Schöner Bogen, Lieber Augustin!

Viola Quote of the Day (from Monkey Business)

Groucho : Ah, 'tis midsummer madness, the music is in my temples, the hot blood of youth! Come, Kapellmeister, let the violas throb. My regiment leaves at dawn!

Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 Finale for String Sextet

[click for a larger view]

A friend in Italy who lost his father to the Coronavirus asked me to arrange the last movement of the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6, his father's favorite piece, for string sextet.

Working on it has been quite an emotional experience for me, and I hope that having this arrangement helps my friend and his mother in their grief. Not being able to grieve in conventional ways is one of the many tragic consequences of this pandemic. This movement of this particular piece sings of the essence of what we are all living through now. Remember that Tchaikovsky wrote this symphony during the cholera pandemic (1881-1896), and he didn't live to hear the premiere.

You can find the score and parts on this page of the IMSLP, and you can also find it here.

If you would like to listen to a computer-generated midi (it is rudimentary, and some of the tempo changes didn't make it through) you can listen here.

Does anyone reading this have skills to put together a video of six people playing this from their different places in isolation?

Augustin Hadelich, Augustin Hadelich, and Sergei Rachmaninoff

Berl Senofsky told me the story of the time, as a boy, he was having a lesson in New York with Ivan Galamian on the Rachmaninoff Vocalise, and it happened that Rachmaninoff was in the building. Rachmaninoff knocked on the door and asked if he could play it with Berl. Rachmaninoff wanted to play it over and over again, and he told Berl and Galamian that it was his favorite piece.

This absolutely amazing reading reminds me of what it might have been like to have been in that room with Rachmaninoff at that time. Thank you Augustin for letting us into your room, at this time.

Ode to Joy in this time of social distancing

You can find more music played by members of the Colorado Symphony in isolation on their YouTube channel.

Family Twitter Fame

The other day I saw a post on Twitter by a person who was trying to help her child with some Kindergarten schoolwork. Since school is closed now because of the virus, parents are trying to keep their kids up to speed at home. Kindergarten work should be child's play, right?

Not true at all.

I was curious about what the worksheet was trying to teach, so I sent the tweet to our daughter, who is a Kindergarten teacher. She figured it out instantly. She didn't have to think about it twice. Her Twitter account is private, so her response couldn't be read by the person posing the problem. A few hours (and a few dozen confused answers) later, I thought it might be a good idea to share Rachel's answer, which I quoted from her private tweet.

During the next day or two we watched the response get dozens, and then hundreds of "likes", and then the number of "likes" reached 1,600!

[I refuse to use that "v" word to describe what was happening.]

And now the whole discussion has made it to a post on Distractify. "Twitter user Elaine" is me.

Beethoven Berg Quartet Project

Of all the things I miss by not being able to interact with people outside of my household during this time of social distancing (or perhaps it is better to call it "physical distancing"), there is nothing I miss more than playing chamber music with people. My March and April schedules were so full of chamber music and orchestral music that I wondered how I could possibly make it through without getting some kind of physical injury.

So here we are.

Practicing solo Bach is fine. Learning new music and playing etudes is fine, but playing by myself isn't stimulating and life affirming for me the way playing chamber music is.

In February Michael decided to listen to the Guarneri Quartet recording of the Beethoven Quartets he bought many years ago. I enjoyed listening to some of the quartets with him, and I enjoyed talking with him about the quartets that he listened to by himself. The Beethoven Quartets are old and true friends.

So, in anticipation of a time when it will be possible to play chamber music again, I decided to learn the first violin parts of all the Beethoven Quartets. I have studied and played the viola parts (though that was many years ago), but I have never thought of trying my hand(s) at the violin parts. Yesterday I looked at Opus 18, No. 1, today I looked at Opus 18, No. 2.

Then I got out my portable CD player, plugged in some headphones, and played the first violin part along with the Alban Berg Quartet. Aside from glossing over the difficult fast passages in the Scherzos of both quartets (which will require a lot of dedicated practice with the metronome), I found playing along with the recording to be a rewarding experience.

I have listened to many Beethoven Quartet cycles, and I find the Alban Berg Quartet's interpretations to be in exact accord with the way I would want to play them.

I think that this is an appropriate way to celebrate the Beethoven Year, and it gives a little bit more structure to my musical day.

Beans

This post has nothing to do with music (unless you think of that old saw that refers to beans as the musical fruit). Don't tell me that it didn't just cross your mind before reading between the parentheses in that first sentence.

Anyway, this is a bit of practical advice appropriate for times like these when it is wise to keep dried beans around. Dried beans keep for years, and they take up less than half the space of canned beans. I think that they taste better because I can control the amount and kind of salt that I use to bring out their flavor.

That's our current stash above. I was shocked to see that we no longer have lentils! (I wrote them on the list for the shopping trip we are planning to take next week.)

I used to be deeply puzzled by the amount of time it took for beans to cook. Cookbooks would say to soak beans overnight and boil them for an hour, but I had to boil them for three hours. I tried using unsalted water, and I tried salting the water. Salting the water would help, but the beans would still come out tough, even after three hours.

I learned that our water is hard (i.e. it tastes good and has a high mineral content), so one fine day a few years ago I tried putting a little bit of baking soda (just a pinch) in the water to balance out the Ph before cooking beans, and VOILA! The beans cooked perfectly!

I hope that this solves your difficulties cooking beans if you have hard water!

Difficult Times

I have spent the last week being productive: practicing, writing music, and trying, within the confines of my home, punctuated by walks in the neighborhood, always keeping distance from any other souls (aside from Michael, my walking companion), to keep things as normal as possible. I have had some success teaching my students via FaceTime, and I'm hoping that they can use the time they have away from school and schedules to practice. They may even make progress, since practicing is the way to do it.

I started one of my violin students on a Kreisler piece, and decided last night that it might be a good idea to use this time to finally learn all the Kreisler pieces I have always wanted to master. Since I didn't go through a traditional path of violin study, a pandemic crisis is as good a time as any to fill in the gaps in my repertoire.

I had high hopes for today, and even made a list of things to do, like cleaning the house. I don't think that's going to happen today. And I think that my practicing is mostly going to be medicinal, to try to maintain sanity and provide temporary respite from fear.

I started the week thinking I might be making lemonade, and am ending the week finding solace in the fact that we are pretty well stocked-up on alcohol (which we will drink sparingly but regularly).

Saprophyte String Quartet Project

I have always been interested in fungi (who isn't?), and thinking about honoring fungi in musical ways (as I have mentioned in previous posts) has been overwhelming because of the variety to consider! Who could choose even a few favorites? I finally decided to write a set of pieces for string quartet in honor of the whole realm of fungi.

In this time of staying inside I might try my hand at making a YouTube video with photographs of some of these amazing organisms to go along with the music, but for now I have put score, parts, and an audio file on this page of my Thematic Catalog, which links to a dropbox folder and an entry in the IMSLP.

Those in the string quartet "know" will understand immediately the source of this particular "decomposition." I am, of course, not the first to have used it for "nourishment."

You can listen here.

Texas Women's University Virtual Orchestra 2020 Plays Florence Price

Sam Flippin, the orchestra director at Texas Women's University, is inviting string players from everywhere and anywhere to join in a virtual orchestra project. He has chosen my transcription of Florence Price’s "Adoration" as his first piece.

If you would like to participate, please go to this website. On this page Sam has parts marked with bowings, and a video of him conducting.

I'm very excited to hear how this all comes together!

St. Patrick's Day Concert (that isn't happening)

I feel so sad that we are not playing this concert tonight. I'm very proud of the poster I made for it, so I'm sharing it here.



We have spent the past several months rehearsing carefully, and we were excited about celebrating St. Patrick's Day with music. There are recordings of these pieces that can be found on YouTube or in the IMSLP (for members). I'm sharing the program here so, if you want to, you can add music from the program to your private celebrations of things Irish at home.



Not everything is purely Irish, of course. McEwen was a Scottsman, and Bantock, though he used an Irish song and an Irish jig as the material for the last movement of his viola sonata, was English. But Stanford was Irish, and so was Field.

We will play the program at some time in the future. Hopefully we won't have to wait a year to do it.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone.

A Giant Chorus of Solo Bach

I vividly remember the first few minutes after giving birth to our daughter. I felt a momentary sense sisterhood with all mothers, everywhere, and through all time. Even across species.

Other times when I have felt profound connections to people I did not know have been observing natural wonders, like a sudden rainstorm in a city, or a rainbow, or experiencing music together as part of an audience.

But for the next few weeks I intend to savor my connection with other musicians, urban and rural, accomplished and aspiring, famous and not known at all, as part of a giant chorus of solo Bach, played on all instruments, in every country, and at all times of day and night.

Sickness, Limbo, and Amazing Grace

Last Saturday my friend Ken Greider died of brain cancer, and yesterday I played this arrangement of Amazing Grace at his memorial service. Ken, the grandfather of one of my students, went above and beyond all conventional measures to support his second grade granddaughter's violin habit. He listened to her practice, gave her excellent instruments, gifted her with nifty violin accessories, and took her to concerts. He built her a music stand, and then, one day, he built one for me.

It's the music stand I use every day to practice. I just now took all the music off so that I could take these pictures and share them here:



Yesterday afternoon there weren't any reports of Coronavirus in our part of the state, so I felt fine about playing for the memorial service. I still did my best to keep physical distance from people, which is very difficult in a memorial service. I played a couple of pieces with my student that I arranged for violin and viola, and I played this arrangement of Amazing Grace that I made for the occasion (and am sharing here for other people to play).



You can find it in PDF form this page of the IMSLP.

In the evening, shortly after the memorial service, Michael and I played for Shabbat services, and I said Kaddish for Ken. It was a very lovely community/musical experience.

This morning we learned that someone had tested positive with Coronavirus in the local hospital last night.

The schools and universities in Illinois are closed now, all my orchestras have prematurely ended their seasons, and the St. Patrick's Day concert I was planning to play with John David is cancelled. Rehearsals for all my ensembles will have to wait for a time when we know we are all safe from the virus. Thank goodness I can give my students their lessons using FaceTime. I am hoping that they will use their time off from school to do some good practicing.

Even though there isn't a concert to play on Tuesday, I still have scales, etudes, and music to practice. And I know that there will be a time in the future when life, musical and otherwise, will return to normal. In the meantime there are books to read, movies to watch, blog posts to write, and I have a new piece in the works (and time to work on it). I also have excellent company here at home.

Stand Hand Stickers for Hand Sanitizer

I found a small bottle with a screw cap in my medicine cabinet to fill with hand sanitizer, and used "stand hand" labels to cover the bottle's old label. I then protected the whole thing with clear packing tape.

You can find a PDF of these hands to print here.