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In 2010, Washington Post classical writer (extraordinaire, imho) Anne Midgette attended a recital by pianist Dejan Lazic. Later, Midgette took Lazic apart in her review of the show, titled “Sparks but no flame: Pianist Dejan Lazic at Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater.” Here are a few of Midgette’s lines:

Grandiloquence is an occupational hazard for a solo musician. There you are, alone onstage, playing works that are acknowledged to be monumentally great with breathtaking ability. It can be hard to avoid assuming the trappings of greatness. Exhibit A is Dejan Lazic.

Not too salty, but there’s this…

The selection of [Chopin and Schubert] is usually a way to demonstrate a pianist’s sensitivity as well as his virtuosity. This performance, though, kept one eye fixed on monumentality. Some of the pieces (…) sounded less like light solo piano works than an attempt to rival the volume of a concerto with full orchestra. This scherzo became cartoon-like in its lurches from minutely small to very, very large.

Okay, don’t let Lazic read this:

[He used] a host of concert-pianist playacting gestures: head flung back at the end of a phrase; left hand conducting the right hand; or a whole ballet of fingers hovering over keys and picking out their targets before an opening note was even struck. (…) There were fine moments, but they stubbornly refused to add up to anything more than a self-conscious display of Fine Moments.

Midgette went in.

Mark O’Connor does not like Shin’ichi Suzuki.

For those who don’t know, Shin’ichi Suzuki is the originator of the Suzuki Method. Suzuki’s method teaches ear-training and musical technique to very young music students. The Suzuki instructor introduces increasingly complex pieces in sequential books. Everybody in the Suzuki Cult learns the same material and wears the same robes.

This systematized approach has led to thousands (more likely millions) of musicians learning all the Suzuki repertoire. I’d bet four out of five people in a given pro orchestra could still play Suzuki tunes from memory. I sure can.

 

 

What is it about the idea of devilry that summons fear in our hearts, and thrills us at the same time? Why do we shake at the thought of eternal damnation, but still secretly hanker for a taste of evil? Most importantly, do we make a pact with the Dark Lord when we put on certain classical records?

On Wednesday I noticed an unfamiliar album in the slop bin that is my iTunes library — Songs of Innocence by a little Irish collective called U2.

The album was made available to half a billion iTunes users fo’ free, just for keeping it real with Apple. Public response was tepid. Actually, icy. First, it’s not very good. Second, users couldn’t remove it from their cherished iPhone 6-Pluses if they wanted to.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen music bundled with a new product. Remember when Samsung bought a million copies of Jay Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail to give away to customers?

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is embroiled in a player-management dispute that could doom their upcoming season. At issue: player benefits, salaries, and retirement plans. Management wants to be realistic about costs, players want to be able to make a living, blah blah blah. Here’s the NPR account:

Alas, it is déjà vu all over again for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. (…) ASO musicians and management failed to meet the deadline to agree on a new contract after eight months of negotiations. That means the players, while still employees of the orchestra, are effectively locked out of the Woodruff Arts Center (the orchestra’s home) and will not receive paychecks until a new agreement can be ratified. ASO musicians demonstrated outside the hall Tuesday. A similar labor dispute silenced the orchestra exactly two years ago.

It’s a sad day when strikes & lockouts are a normal part of business for arts outfits. When did things get so bad?

On the one hand, we’re used to strikes in various businesses. There was a shortened 2011-12 NBA season. The NFL had its replacement refs last year (seems like a quaint scandal now, huh?). Here in Boston, Market Basket employees rebelled against ownership for a long summer. When there’s millions of dollars at stake, there’s tension over the commas on those outgoing checks.

On the other hand, what the hell kind of world are we living in when every season is a negotiation, when a major orchestra doesn’t know season to season if it’ll be doing the full year, part of the year, or none at all. These are people’s jobs! People bought tickets! The public wants music!

Startup arts groups harbor naked jealousies over the massive endowments and donor lists of major orchestras. So how the hell are we supposed to be jealous if orchestras start imploding? God damn it, Atlanta Symphony, make us green with envy! Solve this and get back to being smug & superior. We all need it.

I’m a huge advocate of quiet, solitary downtime. Huge. I loved this Brain Pickings piece about being alone, and in particular this note about the intensely private Greta Garbo.

Garbo introduced a subtlety of expression to the art of silent acting [whose] effect on audiences cannot be exaggerated… In retirement she adopted a lifestyle of both simplicity and leisure, sometimes just ‘drifting’ … She did not marry but did have serious love affairs with both men and women. She collected art. She walked, alone and with companions, especially in New York. She was a skillful paparazzi-avoider. [S]he chose to retire, and for the rest of her life consistently declined opportunities to make further films. [I]t is reasonable to suppose that she was content with that choice.

To what extent do our still moments — that might seem boring or inscrutable to outsiders — produce the stroke of genius essential for making art? How does solitude help us pay attention to the irrepressible slot-machine of ideas we ignore in our work-a-day world?

Musicians spend a lot of time getting their asses kicked in rehearsal. They spend a lot of time dealing with regular old life, too. But musicians have to spend a lot of damn time on their own: the practice room is the padded cell where they face down their demons. Battle them, tame them. It’s lonely. Those goddamn rooms! No phones, no conversation, just phrases and lines, scales and arpeggios.

But then, there’s a spark.

For a classical musician practice is penance. You learn how to love it. Not love in the lusty, obsessive sense. This is an arranged marriage. You survive it, you control it, and you use it to your advantage.

The problem is, this is a Control-T world, and our distractions are an infinitely-recurring loop.

Sitting in a roomful of people all working on one thing — loud & frenzied — is a powerful tonic, and it may just lead you to that elusive breakthrough. A little head-to-head competition can get your ire up, piss you off enough to bring out your best work.

But something far quieter (and harder) might do the trick too, and quicker. This is the thought uninterrupted: a cluster of still moments opens the mind up, ideas aerate and marinate. Silent, methodical repetition sharpens ideas into knife-edge chops.

Creation of the universe may have happened in six or seven days — or however that went down — but here on terra firma it takes an Olympic effort just to put down a phone and start something. For some it just ain’t natural. But eventually, ideally, everything falls away, and action begins.

A non-classical friend recently asked me to put together a playlist of classical hits, as a sort of easy on-ramp into the music. First, that’s a cool thing to be able to do for somebody. But it got me thinking — how do you get people to the point where they might be interested in sampling some of the product?

The short answer is basically you don’t, at least not without some strategizing. So, here are a few thoughts on getting would-be fans interested in classical music. (Patent pending.)

I wrote a piece over on the uber-trendy Medium platform, and it didn’t mean anything! It won’t happen ever again! I just wanted to feel alive.

Anyway, have a read and let me know what you think. Medium gives writers flexibility with images — i.e., the “snowfall effect,” bigger images, etc. — so this was a little trial run.

Don’t worry, I still care about what we have.  I just need a little variety once in a while.

• Conductor calls board members “crooks in $3,000 suits,” board offended by that sick burn.
• Using a cat as a euphonium mute (cuteness alert).
• HDClassicalMusic.com offers TONS of free classical you can download or stream directly to your face.
• “Beat deafness” is why people can’t clap together at concerts.
• Viola worth ~US 45 quadrillion dollars fails to sell because, I don’t know, people wanted to buy crocodile skin t-shirts instead, or something.
• Ansel Elgort — he of the weepy The Fault in our Stars — landed the lead role in the new Van Cliburn biopic.
• Here’s security camera footage of a dude in jorts (what else) stealing a violin. Violin was returned unharmed.
• Palette cleanser: grab your Fun Dip & enjoy this “circular visualization” of Steve Reich’s Piano Phase.