Switching from Flute to Violin

I started playing the violin when I was 7 and stopped playing at around 11. I always wanted to go back to it, but it took a long time to muster up the courage. At age 32 I started from "scratch." I figured that if I practiced for ten years, I would be an adequate violinist at 42. If I didn't start at 32, I would still be 42 in ten years. Now at age 47 I have played for 15 years, and I play as well as an average graduate student at a conservatory. I'm very proud of what I have accomplished.

Sometimes people are amazed that I switched from being a professional-quality flutist (I say professional quality because I didn't have a professional job as a flutist at the time) to being a beginning violinist at the age of 32. I believe that it is the best personal "move" I have ever made. It was also very easy to do.

When I moved to our small university town in 1985 I was welcomed as a flutist. It seems that they hadn't ever had a decent flute player in these parts, but I was a decent flutist without a master's degree, so I was unable to be hired by the university when the flutist who was here suddenly decided to leave town. I taught the students, but when it came time to hiring for the job here I guess I didn't have the necessary credentials.

Not being able to teach at the local university significantly narrowed down my chances of gainful employment, but the reason that I never got a master's degree in flute performance was that I didn't want to teach flute at a university. I didn't believe that it was ethical to teach flutists that if they had talent and practiced a lot they could make a living playing the flute. Even with all the practicing I did and all the talent that any person could want, I had a great deal of trouble trying to get work in Boston and in New York before I moved away; and the work I did get was not enough to even think of trying to make a living from. It had nothing to do with the quality of my playing, and had everything to do with knowing people (especially contractors) and being available. There was also relatively little work for flutists, and that work always went to people who had been around and connected for a long time. I know very few freelance flutists living in New York or Boston who make a decent living solely from their playing.

It seems that the moment I became a string player I had people to play with. The day the university orchestra director heard that I bought a violin (it might have been a day or two after I bought it), he came over to my house with orchestra music for me. I didn't even need to ask. The music was way above my violinistic head: Stravinsky's Firebird, but I did my best to try to play the second violin part. I continued playing violin in the orchestra until I bought a viola at a garage sale (really! It cost me $100 and it is a very reliable instrument) and started playing viola in the university orchestra. Then I started playing viola in a string quartet, and now I'm practicing the violin--finally getting some technique, and learning the violin repertoire. I'm playing viola in a couple of orchestras in a city about an hour's drive away, and I'm having a wonderful time. When I reflect on what my life would have become if I hadn't taken the steps to do what I always wanted to do, I shudder.

Tags: classical music, adult beginner, violin, flute

Dora Schwarzberg

I just listened to a great recording by violinist Dora Schwarzberg and pianist Martha Argerich (Franck, Debussy, and Schumann on avanticlassic). My fascination with Schwarzberg and Argerich led me to a page on a Italian radio site that has links to a bunch of what seem to be radio performances of sonatas and chamber music made between 2002 and 2006. I'm listening to the Beethoven 10th Sonata right now.

Tags: Violin, Dora Schwarzberg, classical music, Martha Argerich, piano

Being Self Sufficient

I guess that most musicians depend on the opinions of other musicians to somehow validate what they are doing. We all seek approval, and those of us who are trying to do something worthwhile put a lot of stock in our impact on others. Sometimes that means getting validation from sources that are unable or unwilling to give it. And if we get some validation, we sometimes don't believe it because we are all aware of our own weaknesses and our own place on the path of where we would like to be some day.

This has been my problem for my whole musical life. I remember when I started playing flute I used to ask my brother if he thought I had improved. He listened to me practice every day for hours on end, so he had about as much objectivity as I had. All he could tell me was that he noticed when I changed the order of the things I practiced. My parents also had their subjective positions relative to their own musical and parental insecurities. When I asked Julius Baker, my teacher at Juilliard, if he thought I had any talent, he told me to see a psychiatrist. Being a dutiful student, I did. The psychiatrist and I talked mostly about my difficulties with my teacher not paying much attention to me at what usually turned out to be group lessons. I think that my psychiatrist believed, in his heart of objective hearts, that I was probably not worth paying attention to as a musician. He came to a recital I gave (which was really quite good), and then he totally changed the tone of the therapy, aiming for more Freudian ways of using my parents' insurance company's money.

So, now as an adult I am often in the position to validate the work of others. I do it as a reviewer, as a program annotator, as a teacher, as a parent, as a spouse, as a chamber music partner, and as a friend. I'm actually quite good at it because I have had to be self-sufficient for so much of my developing life. I have even sought out opportunities to do it, sometimes blurting things out when I am not even asked.

I also have to do it for myself. Most people know me as a person of rather strong opinions, and most people imagine that I don't need to have them validate the work that I do. Maybe I don't, but then again, like everyone else in the world, I have an "inner child" who wishes that every ball that I throw into the world will come back at me, that every review or article I write is a potential conversation, that every piece I write is something that people will enjoy playing and listening to.

Maybe there is no real self-sufficiency when it comes to music. So we just plug away, working in isolation, and hoping for some kind of connection with the outside world. We keep ourselves in the company of great musical minds, having most of our musical intimacy with people who are no longer alive, people who have been kind enough to leave something of their musical selves for us to play. And we keep looking for people who understand the importance of communicating honestly through music.

Tags: Classical Music

Automated Musical Comedy Orchestras

Last night I had my first experience watching a musical comedy with the accompaniment of a pre-recorded synthesized "orchestra." We have explicit laws covering copyright protection, and in a better world we would have laws to protect the shows themselves by not allowing performances of musical comedies to be done with "sound tracks." There were, of course, other problems with the show I saw last night. It was put on by a group of rather inexperienced actors and actressess who did not have any vocal training and could not really dance. Their collective missing of the mark was not funny, and it was only enhanced by their vocal and physical robotic responses to the ersatz sound track.

Isn't it worth all the time, effort, and money that people put into a show to at least hire a pianist? Or maybe it would be better for a troupe like this to perform in front of a synthesized audience.

Tags: musical comedy, synthesized orchestra

The Joy of the Fuddy-Duddy Concert

This week I had the opportunity to play a symphony concert that was made entirely of standard repertoire. It began with a Dvorak overture that was followed by the Brahms Violin Concerto, and after intermission we played the Schumann Spring Symphony. The program was well thought out, the program notes gave the progam a sense of continuity, and the performance was satisfying in every way. The solo violinist in the Brahms was Eva Leon, an up-and-coming soloist from the Canary Islands, the conductor and program annotator was Steven Larson, and the orchestra was the Champaign-Urbana Symphony. I was playing with the orchestra for the first time, and really enjoyed being in its viola section.

I remember going to concerts like this in the 1970s and even in the 1980s, before it became necessary to "reach out" to the audience, before there was competition for the "leisure dollar." The audience for this concert was small: the hall was filled to about half its capacity. The concert was also on a week night. The people who came to the concert came because they wanted to hear the music. They also came because it was a concert by their local orchestra--an orchestra that, as far as I'm concerned, plays better than some professional-but-local orchestras I have have heard in larger cities.

Tags: Brahms Violin Concerto

Match Point

I saw the movie "Match Point" on DVD the other night, and to the film's credit, I have been unable to get "Una furtiva lagrima," from Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore out of my head. It annoyed me that the Caruso recording Woody Allen used in the film always started from the second verse, but I was very impressed with the way the images in the film and the music (arias from various operas with various plots that could be connected with some of the emotional or narrative substance of the plot) went together. My favorite visual moment was when a tennis ball "paused" over the net while Caruso held a note for as long as he wanted to hold it. The rubato on the recording, though it was something that Caruso determined at the moment, was a fixed entity. The film (and our perception of gravity itself) had to be manipulated for the two elements to work together. When music takes priority, wonderful things can happen.

I liked the visual and musical aspects of the film, but I would have preferred a script with dialogue that sounded more plausible. Much of the dialogue could have been left out, because it just stated the obvious.

Well, I'm off to listen to Giuseppe Di Stefano's 1944 recording of the Donizetti (plus a whole bunch of other great tenor arias). And I'll finally get to hear the first verse.

Tags: Caruso, Donizetti, Match Point, Woody Allen, Opera, Di Stefano

The Best of All Possible Music Schools

After reading Eric Edberg's very interesting post about listening to the same audition pieces over and over, I started thinking about how I would run auditions and classes at my ideal music school.

Since I do not have any aspirations to become an academic musician in the conventional sense of the word, I feel free to think as far "out of the box" as I want. Because I am operating completely in the realm of my imagination, my school would provide tuition, healthy vegan-friendly food, and housing for all students without charge. Nobody would be able to stay longer than four years, so everybody would have to make the most of their time. There would be between 200 and 300 students in the school--enough for a symphony orchestra, an opera orchestra, a chorus, and enough pianists to keep everyone happy. The setting would be rural, but it would be within a half-hour's journey (either by car or by public transportation) from a major city. The faculty would be well paid, and they would be able to come in from the city if they choose, or they could live on campus. If they have late rehearsals or concerts, they would always have a place to sleep on campus.

The school would be supported by concerts put on by the students and faculty at the school, generous gifts from music lovers everywhere, and grants from a government that understands the importance of music in our culture and thinks of education as a priority towards achieving world peace (don't laugh, it's my fantasy). All the "work" on campus would be done by the students, except in the case of building repairs where a professional would need to be called in.

Students applying for the school would be expected to know the chamber music repertoire for their instrument. They could be students of any age who have finished high school. Auditions would be held year-round, and would consist of chamber music reading sessions with the faculty, playing an unprepared piece of music from that instrument's repertoire--something that the person auditioning should know anyway. In addition to playing chamber music with the faculty, students would have to have an understanding of music history, understand the origins of their instruments, and know the recorded legacy of their instrument. To prove their understanding of music, they would have to write several essays written on specific topics, but geared towards subjects that would be relevant to their instrument. These would need to be extremely well written and would need to show the kind of devotion necessary for a music student to stand tall in a world that is generally not interested in anything that matters to them. There would also be an interview, followed by more playing, if the person seems a likely candidate for the school, and there would be a waiting list.

The course of study would be varied, but everyone would have a daily hour of slow practice. The motto for this hour would be "no quarter notes over the speed of 60 beats per second," and everyone would develop a beautiful sound. Students could practice scales, exercises, or music, but everything would have to be slow. In addition to courses about music, there would be courses in literature, poetry, and art, and people interested in science and math could audit courses at a City university for credit.

Everybody would have to learn to teach, and part of the coursework would be for each student to go into the city once a week and hold an improvisation class with children who were interested in music. At the end of the school year (or maybe at intervals during the school year), there would be a city festival showcasing all the different improvisation groups. The students could also teach private lessons during their city day, but the money would all go to the music school. For their entire four years at school they wouldn't have to use any kind of currency.

In addition to teaching children, the students in the school would be expected to go into the City and introduce their peers to the joys of listening to music and going to classical music concerts. Maybe the idea would really catch on, and we could have schools like this all over the country.

Tags: utopia, classical music, music school, pipe dreams

Mozart Opera Action Figures?

Last night I went to a fantastic production of Mozart's Don Giovanni in Bloomington Indiana. This morning I was struck with a rather wacky idea to introduce opera to kids: Opera Action Figures. If I were an enterprising person (and if I knew how) I would form a company, hire a great costume designer, and go into business.

Just imagine children (or adults) listening to operas on CD, learning to identify characters, and "staging" operas at home. There could be interactive "kits" to build small stages, and panels that could be made into sets. Nothing would be as technically elaborate as puppet operas, but there could be a lot of room for making characters "modular." The characters could be supplied with costume changes (and masks, when necessary) that snap on to their little plastic bodies. They could even have little holes where their feet are, and the stage could have little groves so that the can move while they sing (being controlled by sticks that go through the grooves in the stage and go into the bottoms of the individual action figures).

The action figures could be sold in opera "kits." Don Giovanni only has 8 principal players, so its kit would consist of 8 figures (including a "stone guest"). The "stone guest" would be the only figure that would not be able to work in any other opera (being a statue representing a dead Commendatore), but the other characters could also double as extras in other operas. The kits could also come with large sheets of paper and mounting frames so that people could design their own sets. There could be instructions about different kinds of media that can be used--watercolor, crayon, colored pencil, charcoal, and collage. Some clever person could even design an easy way to mount the sets on rollers, which could snap onto the frames. The kits could come with suggestions for making props (out of clay, maybe?), and set pieces (tables and beds).

I imagine that any parent buying this kind of thing for their children would end up playing with them as well. Gee, the kids might even want to go to actually see an opera, once they know the characters and the arias. They might become experts on staging and set design before they are even old enough to read the super titles. Before that they might just sing everything in Italian. Or German. Or French.

Imagine the action figure set for Wagner's Ring! The kits could be geared for different age ranges, with the more "adult" operas saved for later adolescents or adults. My mind races at the thought of the set of action figures for Salome.

Tags: Mozart, opera, action figures, Don Giovanni, toys, classical music, musical toys

Beethoven played by the Iraq National Symphony

This New York Times article about the Iraq National Symphony Orchestra tells about the tragic situation in that country for musicians. Hearing the orchestra play Beethoven on an "audio slide show" link on the page made me cry. The quality of the playing is not high: it clearly reflects the fact that the musicians are not allowed to practice their instruments, but the emotional content of their performance is extraordinary.

Good Enough Never Is

About ten years ago I was in the strange position of being able to invite Debbi Fields, the founder of Mrs. Field's Cookies, to the local university. It was when I worked at the university radio station, and during a time when there was a bit of fire damage, I was put in charge of organizing a fund raiser. Because the sister television station was airing a Mrs. Fields cooking show, hosted by Debbi herself, I thought it would be a great idea to have her talk at our fund-raising party, and serve desserts from her cookbook with dinner. Somehow it managed to work, and everything was a great success. We even duped Debbi Fields into thinking that we had a functional station, even though we all knew that it was a quagmire of dysfunction.

Her big motivational talk was about the idea of excellence, that "good enough never is." In walks of life and professions other than music, this is something of a revelation. In music the reality that "good enough never is" is something that practicing musicians face every day, with every note. It's not good enough to play well once--you have to be able to do it again, and you have to be able to do it on demand, not just when you feel like it. And no matter how well you play a piece, there are people who will play it better. No matter how much insight you have and how much structural knowledge you have, there are people who have more. Once you get beyond the age of 12 or so, there are always people who are younger than you, who can play as well as you can, or better. After a good concert, it's back to square one, back to getting the strength to play as well again. The response of an audience is short-lived, because the real excitement of music fades away as soon as the concert is over.

But then again, the idea that "good enough never is" keeps us fascinated with exploring the possibilities of nuance and bow changes, and it allows us to open our ears and try to hear more counterpoint, more voices, and more in the way of orchestration when we play in ensembles. It helps us to listen more closely to music that cannot be improved upon (like most of Bach's music, most of Mozart's music, most of Haydn's music, and most of Beethoven's music, to give a few examples) and learn to ride a stream of musical thought that goes far beyond just playing well or trying to write music that is meaningful.

I really got a kick out of meeting Debbi Fields. Now if she would just start making a line of vegan cookies, that would be really exciting. I'll be happy to let her know if they are good enough.

Tags: Mrs. Fields, vegan cookies, classical music

Practicing Debussy

I am finally coming to terms with my double life. I have decided that it is morally and ethically correct for me to switch from violin to viola whenever I want to, and that it is fine to enjoy everything there is to enjoy about both instruments. Actually, what I enjoy most (on either instrument) is to cross the bridge between not being able to do something--to play a passage or a piece--and being able to play it.

Tonight the challenge is Debussy. My pianist friend and I have a recital set up for Mozart's Birthday (January 27th--his 201st), and in addition to a bunch of Mozart, we're playing the Debussy Sonata. I have an old French edition without any fingerings or bowings, so I am totally on my own to figure out what to do. I thought of cheating--watching some of the Indianapolis Finalists who have their recitals archived on the IVCI website--but I'm not going to even watch (or listen) until I have figured out everything for myself.

Working on this piece seems to tighten the screws in my brain. It makes me get sounds out of the violin that are actually violin-like. A year ago I played violin like a violist, embracing the darkness of the lower register and avoiding any resonance on the E String. Now I think I might even pass as a violinist.

Tags: Debussy, violin, viola, classical music

Shostakovich Birthday Tribute

Yesterday's Los Angeles Times has a perfect birthday tribute to Dmitri Shostakovich written by Miles Hoffman. If the LA Times link does not get you to the article, try Arts and Letters Daily and look at the column on the left, under "Articles of Note." If Shostakovich were alive he would be celebrating his 100th birthday today, but since he died in 1975 we'll all just have to do the celebrating for him (and we are).

After Indianapolis

The people who run the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis work for four years in order to make the event happen once every four years. I can easily say that it is worth all the effort, and that it's even worth the wait.

I arrived in Indianapolis in the middle of last week, in the thick of tremendous excitement: the beginning of the final round. It seemed like the entire music-loving population of Indianapolis, plus violinists and music lovers from around the world, were all focused on one thing: listening to six highly accomplished violinists play. The energy was tremendous, and people who had been listening to the previous rounds of the competition had developed serious personal feelings about the people playing.

There were IVCI flags all over the downtown, and a huge amount of community pride. I met wonderful people, and I could talk with them about what I heard--even at intermission. The vioinlists were so good and so different from one another, that we in the audience could disagree on matters of taste and style, and still find common ground. And everyone was happy to say what they thought. In normal life people tend not to say what they think, for fear of offending someone or exposing themselves as ignorant. The audience in Indianapolis was so used to listening critically, that talking about the music came quite naturally. And everyone was equally enthusiastic about Augustin Hadelich.

I feel for the judges. I couldn't imagine keeping quiet about what I heard both on line and in person. They were not allowed to talk with one another about any of the performances while the competition was still going on, and they had to do it day after day for two weeks. All of them are such upstanding professionals that I'm sure they stuck to their vow of silence. What a relief it must have been to finally be able to talk about the violinists--after it was all over, when everyone was planning to go their separate ways, back to their normal lives.

I left Indianapolis early in the morning after the end of the competition. For me it felt the way it feels when a circus rolls into town, puts on a great show, and then packs up and leaves. It is very sad, but the memory of the event seems to linger. I'm hoping that the sad part of this sweet sadness passes, and that I will be reminded of the 2006 IVCI every time I get a chance to hear the finalists play concerts in the "real world" or get to hear their recordings.

Tags: IVCI, Indianapolis Violin Competition, violin

Proud Mom

Last night my 17-year-old son Ben Leddy and his friend Bryn Rich gave a performance at his high school variety show (Ben is the one on the right side of the screen with the high baritone voice). Bryn's mother videotaped it and put it on YouTube, and I'm putting it here.

Indianapolis Finals: Size matters

I have been waiting to write about being in Indianapolis for the finals of the competition until after the competition was finished. I am very pleased that Augustin Hadelich won the gold medal and the use of the Gingold Strad, but like nearly everyone I have talked with, I am baffled by the computerized results of the judges' decisions for the ranking of the other finalists. I imagine that many of the judges are baffled as well. What matters to me is that Hadelich will be able to use a first-rate instrument, and that he will have a chance at a real solo career. He is an extremely special musician on top of being a first-rate violinist.

I am grateful to this competition for introducing me to Yura Lee (yes, I go to meet her--she is an absolutely delightful person, and her superb musicianship reflects her personality completely). I believe that she has an original and necessary voice as a violinist, and I know that other violinists and other music lovers were moved and inspired by her performances in every round of the competition. For me her playing represents a living ideal of music making for all the right reasons: to engage performers and listeners in a kind of dance. She is a very generous musician, and she gives of herself in a very unselfish way. Because of her small size she has to work twice as hard as violinists with larger hands and longer arms. She is a physically small person, but she is a very large musician. Seeing such a small person make such large musical gestures can give the impression that those movements are extra-musical and unnecessary. In Yura Lee's case she is trying with every square inch of her body and her entire musical soul to set the air in the hall in musical motion.

In the "meet the jury" forum on Saturday, an audience member asked a question specifically about judging based on physical motion. The jury members that answered said that they did not take that into consideration at all. I don't think that such a thing is possible unless he/she is either blind or is unable to see the person performing.

Barnabas Keleman, the 2002 IVCI Gold Medal winner, played a wonderful recital between the semi-final round and the final round. He is a large man who plays with very large gestures, both musical and physical. There is no doubt that he is a great artist, and because of his physical size relative to Yura Lee, he can get away with large gestures.

I feel that Yura Lee should have gotten second place in this competition on the basis of her exceptional violin playing and extraordinary musicianship. I don't want her to change anything about her playing. I don't think that she should consider "toning down" the movement because it might get in the way of the marvelous (and original) things that she does as a musician.

The IVCI is planning to keep all the performances, not just the performances of the semi-finalists and finalists, archived on their website for three months (the interactive commemorative program guide is the best way to get to them).

Tags: Augustin Hadelich, Yura Lee, Indianapolis Violin Competition, IVCI 2006