductor is kind of like taking the training wheels off your bike. At one point in time it seems a dangerous impossibility. Later, with the training wheels rusting in the corner of the garage you realize they have gone from an object of shame to the subject of a harmless and wistful nostalgia. The history of the orchestra is something like that, only in reverse.

The really interesting experience was not performing, but rehearsing without conductor. Many of us string players are so conditioned to our place in the chain of command that when the shackles finally come off, it feels very odd indeed. I imagine any group situation where the normally rigid structure is suddenly removed ends up with the same set of issues. The majority, having strongly conditioned inhibitions, take no action. A few brave souls participate in decision making. Those lacking a healthy amount of inhibitions seize the opportunity for inappropriate displays of personal aggrandizement.

Someone with no firsthand knowledge of the classical music business recently asked me how much discussion about the music making went on at a typical rehearsal. His surprise at the answer (none) got me to thinking that the layperson doesn't have much knowledge of the process of making music in an orchestra, where the decisions tend to flow in one direction only. There is a fairly prevalent misconception that the music business is some bastion of freedom.

The random thoughts I had came in the form of a wish that somebody would write a book about the history of the orchestra, comparing it to the political systems developing simultaneously, and also relating all that with developing concepts of individuality and freedom. If anybody is up to that (or if something like that is already extant) let me know. I'd gladly fork over about $5 for the paperback.

Before the emergence of the institutions of maestro and orchestra as we know them today, the music business was under the church and the nobility, hardly bastions of freedom themselves. I'm interested in the connection between the rise of concepts like liberty and equality alongside the rise of the orchestra, with the conductor as leader. Another interesting relationship is the development of romanticism and the accompanying ideas of personal freedom of expression and the ways this was reflected in the increasing size and regimentation within the orchestra itself, almost as if at the moment when the music itself music began to represent an ideal of freedom, the means of production (if you will) became more tightly controlled, compartmentalized areas of local authority – section leaders, assistants and the rest of the hierarchy within the group – with authority flowing in a one way direction only, down from above. I'm pretty fascinated by the symbolism implied by the orchestra as a social structure. Sometimes I worry that we are perpetuating some unhealthy ideas, particularly with what I see as a troublesome relationship to authority in the art form and the profession surrounding it. We are probably championing the industrial revolution more than the enlightenment by preserving the 19th century orchestra in all its glory.

I certainly don't see the era before the modern orchestra as some sort of utopia for musicians. When Lully had his unfortunate accident, I'm sure there was some bitter, scowling cellist, the sort of fellow who would be perfectly at home in the modern orchestra, muttering “Good riddance!”

As much as musicians might chafe under the centralized authority emanating from the podium and radiating downward through various 'titled' players within the group, when given the chance at self governance, the structures rise up in depressing resemblance to the centralized authority of the orchestra itself. The tendencies toward centralization and authoritarianism seem to be deeply ingrained, perhaps inevitable byproducts of our work.

The bass section of our orchestra is going through something of a social experiment at the moment, with our principal player on an extended leave of absence. Since we have no assistant principal to step in and fill the post, the rest of us are sharing the leadership duties, such as they are. When the situation was first announced, I blush to admit to having some utopian, egalitarian, and dare I say even socialistic fantasies about the possibilities of what we might accomplish, demonstrating to the world, or at least the very tiny portion of it that might pay any attention at all to a group of bass players, how we might function outside traditional ideas of authority and subordination . Needless to say, my idealism has taken a pretty severe beating as a result.

Watching public television one Sunday afternoon long ago, I remember a classic old silent film, something about a peasant revolution,. The film's depressing denouement has been on my my a lot lately. After the heroic storming of the palace, a small group of peasants find themselves in the empty throne room, the scene of a hastily abandoned banquet and the narrow escape of the royal person. With no idea what to do next, the peasants descend into anarchy and debauchery. As the screen dims, a pair of simpletons roll on the floor, struggling over some shiny but useless bauble while others gorge themselves on the royal leftovers. In another corner, a Rasputin-like character combs his filthy beard with the queen's jewel encrusted comb. A couple of wily individuals, with some some inkling of what power is all about, sneak away with the keys to the armory.

The Evil of Banality

2010-03-13T10:25:00.002-06:00

SCHUBERT Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, D. 759 (Unfinished)
GOLIJOV She Was Here
INTERMISSION
COPLAND Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson
GOLIJOV How Slow The Wind
COPLAND Suite from Appalachian Spring (chamber version)
Robert Spano, Conductor
Jessica Rivera, Soprano

Once while on tour in a German speaking country (well, OK, Germany) we were all invited to a swanky reception, the sort of thing that looked too good to pass up in spite of some nagging doubts on my part. After a circuit of the buffet table, an ordeal in and of itself – I've stopped going to orchestra functions, so I'm not sure if anyone has picked up the torch, but some of those old timers could turn it up a notch or two in the presence of free food – having paid for every moment of hesitation with a friendly blow to the ribs from a member of the violin section, I managed escape with a full plate, grab a drink and secure a seat at an out of the way table. Finally having the chance to examine the bounty I came away with, I discovered everything before me was either creamy, creamed, or cream-colored pablum.

On paper, I'm sure this week's program looked quite interesting and varied, but at least from my seat (and admittedly, not playing the Appalachian Spring) the whole thing came off a bit fiber-less. In spite of the intriguing possibilities offered by the pared-down orchestra, Spano seemed intent on making as few waves as possible with his Schubert Unfinished. Golijov's She Was Here, an arrangement of Schubert songs, came across as some sort of turgid Straussian/John Adams mash-up. True, some of Schubert's harmonies seem to foreshadow late romanticism, and yes, if you turn a half-note into a pulsating series of sixteenths, it sounds like minimalism, but I found myself longing for the simplicity of the originals. The way Schubert did so much with so little makes the long-dead, bespectacled Austrian come off as more the modernist in my ears anyway. As always at these concerts, the wine glass playing was beyond reproach. I wonder what Schubert would have thought about that.

Copland's Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson has some classic Coplandesque moments, but otherwise struck me as not his strongest work. It didn't help that I couldn't hear the voice much of the time. Spano seemed almost shy about shushing the orchestra, but I imagine he wants to live to conduct here another day. After the title page, the headers in the bass part to the Copland songs bear the unfortunate abbreviation: Poems of E.D. By then, my mind wandering far from the business at hand, I found myself imagining Bob Dole coming out to do the Lincoln Portrait, getting to the line that often gets a snicker anyway (“when standing erect...”) saying 'ah geez!' and trudging off the stage.

The Shameful Truth

2010-03-09T12:43:00.008-06:00

My apologies for the dearth of posts recently. For one reason or another. the orchestra hasn't been drawing my interest of late. Last week Charles Dutoit came to town and conducted Shostakovitch 11 (The Year 1905), along with the Rachmaninoff 2nd piano concerto. I generally like what Dutoit does, but something about his antics on the podium bring to mind the lion tamer, or perhaps the matador – something to do with subduing supposedly 'wild' animals anyway. Suffice it to say, we did our beastly best for him.

Some reprehensible offstage antics (nothing to do with Dutoit) evoked 1924 more than 1905 and put a pretty bad spin on the whole week for me.

The rest of this post I imagine will prove interesting only to bassists. The layperson is warned to proceed at the risk of extreme boredom.

* * *

Playing the bass tends to bring to the surface any issues one might have with inferiority. These are often successfully sidestepped at 'bass only' events such as the solo recital or bass ensemble type of concert. On the other hand, in the course of commingling with other musicians the orchestral player gets his or her nose rubbed in it on an almost daily basis.

As mentioned in a previous post, I opted out of the recent orchestra trip to New York to perform with a local chamber group. The Rossini Duetto for violoncello and double bass on that program stands as something of a highpoint in the repertoire of our lowly instrument, the rare case of a brand-name composer going out of his way to feature a musical oddity. Here is an example of the nose rubbing I mentioned earier.

In the opening section of the Rossini Duetto, the cello plays the following bravura passage

answered soon after by the double bass with

The bass part is obviously a simplified version of what the cello played earlier – bravura for dummies I suppose you might call it. Rossini goes out of his way to avoid giving the bass anything in thumb position, something common in orchestral writing of the time, as the dumbing down of the bass part continues throughout the piece. (In case any non bassist has made it to this point the post: 'thumb position' refers to the upper register of the string instruments held vertically, about the place where the neck joins the body of the instrument. The thumb is no longer held behind the neck, but is is brought up onto the strings. Once upon a time some adventurous player must have discovered it was possible to actually use the side of the thumb to depress the string, so it is called thumb position, not thumb-less position.)

One might argue that as the Duetto was written for an amateur player, such simplifications are understandable. More than other instruments, the bass seems to attract the brash, if under-prepared dilettante, the player who, oblivious of his personal shortcomings and those of the instrument he proudly lugs about, ill-advisedly shoulders his way onto the stage as recitalist, ersatz virtuoso, or (horrors) clinician, all while his better trained and justly self-conscious colleagues watch from the wings, cringing. Unfortunately, the amateur for whom the Duetto was written turns out to be the cellist. The bassist, none other than the legendary Dragonetti, was arguably the greatest player of his day, and depending on who you ask, any other day as well.

In fairness to il Drago, his own compositions for the bass are more ambitious. So in that spirit I made my own arrangement of the Duetto, if not fully restoring the dignity of the instrument in the process, at least hoping for some hard-earned respect.

While preparing for the performance, I completely forgot about the tradition of adding a couple of cadenzas to the first movement. The cellist arrived well-prepared, with cadenzas in hand while I had to pull something out of my (uh) hat at the last minute. Here's what I came up with, in the hopes it might prove useful or interesting to anyone finding themselves in a similar predicament.

(N.B. These cadenzas are intended for solo tuning, as is the rest of my arrangement, which is available from Discordia Music.)

between mm. 75 and 76:

between mm. 149 and 150:

Food for Thought

2010-02-13T07:53:00.001-06:00

Sometimes, if you choose the right right concerts for a leave of absence they come with a bonanza of time off. Such was the case for me in January when I took a leave for the two concerts in New York and ended up with three weeks off. Months ago a local chamber group invited me to play with them and I jumped at the chance to be a big fish in Highland Park Illinois rather than just another krill in New York. Of course I ended up missing out on much of the hoopla, ceremony and pageantry surrounding the eighty-fifth birthday of Maestro Boulez, which was too bad, because I really am fond of him. I'll do my best to stick around for his hundred and seventieth, which might be the year I finally qualify for a full pension anyway.

So instead of touring to New York, I stayed home and played some bass music, including the Rossini Duetto for cello and double bass, a silly but charming piece of fluff, if there ever was one – in the double bass repertoire there are plenty, by the way. For me, there is link burned into my brain between Boulez and silly bass music anyway and I found myself recalling it as my own personal tribute to the great Maestro.

Once upon a time there used to be a telethon to support the symphony. It might have even been called a 'symphony-thon'. I'm not sure if that still goes on or not. Orchestra players used to be welcome to sign up for slots to perform live on the radio during this event but I think after a while somebody wised up and decided to keep actual musicians as far away from the microphones as possible. However, while it was still in vogue, I signed up to play a piece by the legendary bassists/composer Giovanni Bottesini, whose operatic, showy salon music has to be about as un-Boulezian as you can get.

When the 'on-air' light went on and I put bow to string I was dismayed to hear the pitch of my instrument had dropped about an octave and a half – the wheel of my bridge adjuster had stripped on one side and collapsed. Fortunately, the president of our organization at the time was an old radio man and he provided a nice ad lib as I screwed the thing back up to pitch, but with no assurance it was going to hold. As I played Bottesini's Sonnabula Fantasy I was really sweating bullets, wondering if my bridge was going to blow out again in the middle of the performance. I kept my eye firmly planted on it, as if that would stave off disaster. With a great sense of relief I made it through to the final flourish, not once having taken my eyes off the faulty bridge foot and so completely unaware that during my performance of that very silly piece, Maestro Boulez had arrived to do an interview and was standing about three feet away. I have no idea how long he had to suffer through what I was playing, but from the look on his face I could tell it was longer than he had wished. He looked like a man who had just been ceremoniously handed a dead fish, a polite man trying to maintain a veneer of graciousness over a deep inner revulsion. From that moment onward my affection for him has not wavered.

[To learn more about Bottesini, I urge all readers to visit this site: http://bottesini.com/alife/ ]

Question time

2010-01-16T14:20:00.004-06:00

Every once in a while I get a question from a reader. Clive sent me the following, which I thought worthy of a post.

During the rehearsals I have watched, the orchestra plays through the work, apparently mostly to the conductors satisfaction. The conductor stops a occasionally, explains some points to the players, who seem to get it and make notes on their music, and then they move on.

I have been wondering how the orchestra gets to this point of near perfection (at least from the point of view of the conductor). Is the open rehearsal that we see the end result of several earlier rehearsals? Does each section rehearse separately with the section leader?

If there is a good book that describes the rehearsal process I would love a recommendation.

As far as I can recall, open rehearsals are always the final rehearsals before a concert. In a typical week, we have three or four rehearsals, so the perfection of which you speak (in so far as it is not illusory) comes as the result of what has gone on over the previous few days. Usually the first rehearsal is on Tuesday morning. On Wednesday, we might have two rehearsals, and then on Thursday have the final rehearsal in the morning, followed by the first performance that evening. Sections do not rehearse separately in any official capacity. Some of the wind sections might stay after and run through a few passages. In the string sections, the very idea might lead to some sort of violent mutiny.

As rehearsals go, the first one might reveal more about the orchestra than the last, but for a number of good reasons, I don't see those being opened to the public any time soon. There's a saying that goes something like, “If you don't mind people hearing you practice, you're probably not practicing the right things,” which is sort of self explanatory in this context. Another one goes something like, “A rehearsal's a rehearsal and a concert's a concert,” a bit of profound wisdom dressed up as tautology. Which is to say that as musicians, all we have of value, if anything at all, is our performance. We are happy to offer that to those who support the orchestra, but I think it is pretty important to maintain a sharp line between the two. Besides, a few conductors tend to grandstand in front of an audience and not get anything useful at all done in an open rehearsal. Certainly, getting out early becomes more problematic as well.

There does seem to be a fair amount of curiosity about how an orchestra goes about its business behind the scenes. I don't think a film could ever be made of the subject. Filming is horribly intrusive, as we see from the growing number of camera-people invading our stage these days, with their chattering headsets, squeaky wheels, and noisy gear. Filming an orchestra at work might be like stamping in a puddle and calling the water muddy. I don't know if a good book has be written about it - I leave that open to reader suggestions. Maybe someone in an orchestra should keep a journal, or perhaps write a blog about it.

One of our more beloved conductors made a funny comment a while back. We had just read through something long, loud, and complicated, but something we knew quite well. Placing his baton on the stand, he looked at his watch, probably realizing we had several more hours of rehearsal scheduled for the piece. “Now what am I supposed to say about that?” he muttered. I suppose you could read that several ways, but I think he was giving us a compliment.

The layperson might be surprised how well the first 'read-though' often goes. One way to visualize the orchestra's preparation for a performance might be to imagine the quality of the playing as plotted on a graph, beginning with the first rehearsal and running though all of the performances. A lot of times the plot might resemble something like the letter 'U', with the first read-through in the upper left corner, representing some arbitrary value. Once conductorial meddling commences, the value drops, sometimes precipitously, before eventually heading upward again. A truly great conductor might achieve results that when plotted resemble something more like the letter 'J,' with the performances rising to a level higher than the orchestra's innate ability. Of course, the opposite is also true – the reverse 'J', where the performances never quite add up to what was possible the moment that particular conductor mounted the podium.

In all seriousness, the better maestros tend to let the orchestra play, maybe a whole movement, or the whole piece, in rehearsal before making corrections, suggestions, or whatever. The orchestra tends to appreciate the conductor who can show with his hands rather than having to stop and tell us what he wants. A lot of problems can be solved by the players themselves if the conductor gives them the chance.

To pile on another analogy, you might think of the orchestra as a horse, and the familiar piece of music the well-worn path to the stable. The able maestro lets the animal begin to go its own way awhile before subtly exerting his influence. The reckless one might immediately spur and whip the beast into the nearest thicket. Of course, the worst sort, even before mounting his steed, arrives with a laundry list of instructions. “When you begin, I would like you to move your front right leg forward six inches, while simultaneously moving the left rear leg forward eleven and three to the side, all the while holding your ears firmly upright. And why do you swish your tail so? By the way, I notice you are brown in color. My other horse is gray, which I certainly prefer. Can you do something about that? OK, giddy-up!”

Meet the Gunnelpumpers

2009-12-31T15:45:00.010-06:00

A group I have played with for the past seven years, one I can actually name, has a few performances of note coming up. In fact, it seems as if the '09 ' - '10 season might mark the beginning of a 'golden age' for the Gunnelpumpers with more performances than we have done in quite a while.

Brainchild of bassist Doug Johnson, the Gunnelpumers are best described by the subtitle on the band's myspace page: music by accident. Other band members include bassist Mathew Golombisky, percussionists Randy Farr, Douglas Brush and Quin Kirchner, along with Guitarist John Meyer. The group has also included a host of stellar guest artists over the years. One of the most interesting things about the group is seeing who will show up for any given performance. One of the best things is that we almost never rehearse. We might have had one, maybe two over the past seven years. More info about the Gunnelpumpers, including music and photos, may be found here.

The Gunnelpumpers will be playing a live set on WNUR 89.3 FM, Saturday, January 2nd, from 4-5 on the Airplay program. WNUR is out of Evanston Illinois. For those out of signal range, I think the programing is available on the internet. For those still too hung over on January 2nd to tune in, I think they also archive the shows. More info is on their website.

On January 5th, the band will play live at Martyrs' (3855 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago, IL) rounding out a show that begins at 8 PM. Any bass blog readers who happen to be at that show are welcome to say hello. Answering 3 bass blog trivia questions might even earn you a free beer, on me.

From Russia With Love

2009-12-21T11:17:00.010-06:00

TCHAIKOVSKY The Storm [L'Orage], Op. 76
TCHAIKOVSKY Selections from The Snow Maiden, Op. 12
Alex Balestrieri, Narrator
----INTERMISSION----
TCHAIKOVSKY Selections from Swan Lake, Op. 20
Alexander Polianichko, Conductor

Redmoon Theater

Frank Maugeri, Artistic Director

Alex Balestrieri, Narrator

All of the concerts I've played since the week of Thanksgiving have been in the dark (sometimes both literally and figuratively) with stand lights and visual aids. I had the week conducted by Nicholas Kramer off, so I have no idea if they had pole dancers and a laser light show for those performances. It certainly seems as if we are resorting to a lot of smoke and mirrors of late. Also, since my night vision really sucks, I find playing in the dark kind of a drag. The stand lights never seem bright enough.

One place I could have done with less light was on the podium. Polianichko pitched a couple of no-hitters in the four performances. I think it was the Selmer Musical Instrument Company that used to provide folders for school bands and orchestras. On the inside of those folders were diagrams of the conductor's beat patterns – reminiscent of the Arthur Murray dance step charts, with the footprints and the dotted lines. I wish somebody would copy those beat patterns and fix them to the mirror in the conductor's dressing room as a kind of refresher, one last thing to look at before going on stage, after fixing hair and making certain trousers are zipped up.

The Redmoon Theater collaboration was interesting, as much of it as I could see, and the Tchaikovsky music certainly appropriate for the season. For a number of years Boulez used to conduct the weeks leading up to Christmas, when we would treat the audience to such holiday favorites as The Miraculous Mandarin, Sacre du Printemps, Notations, Le visage nuptial, Livre pour cordes.

The email sent by a colleague and the Russian music this week had me thinking about the tour to the Soviet Union back in 1990 – the open bottles of vodka at every table for each meal, the emaciated dietician from Jewel, the rat running through Thanksgiving dinner, the black marketeers installed in the Moscow hotel room, the unique and peculiar headache brought on by the Russian champagne, 'Chuck' running through the train with his gun. All sorts of happy memories for the holiday season!

The Gunnelpumpers show at Miskas on Friday night managed to salvage the week.

The Never Ending Story

2009-12-18T06:31:00.003-06:00

An orchestra member sent me an email regarding the appointment of Yo Yo Ma as some sort of creative consultant with our organization. Originally I was speechless, not necessarily with delight, and thought to let the matter slide until it occurred to me that Bass Blog readers might benefit from this insightful and passionate email. Certain words and initials have been redacted to conform with Bass Blog standards.

With the author's permission:

Hubris

What’s the deal? Is it necessary to believe that you possess godlike power to be appointed {redacted} Music Director? Back in the late 80s, Sir Georg Solti saw a film of Vladimir Horowitz performing back in the disintegrating USSR after a life in exile from his native land. The audience was rapturous, many in tears as they cheered the prodigal native son. It never occurred to Sir Georg that, not being Russian himself, he might not get the same reception. Not at all. “We must go!” he insisted, arranging a hastily planned {redacted} tour to Leningrad and Moscow in 1989, just as his tenure at our helm was ending. He told the orchestra, and I am not making this up, that when the Russian people saw what a great orchestra a free society could produce, they would be inspired to rebuild their nation along the lines of the great western democracies. He would conduct a few Mahler and Bruckner symphonies and magically transform a land that had been suffering under tyrants for all of its history. But I guess Putin didn’t come to any of our concerts.

Our next Music Director, Daniel Barenboim, was very excited when Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992. He told the orchestra’s Members’ Committee, on which I served at the time, that if only he could bring the {redacted} to play in Washington, Clinton would understand how transformative the arts are and commit his administration to supporting them in the same way they are funded in France or Germany. Again, I am not making this up. One concert would do the trick, and we duly shoehorned a runout concert to Kennedy Center into our next New York tour. Unfortunately, it turned out President Clinton was occupied with other affairs of state, and was unable to attend our concert. Sadly, then, he missed out on his great epiphany.

Now we have a new Maestro, Ricardo Muti. His rehearsals and concerts have been wonderful thus far, and we have high hopes for his tenure. But here we go again. We have just learned that Yo Yo Ma has been appointed our new Creative Chair. In the language of the press release: “Maestro Muti and Yo-Yo Ma will act as inspirational catalysts for the {redacted} community, advocating for the transformative power that music can have on individuals, regardless of age or socioeconomic background.” Among other things, Muti wants us to perform in prisons, to inspire the denizens therein to turn their lives around. Of course, neither Yo Yo nor Muti have the time to do any of this. They are both globetrotting superstars who will confine their time in {redacted} to at best 10 or so overbooked weeks a year. But hey—Maestro Muti doesn’t need a lot of time. Just like our previous Music Directors, his magical presence all by itself will be transformative.

I have been on the front lines for our two most ambitious outreach initiatives of the past decade or so. I was involved in the creation of the Eloise Martin Center, which was a high tech interactive installation designed by Caroline Kennedy’s husband Edwin Schlossberg. It was up on the second floor of Symphony Center for a year or two, and then the money ran out and it was junked. The big desk in the shape of a bass viol that is used to serve coffee at the Bass Bar before concerts in the rotunda is all that survives of it. Then there was the Armonia project. A string quartet (I was in it) and a brass quintet of {redacted} players each collaborated with a different Latin ensemble. We were paired with an Afro-Caribbean percussion ensemble, and the brass guys with a mariachi group. They spent a ton of money on equipment, commissioned music so we could play together, and we performed maybe ten or fifteen concerts at a few schools and community centers, before the money dried up and the project was abandoned.

So now we are going to redeem the underclass in {redacted}. And to accomplish this modest feat, we are hiring perhaps the most overbooked instrumentalist in classical music today, Yo Yo Ma. Forgive my skepticism, but I think I’ve seen this movie before. And I know how it ends.

***

Programming Hitler's favorite composer in Leningrad (as it was then called) struck me as an odd choice. My first day there, I came across a bomb damaged structure, preserved for going on 50 years, bearing a plaque that read: Monument to Fascist Aggression. I had the feeling our performance of the Bruckner 8th was doomed.

The next music director (what's his name) seemed more concerned with achieving peace in the middle east, a pity when you can almost throw a stone from our concert hall to neighborhoods in our city where kids are afraid to walk the streets to get to schools in a shameful state of decrepitude. A friend of mine who taught music to underprivileged kids at the time told me they were all very excited when our former Maestro was scheduled to visit the school until it was revealed to be little more than a walk-through and they were told, in no uncertain terms, that none of the kids were to play anything for him.

At least Muti and Ma (or their spokespeople) are saying the right things as far as keeping the focus on the people in (the city where we live). But I agree with my colleague that I don't see them getting their hands too dirty. My worry is that in the vacuum created by their absence, scheming minds will come up with ideas similar to the debacles described above. Sometimes our organization goes about things with all the subtlety of trying to comb your hair with a garden rake. I have a vision of us playing Scheherazade for the Guantanamo prisoners supposedly coming to our state, or some other falderal.

The one thing the Bass Blog cannot condone however, is defamation of the Bass Bar (a big violin actually, or three quarters of one anyway). Have you even tried their coffee?

The man who knew too much

2009-12-06T20:35:00.002-06:00

December 3 - 6

MENDELSSOHN Violin Concerto
----INTERMISSION----
MAHLER Symphony No. 4
Markus Stenz, Conductor
Viviane Hagner, Violin
Nicole Cabell, Soprano
Gerard McBurney, Narrator
William Brown, Actor
Laura T. Fisher, Actress
Elizabeth Buccheri, Piano

The Friday and Sunday matinees are Beyond the Score performances devoted to the Mahler. I have to confess to finding these concerts uncomfortable to play. Sitting in the dark listening to lengthy dialog tends to make the mind wander, and then, before you know it, you are called upon to play some touchy little snippet taken out of context. Some further editing might help. The BTS presentation goes on for over an hour while its subject, the symphony, is more concise at about 55 minutes. On the other hand, if I saw this on PBS (or some late night cable outlet) I would probably keep my hands off the remote for a few minutes at least. I'm in no position to judge if this all works as a live performance. To me, the most interesting things are the piano rolls of Mahler playing. Probably some historic recordings would make for quite an interesting documentary, leaving the live performers to do what they do best, perform.

I'm really ambivalent about BTS. I don't buy the argument that BTS is somehow anti music – the 'if Mahler had meant his piece to be talked about he would have written a novel instead of a symphony' sort of argument. I'm all for educating an audience. Not wanting listeners to be well informed about what we are presenting seems akin to wanting to keep your wife barefoot and pregnant. However, there are lots of things to do with your wife that don't entail yakking her head off for an hour at a time. At any rate, these BTS shows always get me thinking about something or other. This past week I found myself remembering an incident from years ago.

In college I suffered through an 8 AM functional harmony course. Adding to my irritability at the unholy hour and insuring each and every school day began in an ill humor was a certain 'foreign' student, a young lady hiding total ignorance of functional harmony (and in my opinion a general lack of intelligence) behind an alluring physicality and a supposedly beguiling french accent. This young lady sat in the front row and played perfectly the part of teacher's pet, irritating us denizens of the back row. One day the instructor called upon her to identify something glaringly simple written on the chalk board, much to dismay of the stoners leaning their chairs against the back wall, chagrined at seeing another softball lobbed to this annoying poseur. When increasingly futile attempts to tease the correct answer out of her began to draw titters and schoolboy guffaws from behind, she rose to address her fellow classmates as well as our instructor. “You know,” she whined, “this is difficult for me because I have to translate everything from a foreign language,” flapping arms no less shapely for their utter helplessness.

And then something unexpected happened. Our instructor, that cold automaton of the 8 AM roll-call, the soul crusher, proud of his ability to reduce any Bach chorale to a series of roman numerals, a man not above shrugging off the most sublime moment in Debussy as an answer on a pop quiz (c. pentatonic scale), like the Grinch, that man's heart seemed to grow three sizes that day.

Perhaps our laughter embarrassed him, exposing cracks in his intellectual rigor, awakening a last frozen shard of a forgotten humanity. Whatever the reason, rather than directing an angry rebuke at the rest of the class as we all expected, he glared back at the hapless young lady. “Well, so do I,” he snapped, knuckles rapping the blackboard covered with chord symbols, brackets and dotted lines. “This all starts out as music!”

A gale of laughter followed, accompanied by foot stamping, knee slapping, and a minor storm of shredded papers (among them, my useless notes) tossed in the air from the back of the class. From then on I dedicated myself to becoming a better student. It is hard to enumerate the number of times the things I learned in that functional harmony class have helped me in my career as a professional musician, mainly because that number has remained stuck on zero for the past thirty years. But I'm still ready and waiting.

If I were a rich man

2009-12-04T10:46:00.001-06:00

November 27-29

ADDINSELL Prelude from Blithe Spirit'
ARNOLD Excerpts from The Bridge on the River Kwai'
JARRE Excerpts from A Passage to India
BAX Three Pieces from Oliver Twist
JARRE Excerpts from Dr. Zhivago
JARRE Excerpts from Lawrence of Arabia
----INTERMISSION----
WILLIAMS The Magic of Harry Potter
Holland Taylor, Narrator
WILLIAMS Flying Theme from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (encore)
WILLIAMS Marion's Theme from Raiders Of The Lost Ark (encore)
WILLIAMS Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme) from The Empire Strikes Back (Star Wars Episode V) (encore)
WILLIAMS Wide Receiver , (Theme from NBC Football) (encore)
John Williams, Conductor
Michael York, Narrator
Holland Taylor, Narrator

Well, we went from an unflinchingly rude conductor to an unfailingly polite one. The orchestra always seems a bit cowed by John Williams and he responds with the utmost cordiality. You might chalk it up to to celebrity, but I think a large part of it has to do with his net worth – inside every orchestra musician is a petit bourgeois struggling to get out. If these concerts had been conducted by a lowly assistant conductor from somewhere, the usual sort of sacrificial lamb brought in to lead a pops show, after four rehearsals things might have turned quite ugly. As it was, we never strayed far from appearing to be in a mutual love-fest with our conductor of the week. I'm not sure it is possible to convey how unusual that is. The autograph seekers waiting in the alley after the show added to oddity of the whole thing, as was having the audience immediately recognize (and enjoy) the music we played for them.

Marathon Man

2009-11-21T11:23:00.002-06:00

November 19 - 22

BARTÓK Divertimento for String Orchestra
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 12
----INTERMISSION----
SCHUMANN Symphony No. 2
Christoph von Dohnányi, Conductor
Paul Lewis, Piano

A visit to the dentist sometimes turns into a painful ordeal. Acknowledgment that this is for our own good mollifies us enough to submit to the uncomfortable procedure. Perhaps just as crucial in overcoming the natural reluctance to place ourselves at the mercy of a potentially pain-wielding professional is the belief our dentist is doing his best to minimize our suffering, and that furthermore, he derives no secret sadistic pleasure from all the painful picking, prodding and poking.

A conductor actually has a few ways to positively affect an orchestra in rehearsals, although more often than not the opportunities to employ them are bungled or misused. In brief, one of those is didactic, embodied in the maestro who comes to town with a number of interesting musical ideas which, if not presented in an insufferable manner, are available for the entertainment and maybe even enlightenment of all whose ears are not yet permanently calloused over. Another approach is the corrective – the maestro who performs the necessary and laudable services of scraping away at the orchestral tartar, filling the musical cavities, reigning in the rhythmical overbite, and maybe even addressing chronic institutional halitosis. This conductor has the chance of leaving the orchestra in better shape than when he found it.

Obviously, the lure of sadism sometimes proves too much, and what begins as constructive turns cruel and capricious. Cleaning the gums turns into a relentless pricking an poking, looking for blood, then gleefully pointing it out, holding a mirror up before the hapless, chair-bound orchestra. “You see! We have a problem here, such a pity. Let me get another pick. Nurse! No, the longer, more cruelly formed one please...”

To stipulate a need for the old-school type Great Maestro, one might argue that the ends justify the means (in our modern era, so long as they conform to the union contract). However, the end aimed at by barking “Watch it!” a split second before someone makes an entrance remains obscure to me, among a number of other things. Sadly, the performances this week had a somewhat flabby, dull, and uncomfortable aspect to them, a kind of Middle-European precision goosestep performed in stocking feet.

09/22-25

2009-10-08T11:50:00.002-05:00

London

Nice to be in truly world class city. On past trips the driest place to be in London has been onstage at Royal Festival Hall, but this time around the weather cooperates. After Paris, the city looks beautifully clean.

The two concerts here (Mozart/Brahms, Haydn/Bruckner) were well received, although as in the other cities much of the adulation was directed towards Haitink. Musically, this has to be one of the most satisfying tours I can recall – consistently high levels of performance from the orchestra, no histrionics from the podium, full houses. I wonder this is our last trip with Haitink since we have a new boss coming in next year. If so, it's a somewhat bittersweet moment, for me anyway.

09/19-21

2009-10-03T09:57:00.005-05:00

Paris

At around 6 AM the train from Hütteldorf arrived in Munich where groups of Oktoberfest revelers were carousing in the station (a very nice one, BTW). These fresh-faced youths, toting impossibly large beer bottles, were either getting an early start on the day's drinking or, possessed of superhuman stamina, were still up from the night before. When two opposing teams decided to start some sort of demolition derby with the luggage carts it was time to hit the streets until my onward connection.

In Paris the Shostakovich/Mozart program became the Brahms 1/Mozart 41 program. Haitink sure does a nice Brahms 1, the leaner sort of interpretation where you can see the bones, rather than flopping a bloated, hulking carcass onto the stage. Of course, any conductor who realizes the second movement is marked Andante Sostenuto rather than Largo Lugubriouso goes a long way to winning me over. After leaving the German speaking world, audience enthusiasm for the Bruckner 7 dropped noticeably. A colleague pointed out a gentleman who had his hands firmly clamped over his ears.

Salle Pleyel – the Avery Fisher Hall of Europe – had an interesting effect on us. I heard a few people remark “You know, the sound in here isn't that bad!”

Paris supposedly has many sights to see, but since the city also has a major dog-doo problem I spent the entire time watching where I stepped and so saw little besides my shoe tops. After two days I finally did notice a gentleman picking up after his dog. I squelched the urge to congratulate him when it occurred to me that throwing my arms around a complete stranger holding a bag of poop might be ripe for misinterpretation.

09/15-19

2009-09-28T22:18:00.002-05:00

Vienna

Travel from Luzern to Vienna, uneventful. The Musikverein is the same old place, which is what is nice about it. Some of the end pin holes in the stage look like they might be a hundred and fifty years old, the kind of tradition you can put your foot on. The hall has a fantastic resonance that, if we aren't careful, we can fill with a fantastic jumble of sound. At rehearsals Haitink asked us repeatedly not to (surprise) overplay. Performing Bruckner in the Musikverein feels very appropriate somehow, although I can't say I came away from the concert liking Bruckner or understanding what he was up to any better. But if you put a pig in mud I suppose he's happy even if he can't tell you why.

There is a story floating around that Bruckner, a shy and possibly troubled man, asked that the bare breasted caryatids in the Musikverein be covered. I have no idea if this actually occurred (the request and/or the covering) but I think of it whenever I play there.

We performed both programs (Mozart/Shostakovich, Haydn/Bruckner) in Vienna with a day off in between which I used to pay homage to another reviled, discredited, and dare I say misunderstood, historical figure. I spent a few pleasant hours at the all but deserted Arnold Schoenberg Institute – well worth the € 5 price of admission IMHO.

The dingy blockhouse that is Vienna's Hütteldorf train station left a lot to be desired. The decrepit waiting room reminded me of places I'd seen in the old Soviet Union – uncomfortable seats, peeling paint, bright, crackling fluorescent lights. All in all not the kind of place to spend the time between concert and midnight train. At the last minute the track for our train changed and we all lurched and jostled our way through a grimy, fetid passageway before emerging onto the correct platform – like a scene out of Dr. Zhivago, perhaps 1984, I thought. Wondering if the little dis-utopian scene I found myself caught in, the nightmare vision of a Europe that might have been, could possibly be some sort of penance for my foolish beliefs, I promised to make no more visits to Marx Engels statue. Just then the station loudspeakers began playing Pierrot Lunaire.

09/12-14

2009-09-24T02:06:00.003-05:00

Luzern

Getting to Luzern turned out to be one of those magnificent ordeals arising from an almost obsessive desire to travel separately from my colleagues. At midnight, the view of Berlin from the elevated train platform was magical. The train arriving half an hour late and falling 45 minutes behind before reaching Dortmund, not so magical considering the scheduled connection time of 47 minutes.

A city on a large lake in need of a new concert hall sounds oddly familiar. Only Luzern did something modern, and in my opinion, quite spectacular. Not all my colleagues like the acoustics of the concert hall as much as I do, but everyone is entitled to be wrong, I suppose. We played two programs, Mozart/Shostakovich repeated from Berlin, and then and Haydn 101 paired with (yes, again) Bruckner 7.

Sunday morning, I set out to climb nearby Mount Pilatus whose summit was, as usual, hidden in clouds. I don't know the mileage of the hike – the sign says '4 hours' – but the elevation gain is about 5,200 feet. A few times the clouds parted to offer views of the scenery below, but for the most part, I trudged through dense fog. After about three hours I entered a series of steep switchbacks crossing a rockfall. The summit could not be far above me, but where? My feet were sore, my spirits flagging until, from still high above, came the plaintive melody of a single alp-horn. The lone voice, at length joined, became a chorus. I stopped to listen, briefly disoriented that the sound of a horn could produce in me something quite strange, a feeling I can only describe as the absence negativity. Rallying, I stumbled upward.

09/10-12

2009-09-19T02:01:00.004-05:00

Berlin

Speaking of Hindenburg, for once the German capitol city is warm and sunny. We used to have a conductor (name escapes me) who dragged us to Berlin every Easter where it seemed perpetually rainy, cold and gloomy. And that was before leaving the concert hall.

Haitink is “Mr. Sunshine” in more ways than one, I guess. He seems to be back to form after suffering some sort of leg or back ailment that had him using a cane last time we saw him. The orchestra came out of vacation sounding understandably ragged at the opening rehearsal but more or less pulled together to put on a fine concert (Mozart 'Jupiter', Shostakovitch 15) at the Philharmonie, thanks in large part to the Maestro's steady hand.

The Philharmonie has been underwhelming me the last few times we played there. Not sure why – the sound is clear and certainly more resonant than what we are used to, but I can't help feeling there is something a bit flat about it. The backstage canteen continues its fine tradition of offering cheap eats and drinks – about € 4 for a sandwich and a beer. Honestly, the availability of beer within 20 or so paces of the stage makes up for any number of shortcomings.

I devoted a free afternoon to my usual pilgrimage to Marx Engels Platz for a glance at the statue. Hardly a thing a beauty – the huge clunky figures would not find themselves out of place in one of the Planet of the Apes films – nevertheless, whenever I am in town I am drawn to the sad spectacle of those two somber figures forced to watch their dream is slowly, inexorably crushed as the Unter den Linden becomes just another shopping street. Perhaps as a classical musician I have a degree of empathy for those who, in spite of their best efforts, wind up on the 'wrong side of history', become ossified, caricatures of their former selves, forced to watch the march of so-called progress heading off in the wrong direction. Whatever. My visits to the statue began soon after the wall came down. Several times I discovered someone had left flowers at the feet of the great socialists – sometime an old bouquet, wilted weeks ago, lying in the rain – but that hasn't happened in years now. Clasping hands with Engels, Marx rises stiffly, shedding a few rust-colored flakes as he takes a first, faltering step. Bronze shoes thudding on stone, I watch the two giants stride off down the Unter den Linden in the direction of the Brandenburg Gate. Engels shrugs, 'accidentally' taking out a Starbucks sign with his shoulder. Marx, lost in conversation, gestures idly with his free arm, swiping away a pair of golden arches. My shoes slide on broken glass as I run to catch up to the great thinkers disappearing down the street. “Wait for me,” I call out, weakly.

09/09/09

2009-09-10T11:29:00.001-05:00

An inauspicious beginning

Usually the tour starts when the plane wheels hit the ground, that little bump signaling the end of one chapter, in this case, vacation , and the beginning of another, the tour. This time is a little different, however. First, there is the business of cleaning up the past, making a few excuses so as to move on with if not a clear, at least a whitewashed conscience. The stolen violin and some other hijinks during the summer disrupted my Haiku-a-day plan, which was probably over ambitious to begin with anyway. But, in case nobody noticed, the Bass Blog has turned out to be more or less an account of failure – the large, ongoing type, as well as a series of smaller episodic shortcomings that seem to dog my every day. Think of that well known film clip, the Hindenburg disaster, played continuously in slow motion. So in those terms, failing to write a few Haiku is hardly anything to get upset about, is it? But it is time to rewind the filmstrip and begin the process once again.

The day before my flight to Berlin, acting on a premonition, I took the (for me) unusual step of telephoning the airline (named after a large German city) to confirm my flight only to discover my reservation had been canceled weeks ago with me none the wiser. Re-booking a ticket on short notice turned my intended thrifty gesture into one of extravagant financial excess. Not a great way to begin.

Thursday, July 23

2009-08-11T19:55:00.000-05:00

10-12:30 Rehearsal
Eschenbach
BERNSTEIN
DVORÁK

the rehearsal stops
for no apparent reason
eschenbach is back

Wednesday, July 22

2009-08-11T19:45:00.000-05:00

off

lang lang and barto
one of them more than enough
poor peter serkin

Tuesday, July 21

2009-08-11T07:55:00.001-05:00

off

thirty years old now
not one thing works as it should
my old bicycle

Ravinia 03

2009-08-04T14:34:00.002-05:00

concerts this week
(OK, that week: I'm hopelessly behind)

A
Time For Three
Bernstein - Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
Higdon - Concerto 4-3 (Chicago premiere)
Gershwin - Concerto in F
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
Tzimon Barto, piano

B
Brahms - Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15
Dvořák - Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95
Christoph Eschenbach, Conductor
Peter Serkin, Piano

C
Prokofiev - Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major, Op. 26
Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
Lang Lang, piano

Monday
off

soft sound – still water
early bass pizzicato
you throw in a rock

Sunday, July 19

2009-08-04T14:09:00.000-05:00

12:30-3 Rehearsal
Ravinia C
Conlon
MAHLER

5 Concert
Ravinia C
Conlon
MAHLER

farewell symphony
mahler gave the final word
to the violas

Saturday, July 18

2009-07-25T11:03:00.003-05:00

1:30-4 Rehearsal
Program B - Gala
Conlon, Norman, Wall, O'Connor, Griffey,
Robinson, *** Symphony Chorus
BEETHOVEN
COPLAND
COPLAND

7 Concert
Program B - Gala
Conlon, Norman, Wall, O'Connor, Griffey,
Robinson, *** Symphony Chorus
SMITH
COPLAND
COPLAND
BEETHOVEN

I'm off this concert!

speeches and music
my oil and water cocktail
good day to stay home

Friday, July 17

2009-07-25T10:26:00.000-05:00

off

no concert today
bike leaning in the garage
legs and ears weary

Thursday, July 16

2009-07-25T10:10:00.002-05:00

11-1:30 Rehearsal
Ravinia C
Conlon
MAHLER

2:30-5 Rehearsal
Conlon
MAHLER
BEETHOVEN

final symphony
the composer says goodbye
rehearsal endless

Wednesday, July 15

2009-07-20T05:35:00.002-05:00

2:30-5 Rehearsal
Ravinia A
Conlon, Ohlsson
SCHUMANN
PROKOFIEV
WAGNER

8 Concert
Ravinia A
Conlon, Ohlsson
WAGNER
SCHUMANN
INTERMISSION
PROKOFIEV

serge prokofiev
sometimes the thing of beauty
is hard to endure

and here's a better one from my friend Max

Prokofiev Fifth
wonderful woodblock writing
viola, less so

Tuesday, July 14

2009-07-20T05:12:00.000-05:00

off

Ravinia stage
the acoustical science
theater of pain

Ravinia, week 02

2009-07-20T05:01:00.003-05:00

Concerts this (last )week

A Wednesday, July 15
Wagner - “Siegfried’s Funeral March” from Götterdämmerung
Schumann -Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54
Prokofiev - Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, Op. 100
James Conlon, conductor
Garrick Ohlsson, piano

B Saturday, July 18
Copland - Fanfare for the Common Man
Copland - Lincoln Portrait
Beethoven - Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125 ( Choral)
James Conlon, conductor
*** Symphony Chorus
Erin Wall, soprano
Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano
Anthony Dean Griffey, tenor
Morris Robinson, bass
Jessye Norman, narrator

C Sunday, July 19
Mahler - Symphony No. 9 in D Major
James Conlon, conductor

Monday, July 13
off

fall behind again
Haiku – Bruckner melodies
fleeting in the mind

Sunday, July 12

2009-07-14T12:30:00.001-05:00

12:30-3 Rehearsal
Ravinia C
Conlon, Fried
TCHAIKOVSKY
TCHAIKOVSKY
TCHAIKOVSKY

5 Concert
Please note: live cannons during 1812
Overture
Ravinia C
Conlon, Fried
TCHAIKOVSKY
INTERMISSION
TCHAIKOVSKY
TCHAIKOVSKY

the year that was

famous overture
battle scarred – mighty number
bad time for my ears

Saturday, July 11

2009-07-14T12:05:00.002-05:00

off

screens beside the stage
heads turned see only the thing
right in front of them

Friday, July 10

2009-07-13T22:25:00.001-05:00

2:30-5 Rehearsal
Ravinia B
Conlon, DeYoung, Skelton
MENDELSSOHN
MAHLER

8 Concert
Ravinia B
Conlon, DeYoung, Skelton
MENDELSSOHN
INTERMISSION
MAHLER

the beat elusive
hopeful glance at podium
gone before I played

Thursday, July 9

2009-07-10T13:17:00.002-05:00

10-12:30 Rehearsal
Ravinia B
Conlon, DeYoung, Skelton
MAHLER

bird above the stage
singing with the orchestra
this year - still not deaf

Wednesday, July 8

2009-07-08T16:35:00.000-05:00

day off

lengthy Adagio
right on time – the train whistle
never so welcome

Tuesday, July 7

2009-07-07T11:29:00.002-05:00

2:30-5 Rehearsal
Ravinia A
Conlon, Bronfman
MENDELSSOHN
BRAHMS

8:00 Concert
Ravinia A
Conlon, Bronfman
SMITH
MENDELSSOHN
INTERMISSION
BRAHMS

parking lot soliloquy

slow people walking
right in front of my bumper
what if I nudge them?

Welcome Back

2009-07-05T22:20:00.005-05:00

Ravinia week 1

Concerts this week

A Tuesday July 7, 8 PM
Mendelssohn Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 11
Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83
James Conlon, conductor
Yefim Bronfman, piano

B Friday July 10, 8 PM
Mendelssohn - Symphony No. 4 in A Major, Op. 90 ("Italian")
Mahler - Das Lied von der Erde ("The Song of the Earth")
James Conlon, conductor
Michelle DeYoung,mezzo-soprano
Stuart Skelton,tenor

C Sunday, July 12, 5 PM
Tchaikovsky - Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35
Tchaikovsky - Nutcracker Suite No. 1
Tchaikovsky - “1812” Festival Overture, Op. 49 (with live cannons)
James Conlon, conductor
Miriam Fried,violin

Monday, July 6
2-4:30 Rehearsal
Ravinia A
MENDELSSOHN
BRAHMS

I'm off concert A. Also, since I'm quite busy these days with non bass blog activities, I'm going to have to limit the amount of writing I do. With that in mind, all posts about this season at Ravinia will be in Haiku form.

first day

thrumming cicadas
heat waves on asphalt – the guard
wary of my bike

In the beginning...

2009-06-04T19:25:00.004-05:00

Bernard Labadie, conductor
Benedetto Lupo, piano
Haydn - Symphony No. 94 (Surprise)

Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 18

Mozart - Chaconne from Idomeneo
Mozart - Symphony No. 39

Wordy conductors arrive at our concert hall carrying their verbiage like the penitent's burden. Already looking at an uphill trek to Golgotha, the early music specialist ascending our podium might fair better lightening his load a bit. While it may be possible to teach an old dog new tricks, it is probably wise not to talk to him about about it.

Bernard Labadie brought with him some good ideas and a different viewpoint than we are accustomed to. Less vibrato, more open strings, holding off on the sostenuto, among other things, are IMO valid suggestions. I have no problem with trying to play something differently. In fact I think playing it the same old way causes me more heartburn these days. Unfortunately, the preponderance of instructions, suggestions, reminders, admonishments, notifications, rejoinders, talking points, etc. etc. began turning the music into a bit of a minefield.

The Kapellmeister more adept with the word than the baton is a phenomenon I've come across a number of times, especially in the early music realm. There, I have no problems with it. Most of that music is not conductor dependent anyway (possibly why I enjoy it so much), predating the rise of the stick waving, tyrannosaurical conductor of the modern era. The period instrument players also, not subjugated by constant baton beating, have a different approach to holding an ensemble together.

The Mozart/Haydn concerts began showing a few cracks in the ensemble which only grew more serious with repetition, as if the fragmented assembly in rehearsals came unglued under the pressures of performance.

The Unknown

2009-05-28T10:27:00.001-05:00

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

Donald Rumsfeld
—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Ellington - Three Black Kings

Intermission
Turnage & Scofield - Scorched for Jazz Trio and Orchestra

(Redacted) Symphony Orchestra
Steven Sloane, conductor
John Scofield, guitar
John Patitucci, bass
Peter Erskine, drums
Donald Harrison, alto saxophone
Willie Pickens, piano

Rodgers and Hammerstein at the Movies
(Redacted) Symphony Orchestra
Emil de Cou, conductor

A fine week to begin blogging again. A lot of interesting things have gone on. The most interesting unfortunately, if I value my metaphorical kneecaps, figuratively speaking, I better not mention.

The Ellington/Turnage&Scofield show brought a stellar group of musicians to the front of our stage. These 'fusion', 'crossover', (or whatever you want to call them) type of concerts often leave me less than satisfied, sometimes embarrassed. The featured group usually knows the piece well and has performed it several, if not many times, while we (the orchestra) are sight reading (OK, I confess). They are comfortable with the idiom – we are decidedly not. The tag-team nature of a lot of these things often highlights how painfully square we are in contrast to our guests.

I'm not sure how they do it – the technical means must have come about in the last few years,since that is when these type of concerts began to appear on our schedule – but the movie night concert where we play along live with the vocal tracks from old movies is becoming more common. I'm not sure what the point is, since the spontaneity of live performance is here reduced to a series of minor emergencies when the conductor can't keep in sync with the film. Something like arriving at the honeymoon suite only to don a straight jacket. I confess to deriving much of my enjoyment of these concerts observing the amount of discomfort on the podium – the usually dictatorial conductor reduced to marionette dancing and jumping at the pull of invisible strings.

Boulez times Deux

2009-03-17T21:00:00.001-05:00

Stravinsky - Symphony in Three Movements
Stravinsky - Four Studies for Orchestra
Carter - Réflexions
Varèse - Ionisation
Varèse - Amériques

Janácek - Sinfonietta
Szymanowski - Violin Concerto No. 1
Stravinsky - Pulcinella
Frank Peter Zimmermann, violin
Roxana Constantinescu, mezzo-soprano
Nicholas Phan, tenor
Kyle Ketelsen, bass-baritone

Boulez came to town with a heap of ‘modern’ music. Maybe that should be amended to ‘scary’ modern music seeing how the concerts were so poorly attended, both here and in that somewhat larger city to the east. Too bad really, since I’m quite fond of Ameriques – the savagery of the piece is right in our wheelhouse!

The Stravinsky pieces were all recorded for our (Grammy winning!) in-house label [Redacted] Resound. (That has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?) Sometimes Boulez’s nonchalance and understated approach has had a very positive, calming effect, the perfect antidote to Solti or that other guy who followed him. But now that we have two elderly uncles as caretaker music directors, both of whose podium personae tend towards the soporific, I’m not quite so sold on the effectiveness of the mere flip of the wrist and the shrug. We seem to require a bit more to play together nowadays. The Stravinsky pieces felt pretty loose, to the point of mushiness. I will be curious to see what sort of recording they got from those concerts, although I’m not sure I’ll ever have the heart to listen to them.

The highlight of the two weeks had to be the backstage announcement by our personnel manager that took an unintended turn towards the sci-fi when he requested “All musicians on stage for ionization!”

About a week after my last blog post poking fun at our (hopefully) interim junior senator, I ended up finding myself in a strangely parallel situation – complete with all the backstabbing and other niceties of the political world that seem to find a welcome home in the concert hall. Talk about karma!

This is what he meant to say….

2009-02-25T08:20:00.002-06:00

Lincoln Bicentennial Tribute
Root - The Battle Cry of Freedom
Payne & Bishop - Home, Sweet Home
Harris - Symphony No. 6 (Gettysburg)
Bennett - Selections from Abraham Lincoln (A Likeness in Symphony Form)
Copland - Lincoln Portrait
Beethoven - Symphony No. 5

James Gaffigan, conductor
James Earl Jones, narrator
Kevin Gudahl, speaker
Gerard McBurney, speaker

I think the last time our orchestra performed the Lincoln Portrait the junior senator from our state did the narration. Since he went on to bigger and better things James Earl Jones stepped in and schooled everybody in the meaning of star power. Still, having the current junior senator do the honors might have made for an entertaining evening. Program notes or a post-concert press conference could have clarified and revised the senator’s narration. Besides, we might have been able to boast hosting one of his final public appearances.

Not sure what Beethoven 5 was doing on this concert – Lincoln’s favorite piece? Fate knocking at the door? Music that brings on a headache?

Blog of the tour – part seven

2009-02-21T07:28:00.001-06:00

The Forbidden Concert Hall

Friday, February 13
Beijing

We may have finally found a venue on this tour to match the massive inhuman scale of our repertoire. While exploring Tianamen square I kept bumping into the ghost of Anton Bruckner. Out for a stroll, hands clasped behind his back, the venerable composer nodded in silent approval, dreaming of ways to subjugate another string section beneath his musical fist of iron. It seems as if regular-old socialists and their ‘national’ brethren share some taste in architecture.

The scheduled 2-hour morning rehearsal was converted to one of the 45-minute pre concert warm-ups so I did not arrive in the vicinity of the ‘Egg’ (National Center for the Performing Arts) until about 4 in the afternoon. I enjoy arriving at a new concert hall alone, not with the group, in part to see how these architectural marvels yield up their secrets to a more or less ordinary person encountering them with the modest goal of entering, perhaps finding a bathroom, my instrument, and finally the stage. The ‘Egg’ proved a tough nut to crack, if I can scramble up a tasty hash of metaphors.

Most concert halls have stage doors or performers’ entrances at the back, or the side. Being round and surrounded by a defensive moat, the ‘Egg’ did not present an obvious point of entry for a footsore double bassist. A preliminary circumnavigation revealed two subterranean entrances 180 degrees apart. Looking decidedly more ghetto, one of them seemed the obvious choice.

Approaching the guard on duty, I produced my orchestra photo ID card and said (Blah, Blah) Symphony Orchestra, musician. I made the universal symbol – playing air violin and tapping my chest – but the guard shook his head and smiled sheepishly at my antics before summoning over a gentleman in a suit who had been chatting loudly on a cell phone a few feet away. This fellow seemed genuinely put off at having to end his call. When I presented my card he made a face as if I had just waved something extremely foul smelling under his nose. He shook his head violently and said in English, no, No, NO! and then something in Chinese that sounded like ‘getthehellouttahere!’ (but in all fairness could have been anything) while waving me off in the direction of the other entrance.

At the other side I was able to penetrate two sets of doors before arriving in what seemed to be a lobby for audience members. The guard at the roped off entryway was already shaking his head before I had my ID out, but I repeated my air violin performance for him anyway. Noticing a large photo of Bernhard Haitink hanging above his head I added what I hoped would be clarification (but probably only made me look irredeemably silly) by pointing to the photo, making motions of shaking the Maestro’s hand, and him warmly reciprocating by patting me on the back. (Incidentally, there is a photo of this very spot in the New York Times of February 16, page C3, where you can see the guard in ominous silhouette, the photo of Haitink in the distance.)

Beside the guard sat an officious looking lady at a small desk. When asked if she spoke English, she responded ‘a little bit’ and so I repeated my attempt at self-identification, downplaying the visuals somewhat. She gave a look of what I mistakenly took to be understanding until she led me to what appeared for all the world to be the ticket counter and left me there. Again, I repeated the charade for a group of bemused young ladies who had no idea what I was about. After I rejected the ticket they pushing in my direction, three of them huddled in conversation for a long time before one of them turned back to me, beaming. You, she said, finger pointing to the ceiling, are an actor! Her smile froze. Apparently that was the end of the line as far as she was concerned.

Heading back towards the guard and the lady at the desk, I noticed one of my colleagues, who appeared to be taking the first steps down the same rode I had started off on, now some forty minutes ago. The presence of two babbling foreigners in the lobby was enough to spur somebody to action. We were eventually taken to a room where my colleague spoke to somebody on the phone and I handed over my passport (?), which was returned along with a pink slip of paper. Whatever was written on the paper proved to be pure gold, because the formerly recalcitrant guard waved us through without another look. All that remained was the metal detector, a frisking, and a couple more locked doors that could only be opened by the person whose job it was to open them, but we were on our way!

Blog of the Tour – part six

2009-02-18T06:36:00.001-06:00

Shanghaied...

If someone on the street in Shanghai offers to take you to a tea ceremony or an art gallery, my advice would be to respectfully decline, that is if you value the contents of your pocket book. Unfortunately, anybody who wants to ‘practice English’ is probably up to no good. Having made a brutally honest assessment of my appeal to members of either sex, I have to conclude the countless offers for more personal sorts of attention attracted while walking alone were nefarious as well.

Another depressing fact: the 300 kph (!) train ride from the airport is more than 10x faster than the creaky, lurching transit system in my hometown.

Tuesday, February 10

Breakfast: thank heaven for the in-room coffee maker! Another rehearsal this morning, devoted to Bruckner and Haydn. Graciously acknowledging the presence of many Shanghai musicians and students, Haitink changed his usual rehearsal routine and offered up a read-through of the Bruckner 7 Finale before hitting the same old spots again.

Wednesday, February 11

More free in-room coffee to start the day! Freedom until the short pre-concert rehearsal of Mahler 6.

Drivers in Shanghai are pretty well insane as far as I can tell. Two-wheeled vehicles, motorized or not, seem to be exempt from obeying traffic signals altogether. To a four-wheeler, a red light is merely a suggestion that may be nullified by sounding the horn and flooring it. Pedestrians, like ninepins, are best knocked over in groups. In fact, watching people cross the street proved enlightening.

From a huddled mass of pedestrians waiting to cross a street somebody begins by making a leap of faith and steps bravely, maybe foolishly, in front of oncoming traffic. It could be anybody, and not always the one you would expect to grasp the mantle of leader – the little old lady who just about spat on my shoe a moment earlier, the twenty-something guy on his cell phone who doesn’t seem to be paying attention to anything at all. The important thing is that somebody gets their foot out in front of the onrushing cars first, then safety in numbers takes over and everybody else seizes the moment by piling across. Even if a few are crushed, the odds of any one person making it are increased. The similarity to playing in a string section is truly uncanny.

Blog of the Tour – part five

2009-02-17T07:09:00.000-06:00

Cursed!

Friday, February 6

Hong Kong. Breakfast of fruit in my room, compliments of the hotel. Afterwards, another rehearsal 11 – 1 devoted to Mozart and Strauss. Same passages covered as at previous rehearsal in Tokyo. On my way out the door after finishing, I glance at my watch. It’s 11:23. There were some warnings about the acoustics at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. It’s sort of a smallish place and the sound was not too clear, although I’m not convinced we did our best to adjust our playing to the room. There is no backstage there to speak of, so much of our stuff had to be stored at the hotel, which was a bit of a drag.

After the brief rehearsal, while soaking up some of the nice warm sunny weather, a man in a turban approached me, introduced himself as a ‘Yogi from India’ and began telling me I had a lucky face, along with a number of other insightful observations about my personality – all of them way, way off. This shifty-eyed gentleman was impossible to get rid of, and I waited for the moment he would try and pick my pocket while he read my palm, where he failed to notice I have unusual markings that get most palm readers attention right away. Next, he gave me a small folded up piece of paper to hold in my fist while he asked me for a number between 1 and 5 along with the name of a flower. I’m still kicking myself for picking the obvious – 3 and Rose – but was still pretty impressed when I unfolded the paper and, sure enough, it hade 3/Rose scribbled on it. He then asked for 300 Hong Kong dollars (about 40 US) and warned it might be unlucky for me if I didn’t pay up. Not noticing any accomplice around, I felt confident in giving him only 10 HKD (about 1.20 US), already kicking myself for making such obvious choices but acknowledging a nice magic trick on his part. At that point the mood turned a bit ugly and he demanded more money. When I refused, he cursed me (literally: “I curse you!”) and walked off muttering probably much worse in Hindi.

Saturday, February 7

Breakfast of coffee at Starbuck’s. (They have them here too!) Nothing scheduled until the evening when we had a 45 minute rehearsal, 90 minutes before a 90-minute performance of Mahler 6.

Blog of the Tour – part four

2009-02-13T19:48:00.002-06:00

Breakfast of Champions

Tuesday, February 3

Today, the titular breakfast – diet coke and a handful of aspirin before heading off to rehearsal, already the fifth one of the tour. Haitink certainly love to rehearse! Today the task at hand was the Bruckner 7th, which for me is kind of like a trip to the dentist – in the wrong hands truly painful, and even with the most skilled practitioner avoiding discomfort becomes an end in itself. Kudos to Haitink for scraping off some of the tartar.

Wednesday, February 4

Breakfast at Starbuck’s again and another one of those, creamy, dreamy sandwiches. Today I ate in Shibuya, at the famous Starbuck’s overlooking the intersection where every time the light changes about ten thousand people swarm across.

In the evening, another one of those little rehearsals, 5:30 - 6:15 before a 7 PM concert of Mozart 41 and Heldenleben. There’s a pattern forming to the way we rehearse Heldenleben – start at the beginning, then jump to (oops, forgot the number, 15?) the cackling woodwind passage, then check the offstage trumpets (flawless again!) and end with, well, the end. For those not playing Mozart, enough time for a nap before the performance.

Blog of the Tour – part three

2009-02-05T23:31:00.000-06:00

Coffee and Fish

Sunday, February 1

Breakfast at Starbuck’s again today, coffee and a sandwich with a deliciously creamy but unidentifiable filling – tasted vaguely like tuna, which is hardly reassuring.

Rehearsal and concert of Mahler 6 today at Suntory Hall, mercifully in walking distance from the hotel. I found the experience of playing Suntory much better than Minato Mirai – easier to hear the inner voices and not at all muddy. Rehearsal was scheduled from 11- 1:30, but Haitink wisely called an audible and let us out early, so there was time for a quick lunch and a quick nap before the concert at 4.

Monday, February 2

Due to excessive sake tasting Sunday night, I’m in no mood for breakfast today. Technically, if breakfast is the first thing I ate, I have to include the large quantity of kaiten (conveyor belt) sushi eaten at about 2 PM. The rest of the day was ‘off’ in every sense of the word.

(Internet service is getting more and more expensive so I am growing more creative trying to find free wireless. This post courtesy of Mr Default, resident of Hong Kong.)

Blog of the Tour – part two

2009-02-03T00:55:00.000-06:00

Saturday, January 31

The first post veered way off topic, I’m afraid. I’ll try and stick to the subject matter at hand – a group of Americans flying g to Japan and China to play German and Austrian music under a conductor from the Netherlands.

Breakfast today – Grande Latte at Starbucks. Returning to the Hotel, I stopped in the lobby to glance at the bulletin board set up for orchestra members and noted about half of the space was dedicated to breakfast in one way or another. I wonder if any Japanese folks curious about what is going on have had a peek at our board (it’s hard to avoid if you come in the front door, actually) and wondered if the Culinary Society of Ohio might be in town, with the primary mission of tasting the breakfast options available and an auxiliary function of putting on a few concerts.

Haitink is pretty adamant about wanting a lot of rehearsals on tour – more than we are used to. Today we had one of these ‘acoustic’ (or sound-check, or warm-up) rehearsals from 4:30 – 5:15 before the 6 PM concert in Yokohama. I’m not convinced we needed to do that since we spent the day before rehearsing there. For those playing the entire program (Mozart 41, Strauss Ein Heldenleben) 45 minutes seemed too short to get a square meal in a strange land, and those of us only playing Heldenleben had two hours to wander aimlessly around the Minato Mirai complex. Despite those minor annoyances, the concert was a smashing success.

Blog of the tour – part one

2009-02-01T18:28:00.002-06:00

Order of Lenin, hold the Mayo

The last time the orchestra came to Japan I flew with the group and found myself assigned to a uncomfortable center seat beside two of my more talkative colleagues. About eight hours into a thirteen hour flight, when my interest in the shoes sizes of offspring, what was eaten for lunch on certain day, the cost of various consumer items and so on and so forth reached its nadir, I began hatching a bold plan about what to do should I ever be called upon to return to the land of the rising sun. Hardly worth mentioning now, at the time it seemed entirely reasonable to chart an overland journey across Canadian provinces, the frozen tundra of Alaska, fording the Bering Strait, before island hoping my way down out of Siberia, eventually arriving comfortably by bullet train at Tokyo station, twenty two months late. Eventually it struck me that what I ought to do is simply book myself on a different flight, so that’s what I did.

There are a few ‘jetlag days’ at the beginning of a tour, free of rehearsals or concerts, sorely needed to get over the time change. Things really began on Friday, January 29.

Breakfast came in two installments today. 7:30 AM, coffee at the Dotour coffee shop in the Shibuya train station. Later, the ‘Breakfast Set’ at Cafe de Crié in the Minato Mirai complex, consisting of coffee, toast, and some of the strangest scrambled eggs encountered to date – at least I hope they were eggs – served with lettuce tomato and a large blob of mayonnaise (!). After such an auspicious start, the two rehearsals at Minato Mirai Hall could not but go swimmingly. The acoustic, like most places, is more resonant than we are accustomed to, so ther was some sorting out to do. Haitink mentioned the jet lag and gave the orchestra a compliment – something to the effect that we could probably wake up in the middle of the night in Siberia and still play well – and I thought, to be honest, we’ve already done that. Back in 1990 (or was it ’91?) when we toured the Soviet Union, we made a recording of the Bruckner eighth symphony in (then) Leningrad the day after arriving. I recall waking up during the slow (actually in that symphony, the slowest) movement, realizing I had been playing in my sleep for an undetermined length of time. I have no idea if that is a good recording or not. If so, everybody involved should probably be awarded the Order of Lenin.

The passage of our most dread Sovereign

2009-01-23T06:50:00.001-06:00

A good week to think about new and better leadership.

Riccardo Muti taking the podium the week after Dudamel gave audience and orchestra a good chance to compare and see if ours is greater than theirs, so to speak. They were both quite good, actually.

Muti stayed on focus through all the hoopla surrounding his brief 3-concert run here. As a result, the Verdi Requiem hasn’t sounded better, at least not in this zip code. In the wrong hands the piece all to easily turns into a lurid sort of Opera buffa for the dearly departed. Perhaps disappointing a few, Muti took some of the John Philip Sousa out of the Requiem and restored a much-needed degree of sobriety. He had our long-suffering chorus in fine form as well.

As before, the Maestro proved capable of making his mark in a gracious and even entertaining manner. In rehearsal, anecdotes, jokes, and various other remarks can easily bore or infuriate an orchestra when handled ineptly. In this case they mostly served to focus attention on the task at hand rather than distract. Throughout the week Muti seemed aware that in addition to putting together an excellent performance of the Verdi, it might be in his interest to develop a good working relationship with the orchestra. As obvious as that sounds, not all Maestros tend to proceed in such a way.

All in all, a good start for a new era.

Dudamel

2009-01-14T08:26:00.000-06:00

Last week Gustavo Dudamel made his 2nd, 3rd or 4th appearance here. I’m a bit foggy on the number because before last week I’ve managed to be off every time he came to town.

Some conductors are better in theory than in practice but Dudamel mostly delivered the goods and managed to live up to the hype preceding his arrival. Sold-out houses, in spite of some horrible weather, were also very encouraging to see.

Dudamel accomplished the unlikely feat of attracting the rapt attention of both audience and orchestra alike, with only a few of the usual exceptions among the latter. There was some debate as to whether his long drawn-out pose at the end of the Barber Adagio might have been over the top, but not all conductors have sufficient cachet with the audience to prevent the loutish, premature applause that so often mars the endings of quiet pieces. If you’ve got it flaunt it, I guess. And considering how often in this business greatness and self-indulgence find each other locked in an unbreakable embrace, I consider a little of it entirely forgivable.

We used to have another conductor around here from South America – name escapes me – and there were a few times during the week when Dudamel reminded me strongly of that other Maestro. Dudamel’s Brahms was not always to my taste, however he proved very capable of getting what he wanted from the orchestra and it was quite enjoyable doing things a little differently – even getting what you want all the time can become disagreeable. His manner and the resulting fine performances he got out of the orchestra made a strong case for the argument that putting forth ideas in an agreeable manner might be a more efficient way of doing things.

More of the Same for 2009?

2009-01-10T07:46:00.000-06:00

Well, not entirely. First, a couple New Year’s resolutions.

This year, I will try and be more responsive to emailed questions. I get a fair number of those and although I have read them all, chuckled or gnashed my teeth where appropriate, I acknowledge being pretty lousy about answering them. I will try and respond to comments posted on the blog as well. However, if you have a question you really want answered by me – for what that is worth – better to email it. I may even paste it into the blog and use it for a post – god knows I’m running short on material. Let me know if you don’t want that to happen. Speaking of the deity, please don’t send me quotes from the Bible, or any other religious tome for that matter, I have no idea what to do with those. I will also try and post more regularly. A few readers commented on the boring posts listing rehearsal times, etc. – and those were for the most part people who didn’t even have to attend the boring rehearsals in question – so I don’t think I will be returning to that format. However, I will try and keep fans of the world’s 5th greatest orchestra abreast of what is going on here.

Number 9…

2008-12-17T09:27:00.003-06:00

Ein Heldenleben, undoubtedly a masterpiece, nevertheless rubs me the wrong way. I know as a (working) bassist I’m supposed to like it, love it even, since it is chock full of popular audition passages, but I can’t get past the things I don’t like about the piece, its gigantism, all that bombast, to name a couple. Not my cup of tea, as they say. I wonder if any hero ever dared to play softly? Anyhow, when the option to take those concerts off presented itself, the choice seemed obvious.

As mentioned, Heldenleben contains more double bass audition passages per page than almost any other piece in the literature. The passage at (rehearsal) number nine has probably ruined more dreams of an orchestral career than any other.

Sometimes you might see a few gummy old bass players, veterans of auditions long past huddled toward the back of the bar. Over a stale pint or two they recount in hushed reverent tones disastrous failures, successes won at terrible cost. Their Ypres, Verdun, The Marne, unknown beyond their circle, sound strange in our ears; Number 9, the Battle Scene, 49, 77. “Nine measures after number 15, there I stood, alone, without a mute…”

So friends, next time you go to a performance of Ein Heldenleben, cast a sympathetic eye towards the bass section. Number 9 comes up only a few minutes into the piece – top of the second page. Then you will see the page turned, a deep breath taken, perhaps an eye rolled heavenward in memory of a colleague who didn’t make it. And as they begin to play, without doubt, you think to yourself – what a delightful passage for the horn.

Boo!

2008-12-13T12:25:00.001-06:00

Never in my life have I received such treatment. They threw an apple at me!
Well, watermelons are out of season.

Lasspari and Otis B Driftwood
(The Marx Brothers A Night at the Opera)

Boo…Boooo!…BOOOOO!!!!

Starting softly and getting louder, the gentleman got in three boos before the rest of the audience knew the piece had finished. Definitely not one of our fans who calls out Bravoooooo, these were unquestionably expressions of displeasure. But whether directed at the Lutoslawsky 4th symphony or our rendition of it under Haitink’s baton, nobody could tell. A brief scan of the composer’s biography makes me wonder if our pro Stalin fan (yes we have one) had returned.

I don’t know if it comes as a surprise or not, but the general reaction among orchestra members to audience boos isn’t very disapproving. Perhaps this comes from a sense of smugness about our self worth and the ability for each of us singly to fall back on the belief that the composer, conductor, soloist, or somebody else, is the true object of displeasure. But there is also a sense of relief that at least somebody out there cares enough to go against the grain and express themselves. One of the more disheartening things about this profession can be to see obvious signs of displeasure among audience members during the performance (i.e. yawning, sleeping, the rolling of eyes, head buried in the program or other reading material, or the ubiquitous 20th century music scowl) only to receive the same polite applause at the conclusion. Was that a standing ovation, or were those people merely donning their coats and shrugging? (I once saw a man sleep soundly through a piece only to jump to his feet and applaud.) At least a good hearty Boo shows somebody had an honest opinion.

We’ve had few memorable ones during my time here. The Enescu Symphony (sorry, can’t remember which one) ends conclusively. So when we performed it at the University of (the state in which the city I work in is located) the gentleman who got his boo off (say that fast three times: very funny) a split second before the rest of the audience erupted deserves special commendation. He (booing seems to be a male-dominated activity) obviously sat on the edge of his seat for a long time waiting for his big chance. Probably most famously, a local member of the 4th estate loudly booed the son of a prominent dissident for a lackluster reading of the Grieg piano concerto. That demonstration involved the spontaneous conversion of the program book into confetti.

This Post Rated XXX

2008-12-10T07:32:00.000-06:00

The other day somebody complained to me about the amount of selling on the Internet, what you might call the pornography of self-promotion – buy my gear, buy my CD, my method book, whatever. I thought it high time I dip my foot briefly into those waters.

The Chicago Bass Ensemble will be performing on Monday, December 15, 7 PM at Heaven Gallery, 1550 North Milwaukee, 2nd floor. Information about the CBE may be found here, and the Heaven Gallery, here.

I am also happy to announce, at long last, the re emergence of Discordia Music –publishers of music for the double bass. We’ve spent the last year or so reworking our editions, and five are now ready. Look for more soon.

Information about Discordia Music may be found here.

A few words about the editions:

Bach - 3 Sonatas
BWV 1027, BWV 1028, BWV 1029.
For Double Bass and Cembalo(originally for Viola da Gamba)
A005

The three Gamaba Sonatas are now combined in one volume. This edition is an arrangement for double bass, based on research of several sources, most notably the Neue Bach Ausgabe and the Peters Edition, edited by Lawrence Dreyfus. The double bass parts are at the original pitch rather than the usual one octave lower.

Brahms - Sonata in e-minor, Opus 38
For Double Bass and Piano
(originally for Violoncello)
A004

This edition, also at the original pitch, remains true to Brahms’ slurs, articulations and dynamic markings.

Rossini - Duetto
For Violoncello and Double Bass
A010

An arrangement of the Duo, with the double bass in solo tuning. Many of the composer’s simplifications of the double bass part have been eliminated.

Schubert - Sonata, D.821 “Arpeggione”
For Double Bass and Piano
A01201

This edition is based on the composer’s autograph score. The double bass part is in orchestral tuning, taking advantage of the similarities in tuning between the Arpeggione and double bass. All of the original slurs, dynamics, and articulations are maintained.

Tchaikovsky - Canzonetta
from the Violin Concerto, Op. 35
For Double Bass and Piano
A008

Some violinist may laugh at this… One of my colleagues, now retired , once sheepishly admitted having played this as a student. Make for a nice little bon bon.

Thar She Blows!

2008-12-04T18:30:00.000-06:00

Sorry, but due to non bass blog activities, I’ve managed to fall way behind again…

Mahler 2 is one of those ‘special’ events on the season schedule although it comes up almost every other season, or seems like it anyway. I’m always happy to see Mahler 2 programmed though, mainly because it reminds me of one of my favorite pieces, the Berio Sinfonia, which doesn’t come up nearly often enough unfortunately.

Haitink’s laissez-faire approach certainly has its merits, especially when applied to the large forms. When signing on for a long sea voyage you want a captain whose feet are firmly planted on deck, eyes forward, piercing the fog, steering a steady course towards the distant shore, not a man who frets and throws tantrums over every last rivet, or wastes time reshuffling the deck chairs while the ship drifts idly with the current. Then again, Mahler 2 has a lot of rivets holding it together. During the performances I found myself a little nervous about how many could pop before we all ended up in Davy Jones’ Locker. Fortunately, it seemed like we got home safe and dry every night.

There were a couple of complementary factors at play necessitating I sit behind the low brass for this concert. In the final analysis, it turned out to be an enjoyable, enlightening vantage point looking over their shoulders, although, to be fair, you could say the same thing about a firing squad. Nevertheless, I was able to observe firsthand some of the delicate valve-work involved and precision playing on display. As a bass player, I can certainly appreciate how moving something a matter of inches might still qualify as a minor adjustment. As always, the results were impressive.

Not so fast!

2008-11-23T06:44:00.002-06:00

Ok, so the fellow who tried to sell me a stereo must be working for Gramophone Magazine…

***

Glinka - Overture to Ruslan and Ludmila
Rachmaninov - Symphony No. 3
Tchaikovsky - Piano Concerto No. 1
Ludovic Morlot, conductor
Simon Trpceski, piano

Ludovic Morlot kind of sounds like the name for a Harry Potter-esque villain. In truth he’s a capable stick man and couldn’t be a nicer fellow, maybe too nice. Sadly, there’s a certain nastiness quotient necessary for a conductor to achieve real greatness. But the entire program had a kind of lightweight summer season feel to it anyway.

We used to have a guy here (music director, I think – name escapes me) who frequently programmed the Glinka Overture to Ruslan and Ludmila as an encore and took it really, really, really fast – maybe even too fast, but who am I to say. He also had the habit of hiding the baton when taking the final curtain call so he could leap onto the podium and astonish the crowd by starting the encore unexpectedly. One day while on tour I had a concert off and decided to attend – well OK, I felt forced to attend, a story in itself having something to do with a purloined ticket, somebody’s ‘girlfriend’, our former manager, and me ending up in a position where I felt I had to attend the concert or risk reprobation. Nevertheless, during the applause I noticed a colleague on stage had closed the music folder, loosened his bow and stuck it under the strings (something we bass players do when it’s time to go) obviously thinking he was all done for the evening. “Uh oh!” I thought as I saw the music director fellow emerging from the wings, the baton cleverly concealed along his sleeve while my colleague had his head turned, putting the cover on his rosin or something. Leaping onto the podium the Maestro gave a quick fire downbeat that appeared to take about a third of the orchestra by surprise, especially my colleague who spent almost the entire first page (of a thee page piece) scrambling to get the music out of the folder and the bow out from under the strings. Obsessed as I am with rapid egress, I definitely felt there but by the grace of (whoever) go I.

High Fidelity

2008-11-09T11:43:00.003-06:00

High Fidelity audio is another thing to get nostalgic about, what with the now ubiquitous I pods and compressed audio winning the day.

When I first joined the orchestra the thing to do (or so I became convinced) was to shop for an expensive audio system. Reasonably, it seemed an essential accessory for the serious professional musician, not to mention a sizeable tax-deduction. I consented to accompanying a colleague to one of those stuffy audio places – where they take you into a soundproofed room, offer something to drink, sit you down in a comfy leather chair and proceed to push thousands of dollars worth of audio equipment.

I confess to being something of a skeptic when it comes to high-end audio gear – maybe you could call me decidedly lo-fi – probably how I’ve managed to tolerate playing the double bass all these years. Anyway, the preoccupation with minute details of the performance of various audio components always struck me as somehow antithetical to the spirit of music making, a worship of the simulacrum in place of the original. Not that I celebrate the Ipod-ization of the world either. The audiophile sitting alone in his soundproofed room, curtains drawn against the day, glass of scotch in hand, listening to a long dead conductor’s account of an even longer dead composer is as alarming as the urban hipsters on the subway who stumble over one another, each wrapped in a private world of sound, oblivious to the life passing before their glazed eyes. Each signals the act of listening to music in a group as a shared cultural experience might be in some trouble. But whatever, that merely goes to show I approached the process of buying a stereo with a bit of cynicism.

The salesman had an agenda. I don’t remember the models, but he was pushing a certain brand of amplifier, mostly by denigrating the less costly ones. During his presentation I continued protesting I couldn’t really hear the difference so I might as well go with the less expensive item.

After going back and forth a few times he invited me to make a choice. In part to rankle him, I pointed to one of the cheaper models.

“That is actually very well selling,” he said with calculated derision. “It suits the popular taste.” And then to the barely contained mirth of my colleague and me, he began digging his own grave, so to speak. “It’s like the XSO.” (Using the name of the orchestra I play for) “Oh, they may have a lot of Grammys,” he dismissively waved a hand, “but their sound is crass, unsophisticated, like this.” He pointed to the amplifier I had chosen while my colleague and I bit our tongues. “This is something a man off the street might mistake for quality, just like the XSO. But this,” indicating the more expensive model “is like the Concertgebouw, much more sophisticated. People who don’t know anything might not be able appreciate the polish, the tradition…”

I’m not sure of everything he said, but the salesman proceeded to lay it on thick, bashing the XSO, uplifting the Concertgebouw in comparing the two the amplifiers while we remained silent. My colleague later confessed to growing angry somewhere along the way, but I wanted to see how deep a hole the guy would dig, and also because I wasn’t sure I could have opened my mouth without laughing.

Perhaps mistaking our silence for tacit approval, he moved in for the kill, asking me if, knowing all that, I sill wished to throw my lot in with the crass, the unsophisticated, the man-on-the-street, with the XSO!

I think I blurted out something along the lines that none of the items on offer recreated the sound of the concert hall anyway, which only brought on a tirade. Eventually, he ended up with a finger in my face. “You,” he said “you don’t sit and listen to a live orchestra every day of your life, do you!”

I’m not even sure how we broke the news we both played for the XSO. By then I felt a little guilty having let the charade drag on so long. But my guilt proved entirely misplaced as a really astonishing thing happened. Only a brief shadow crossed his face, a wisp of cloud passed before the sun. Like the inner party member in Orwell’s 1984 handed a slip of paper in mid speech informing him we are now at war with East Asia, not Eurasia (I may have that reversed), the salesman turned on dime.

“Well,” he said, “the XSO is a wonderful ensemble, I’m sure you have many fine players there, it’s just so horribly mismanaged!”

The concert I tried to hate…but couldn’t

2008-10-31T09:56:00.000-05:00

The Inca Trail

(Name Redacted) Symphony Orchestra
Jessica Warren-Acosta, Andean flutes
Kenneth Olsen, cello
Miguel Harth-Bedoya, conductor

It may come as a surprise to discover a number of orchestra musicians less than perfectly satisfied all of the time. For some, displeasure with the goings on at hand is an essential piece of equipment, akin to the gunslinger’s six-shooter. For them, it is best not take to the open range (or the stage, as we call it) without an ammo belt fully loaded with invective, holster flap unbuttoned, ready to fire from the hip an ill-considered complaint, a fusillade of perfunctory condemnation at the first sign of trouble.

Right off the bat, I confess to joining up with many a hastily assembled angry posse, riding down an innocent composer, conductor, program, concert venue, or what-have-you, and stringing them up from the nearest tree without a second thought.

In that spirit, I took notice of the Inca Trail program – a collection of South American music performed with a video projection – and immediately took a disliking to it. My knee-jerk objections were not to the continent of South America or its music, but more to my own dislike of playing another ‘concert’ in the dark, background music to a slideshow. My reaction to seeing one of those on the schedule is usually to tear my hair out. Unfortunately, the increasing frequency of these multimedia type shows has forced me to sport a crew cut year-round, literally to save my scalp from repeated, ravaging manual depilation.

As it turned out, the concert proved an entertaining evening, at least from my seat. Harth-Bedoya’s arrangements were mostly well done and a couple of the original modern works were captivating. Both soloists acquitted themselves admirably. Visual content in this type of programming can easily overwhelm and distract from the music. In this case, I thought the visuals were tastefully understated, as were Harth Bedoya’s (mercifully) brief comments between pieces.

The Ars Viva Mozart program proved a collection of pure gems. David Schrader is something of a local treasure, if I may say so. The delicate sound of his fortepiano made the audience (and even certain members of the orchestra) prick up their ears to listen, and it stood as a reminder of how much louder music has gotten in the last couple centuries. The concert, a strenuous affair to begin with, dragged on a bit for my taste – more than 2 ½ hours, including fully thirty minutes of speaking.

Ars Viva symphony Orchestra

Mozart Symphony No. 1 in E-flat, K. 16
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-flat, K. 456 (“Paradis”)
David Schrader, fortepiano
Mozart Ch’io mi scordi di te – Non temer, K. 505
Michelle Areyzaga, soprano
David Schrader, fortepiano
Mozart Symphony No. 36 in C, K. 425 (“Linz”)
Alan Heatherington, conductor

Nostalgia

2008-10-25T14:07:00.004-05:00

It was certainly nice to see Neeme Järvi back on the podium after many years away. True to form, he brought some interesting music to town – Taneyev, Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, not a bad piece really, and much more enjoyable than playing the same three Tchaikovsky symphonies over and over again. The first rehearsals began in somewhat muddled fashion and I wondered if my fond memories of Järvi were all wrong. But at the Saturday evening concert he seemed to be having a good time, doing one of his trademark overlong grand pauses while giving a little smile to the orchestra, bowing to the audience member who clapped enthusiastically between movements. A little wavelet of nostalgia overtook me – something I felt horribly self-conscious about until it struck me that my chosen profession is based almost entirely on obsessive infatuation with an idealized, unrecoverable past.

Anyhow, Järvi was a frequent guest here when I joined the orchestra and I always looked forward to the weeks he conducted, which more often than not included something new or unfamiliar. Large of frame and somewhat stiff in his mannerisms, a sly sort of playfulness always seemed to be bubbling away just below the surface of his stolid countenance, which made his playful antics all the more enjoyable. Unafraid of trying different things in performance, he could often get the orchestra to do more with a wink or a shrug than a lot of other conductors could achieve after hours of lecturing from the podium. Rumor has it (and I’m only too happy to spread it) he became unwelcome here after siding with musicians in a labor dispute somewhere (Philadelphia?). Our loss, really.

Järvi made recordings with us for (I think) Chandos. London Decca and the mighty Deutsche Grammophone always brought in loads of equipment, but Chandos seemed to be a smaller operation. Most notable to me as a newcomer were the red lights and telephones set before the podium during recording sessions – the phone for the maestro to confer with the recording engineers offstage and the red light to indicate when the tapes(!) were rolling. DG in particular had an expensive looking phone and mounted their red light on a burnished wooden box – stuff you might expect to see in commissioner Gordon’s office as he lunged for the Bat Phone. On the other hand, Chandos used what appeared to be an ordinary 100-watt light bulb with red cellophane taped around it. In the old green room, a lone engineer huddled over a DAT recorder about the size of a toaster.

I wonder if any of those outfits are still in business? Now, there are a few things to really get nostalgic about: recording sessions, records, CDs.

The orchestra used to assemble during the daytime and perform for the microphones, often repeating passages until things were just so. The recordings were imprinted on discs, things you could actually hold in your hand, which were sold in bright, cheery shops dedicated to the sale of music.

Well, the shops were mostly bright and cheery, that is until one ventured back to the classical section.

You could almost hear the vacuum seal of the airlock, the giant sucking sound as the glass door swung closed behind you. Here in the funeral parlor, music no more than a whisper. Mahler, Montiverdi, neither louder than acolytes, distant in their underground catacombs, chanting some grievous loss. A cymbal crash, barely audible – Wagner is dead. The lonely clerk looks over the top of half-rimmed glasses, eyes following you warily from behind a back issue of Audiophile Magazine. The CD cases rattle like bones as you flip them one by one – the moribund, the dead, the forgotten dead.

2008-10-16T19:10:00.000-05:00

Bass Blog Back!

Well, I finally heard from all five of my readers. There may be 68,000 odd hits on this page, but to be honest, about 57,995 of those were me obsessively checking to see if the page still existed and if anyone else had viewed it. Thanks to those who inquired about my health, which is no better, but certainly no worse than usual – I simply needed a break.

The performances last week of the Bruckner 5th Symphony have a great deal to do with my decision t start blogging again at this time. Letting a Bruckner 5 pass without comment would be like sitting at the breakfast table one sunny morning and watching the Hindenburg silently drift by without at least nudging one’s companion to look up from the newspaper. Fortunately, under the baton of replacement conductor Jaap van Zweden (filling in for the permanently absent Riccardo Chailly) Bruckner’s bloated masterpiece fared better than the similarly tumid German airship.

The Dutch violinist turned conductor spent more rehearsal time than normal dealing with the strings; in a work such as the Bruckner an endeavor akin to lifting up a stone at the beach, watching the various small crabs and other multi-legged creatures scuttle off in all directions, and then trying to coax them into marching single file across the sand. In spite of the ultimate futility of the effort, it was entertaining to watch. Needless to say, the stone was replaced at the performances with increasing force each night. Still, these were some of the better accounts of the piece I can recall. Too bad the audiences were consistently and depressingly small.

Week 48 Ravinia 06

2008-08-17T01:25:00.002-05:00

the end…of Ravinia 2008

Program A
MOZART The Abduction from the Seraglio, K. 384
Hanan Alattar, Constanze
Anna Christy, Blonchen
Topi Lehtipuu, Belmonte
Nicholas Phan, Pedrillo
Morris Robinson, Osmin
Michael York, Pasha
Apollo Chorus of Chicago
James Conlon, Conductor
Kevin Murphy, Continuo/Coach

Program B
MOZART Don Giovanni, K. 527
Ellie Dehn, Donna Anna
Soile Isokoski, Donna Elvira
Heidi Grant Murphy, Zerlina
Toby Spence, Don Ottavio
Ildebrando D’Arcangelo, Don Giovanni
Samuel Ramey, Leporello
James Creswell, Masetto
Morris Robinson, Commendatore
Apollo Chorus of Chicago
James Conlon, conductor
Kevin Murphy, Continuo/Coach

Monday
11-1:30 rehearsal (orchestra A)
2:30-5 rehearsal (orchestra B)

Tuesday
11-1:30 rehearsal (orchestra A)
2:30-5 rehearsal (orchestra B)

Wednesday
11-2:30 (orchestra A)
3:30-7 (orchestra B)

Thursday
7 program A

Friday
7 program B

Saturday
2 program A

Sunday
2 program B

This week the orchestra is split in two. Needless to say with my luck I ended relegated to orchestra B. Conlon, undertaking a quasi Barenboimian task, conducts both operas, showing up the instrumentalists who seem to require a day off now and then. Performances take place indoors in the small Martin Theater rather than whatever the place we normally play (outdoors) at Ravinia is called.

Usually with Mozart on the program I feel a mixture of anticipation and dread. I love classical (as opposed to romantic) music – but getting our orchestra to play it, bulked up as we are on a steady diet of Bruckner and Mahler, sometimes resembles coaxing a rhinoceros to play hopscotch. As expected, Conlon continued repeating requests for the orchestra to play more softly, to the point of instigating a minor mutiny. However, the singers seem to be singing quite loudly even in the confined space of the small indoor theater. The Commendatore actually obliterated the trombone section…not by dragging them down to the underworld as some of us had hoped but, improbably, by singing more loudly than they were playing. In the face of all that it became difficult to hear requests to play softly over and over again without getting a little miffed considering what the singers were doing at the edge of the stage.

Rehearsal time was at a premium, particularly for orchestra B, tasked with the longer of the two Operas. There wash barely enough time to play through all of the music in two rehearsals before the run-through, let alone time to make any corrections or discuss esoterica like phrasing, balance, or anything beyond the most basic strategies to keep all of the musicians in the same measure at the same time. In such an atmosphere it is generally agreed that paying attention, avoiding frivolous, non-essential questions and focusing on the most pressing issues at hand is of paramount importance. I can only guess what orchestra A was up to, but here is a little example of our rehearsal technique in orchestra B.

Conlon: I would like the downbeat of measure 102 to be short – for everyone. The entire orchestra, make the downbeat of measure 102 an eighth note. If you have a quarter note, please change it to an eighth. The downbeat of measure 102? Short please – an eighth rather than a quarter – for all instruments.

(less than a minute later, a question barked from the back of the orchestra – no raising hands or ‘excuse me Maestro’ in orchestra B!)

Musician X: Question! That note there, let’s see…. measure one-oh-two, that’s measure…one!…zero!…two! The downbeat – that’s the very first note in the measure – what do you want there? Do you want me to play a short note? I have a quarter note in my part – written in the part! – but I’m hearing eighth notes…

(and so on…)

All in all playing a Mozart Opera has been an interesting and enjoyable experience – something different at very least. Unquestionably it is glorious music and the cast is (in short) entertaining. In spite of some less than optimal conditions in the orchestra (the usual ones) I’m drawing a great deal of solace contemplating the plot of Don Giovanni, specifically the notion that excess, lurid flamboyance, insensitivity and the like, will eventually meet its day of reckoning.

Week 47 Ravinia 05

2008-08-14T10:36:00.000-05:00

Program A
WAGNER Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
SCHREKER Prelude to a drama, Die Gezeichneten
INTERMISSION
BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61
James Conlon, conductor
Miriam Fried, violin

Program B
DVORÁK Carnival Overture, Op. 92
GRIEG Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16
INTERMISSION
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67
James Conlon, conductor
Orion Weiss piano

Program C
BRAHMS Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80
BRAHMS Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77
INTERMISSION
BRAHMS Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68
James Conlon, conductor
Gil Shaham, violin

Monday
11-1:30 2:30-5 rehearsals

Tuesday
2:30-5 rehearsal
8 concert (A)

Wednesday
2:30-5 rehearsal
8 concert (B)

Thursday
2:30-5 rehearsal
8 concert (C)

Friday
off

Saturday
off

Sunday
off

OK, I’m way behind again…

This week ended up a bit differently than originally planned. Itzhak Perlman was supposed to play the Beethoven concerto and then conduct the next night. I’m not sure what happened to him, but I hope it’s nothing serious. One of the good results of all that was the replacement of the overplayed Beethoven 5th by the underplayed 1st.

Program A was played in reverse order, I believe at the request of Miriam Fried. I’m not sure if she wanted to hide behind the very loud cicadas (which tend to quiet down later in the evening), had somewhere else to be at 9 o’clock, or what. The resulting backwards program seemed a little strange. Whatever I think of the Breaking the Silence pieces, once I hear the composer’s life story, I’m always rooting for them. Having the Schreker Prelude followed by (of all things) Meistersinger was a bit of a Bambi Meets Godzilla mismatch that left me feeling a bit creepy afterwards.

The Thursday program was more light, breezy fare, suitable for a warm summer evening.

Week 46 Ravinia 04

2008-08-03T22:30:00.000-05:00

A
BEETHOVEN Overture to Fidelio, Op. 72c
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 73 (Emperor)
INTERMISSION
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55 (Eroica)
Sir Andrew Davis conductor Leon Fleischer piano

B
WILLIAMS The Olympic Spirit
WILLIAMS Theme from Jaws
WILLIAMS Bicycle Chase from E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial
WILLIAMS Main Theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind
WILLIAMS Theme from Jurassic Park
WILLIAMS Harry's Wondrous World from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
WILLIAMS March from Superman
WILLIAMS Theme from Schindler's List
WILLIAMS March from Raiders of the Lost Ark
INTERMISSION
WILLIAMS Flag Parade from The Phantom Menace (Star Wars Episode I)
WILLIAMS Anakin's Theme from The Phantom Menace (Star Wars Episode I)
WILLIAMS Duel of the Fates from The Phantom Menace (Star Wars Episode I)
WILLIAMS Across the Stars from Attack of the Clones (Star Wars Episode II)
WILLIAMS Battle of the Heroes from The Revenge of the Sith (Star Wars Episoe III)
WILLIAMS Princess Leia's Theme from A New Hope (Star Wars Episode IV)
WILLIAMS Imperial March (Darth Vader'sTheme) from The Empire Strikes Back (Star Wars Episode V)
WILLIAMS Yoda's Theme from The Empire Strikes Back (Star Wars Episode V)
WILLIAMS Parade of the Ewoks from Return of the Jedi (Star Wars Episode VI)
WILLIAMS Main Title from Star Wars
WILLIAMS Cantina Band from A New Hope (Star Wars Episode IV)
Erich Kunzel conductor The Chicago Chorale

C
HAYMAN Broadway Pops Opener
COHAN Medley
GERSHWIN 'Swonderful from Funny Face
GERSHWIN Mine from Let 'Em Eat Cake and Swanee from The Jazz Singer
WEILL Mack the Knife from The Threepenny Opera
PORTER Let's Do It from Paris
PORTER Night and Day from The Gay Divorcee
RODGERS Oh, What a Beautiful Morning from Oklahoma
RODGERS Honey Bun from South Pacific
RODGERS Climb Ev'ry Mountain from The Sound of Music
INTERMISSION
BERNSTEIN Selections from West Side Story
LOEWE I'll Go Home With Bonnie Jean from Brigadoon
LOEWE I Could Have Danced All Night from My Fair Lady
LEIGH The Impossible Dream from Man Of La Mancha
SHERMAN Medley from Mary Poppins
HAMLISCH One from A Chorus Line
KANDER Selections from Chicago
BERLIN God Bless America from Yip, Yip, Yaphank
Erich Kunzel conductor Aaron Lazar tenor Kathleen Brett soprano Michael Lowe baritone The Lakeside Singers

Monday
off

Tuesday
2:30-5 rehearsal

Wednesday
2:30-5 rehearsal
8 concert (A)

Thursday
off

Friday
2:30-5 rehearsal
8 concert (B)

Saturday
off

Sunday
12:30-3 rehearsal
5 concert (C)

This is all one week out of date. Sorry.

Sometime the rotation gods smile, other times they are cruel, and then there are those times when they smile cruelly. Due to some reshuffling of personnel, I end up off both Pops programs listed above. However, in trade I end up with the uncomfortable chore of playing one of the Mozart Operas in two weeks (can you guess which one?). Unfortunately, that’s all I can say about that.

Last week (45) ended with a great deal of excitement. As often as possible, I ride my bicycle to Ravinia. The only problem with that, beside the odd thunderstorm, is dealing with the parking lot personnel, who I believe are instructed to behave cruelly towards the orchestra. Musicians are given a parking pass for their car but nothing to identify a bike. This summer I’ve experienced a rising level of harassment as I arrive at rehearsals, everything from the unfriendly ‘Can I help you?’ (No) to the yelled ‘No Bikes in the Park!’ This time I made the mistake of answering ‘May I help you?’ with ‘No, I’m here for the rehearsal,’which I though might prove adequate to placate the guy bearing down on me in his little golf cart as I whizzed past. (No true cyclist wants to slow down for anything, let alone a rude question.) Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him pull a quick U-turn (for a golf cart) and actually come chasing after me. He attempted a maneuver probably learned from watching one too many cop shows – pulling alongside and then trying to swerve directly in front of me. At that point I gave in and stopped, figuring two wheeled contraptions usually come out the worse after a run-in with four wheelers. The guy actually seemed disappointed when I convinced him I played in the orchestra, meaning I had to be there.

I wonder if he is the same guy who put a dent in my car. Here is a link to that post.

In an appeal to the prurient interest, I have left the orchestra initials unexpurgated! Those were the days…

Week 46, concert A (all I played that week) had the odd, jarring overture in E major fronting the rest of the concert which was in E flat. The program went on until 10:15, so there was another reason to scrap Fidelio. One of the two rehearsals for that program was entirely superfluous. Davis had us show up on Wednesday and rehearse for 45 minutes before realizing he had nothing else to say. Spending almost five hours waiting for a concert to begin is not my idea of a productive use of anybody’s time. I’m not sure if my nap on the cement floor under the stage was worse for my back or my disposition. I think the concert was OK, but I’ve already forgotten.

Week 45 Ravinia 03

2008-07-22T09:16:00.001-05:00

A
MENDELSSOHN Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64
INTERMISSION
MAHLER Symphony No. 7
James Conlon conductor
Sarah Chang violin

B
MAHLER Symphony No. 8 in E-flat Major, (Symphony of a Thousand)
James Conlon conductor
[Redacted] Symphony Chorus
Chicago Children’s Choir
Milwaukee Symphony Chorus

C
BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15
INTERMISSION
DVORÁK Symphony No. 7 in D Minor, Op. 70
James Conlon conductor
Jorge Federico Osorio piano

Monday
off

Tuesday
11-1:30 rehearsal

Wednesday
2:30-5 rehearsal
8 concert (A)

Thursday
11-1:30 2:30-5 rehearsals

Friday
off

Saturday
2-4:30 rehearsal
7:30 concert (B)

Sunday
12-3 rehearsal
5 concert (C)

Last week ran the gamut. Haitink and Lang Lang – it’s hard to think of them as part of the same profession.

Haitink’s Mahler 6, excellent as it was, served more to bring to mind the sort of performances we used to give here regularly. Kudos to Andrew Patner for making the same point with more eloquence.

Apparently the Gala concert went beautifully, not to mention on time and on budget, a healthy change from the not so distant past.

The Sunday concert was a weird amalgamation of the Schreker Chamber Symphony, part of Conlon’s earnest Breaking the Silence series, and Lang Lang playing a couple of warhorses, the entire lurid spectacle projected onto huge screens. As my attention inevitably wandered, I caught sight of audience members in the center section craning their necks to look at the screens rather than focusing on the stage straight ahead.

The high point of the week had to come during rehearsals for the Schrecker, when a colleague, asking for an emphatic cutoff from Conlon, made an unfortunate word choice and instead asked the Maestro if he could ‘whack us off’. Fortunately that sort of thing doesn’t happen too often.

What's in a name?

2008-07-21T13:03:00.000-05:00

I have a much uglier word for it, Sir: Misappropriation.
-Waylon Smithers

Here’s an interesting excerpt from our contract.

Section 25.18 CSO Name.

(a)

The designation “Chicago Symphony”, “Chicago Symphony Orchestra”, “Members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra”, “CSO”, or any similar designation may not be used by any Member or Members unless in connection with an event under the auspices of the Association or any subcontractor of the Association or unless to identify a recognized ensemble existing as of September 17, 1979, which has been using such designation. Any unauthorized use will be resisted by the Association.

I wonder if anyone on our players’ committee has seen this:

Week 44 Ravinia 02

2008-07-14T21:00:00.000-05:00

A
Mahler Symphony No. 6 in A Minor
Bernard Haitink conductor

B
Gala Benefit Evening
Schreker Intermezzo
R. Strauss Morgen, Op. 27, No. 4
R. Strauss Ständchen from Sechs Lieder Op. 17
R. Strauss Zueignung, Op. 10, No. 1 Canteloube
Three selections from Chants d’Auvergne
Canteloube Bailero
Canteloube La Delaissado
Canteloube Lo Fiolaire
Puccini Two selections from La bohème
Puccini Si, mi chiamano Mimì
Puccini Donde lieta usci
Cilea “Io son l’umile ancella” from Adriana Lecouvreur
Kiri Te Kanawa soprano
James Conlon conductor

C
Schreker Chamber Symphony
Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue
Chopin Andante Spianato in G Major, Op. 22
Chopin Grand Polonaise in E-flat Major, Op. 22
Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18
Lang Lang piano
James Conlon conductor

Monday
off

Tuesday
11-1:30 rehearsal

Wednesday
2:30-5 rehearsal
8 concert (A)

Thursday
11-1:30 rehearsal

Friday
off

Saturday
1:30-4 rehearsal
7 concert (B)

Sunday
12:30-3
5 concert (C)

Beethoven 7 (last week) and Mahler 6 (this week) were both performed at Orchestra Hall during the 2007-2008 season - the Haitink/Mahler 6 is an exact repeat (same piece/same conductor). Come to think of it, we played Mahler 6 with Conlon at Ravinia last summer as well, so it is hard to say who is copying whom. Sometimes I wish the two organizations were a little (more) cooperative.

I do feel sorry for Haitink though. The forecast calls for 93 degrees on Wednesday. Amsterdam is expecting a high of 65.

Last year the Ravinia management exhibited a great deal of paranoid preoccupation with the 17-year cicadas. But if you take a look at their website, the background image looks suspiciously like a blue swarm of winged insects. Every time you navigate from one page to another, the swarm takes over for an instant, only to be overwritten by Ravinia content – but the bugs are still there underneath, silently waiting for another 16 years.

Fortunately, I have the Gala (Saturday) off this year. Although the program doesn’t look all that bad, galas still drive me nuts with all the speeches, curtain calls, flowers, encores and whatnot. The only thing I’ll miss will be the annual overtime bonanza.

The two hour interval between rehearsal and concert (rather than the usual three) on Sunday is certainly a step in the right direction.

Week 43 – Ravinia 01

2008-07-09T12:07:00.000-05:00

program A
SMITH The Star-Spangled Banner
ENESCU Romanian Rhapsody in A Major, Op. 11, No. 1
SIBELIUS Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47
INTERMISSION
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92
Leonard Slatkin conductor
Joshua Bell violin

program B
RACHMANINOV Vocalise, Op. 34, No. 14
RACHMANINOV Symphonic Dances, Op. 45
INTERMISSION
RACHMANINOV Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30
Leonard Slatkin conductor
Denis Matsuev piano

Monday
off

Tuesday
11-1:30 2:30-5 rehearsals

Wednesday
2:30-5 rehearsal
8 concert (A)

Thursday
2:30-5 rehearsal
8 concert (B)

Friday
off

Saturday
off

Sunday
off

This is where the pro forma statement about how nice it is to be back belongs.

Welz Kaufman’s welcoming remarks to the orchestra were brief enough that anyone blinking (or stifling a yawn) surely missed them. He left the official pleasantries to the chairperson of the Ravinia board who greeted us graciously. The usual offering of cake prompted the usual grumbling about the quality of the cake. Apparently in the ‘old days’ even free cake tasted better than it does today.

Once again, the white jacket failed to make it to the cleaners before the start of Ravinia. Its predecessor was discarded after two decades of similar shameful neglect. In fact, ‘white’ doesn’t really do justice to the color of that garment, which by the end of its useful life took on the color (and more alarmingly, the texture) of a slice of Wonder Bread snatched from the toaster after about 30 seconds. As always, the plan to play the entire summer in the same (allegedly) white shirt is in effect, but the ever-shrinking Ravinia season makes this hardly an accomplishment worth boasting about any more.