“Hell is full of musical amateurs.”

~ George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

I recently learned that Shaw, the son of a professional singer, started his literary career as a music critic. Since I believe that without the musical amateur, the professionals wouldn’t have an audience, I think a better adaptation would be that Hell, for a musician, would be filled with critics.

I first became aware of SimpsonizeMe.com through Michael Monroe’s blog a while back and after several tries, successfully managed to plug a picture of myself, and then Marta, into the system:

I need to go back and tweak them a bit, but for those that know us, what do you think? Close?

Too much freshly-written music goes unplayed and unheard, too few people go to free recitals because they imagine that something free might not be worth their time, and too many young people who ask our advice, advice that we give freely, don’t listen.

This comes from a post written a month ago ago by Elaine Fine on her very thoughtful blog Musical Assumptions. I’ve been meaning to write a post commenting on this but something always seemed to demand my attention. My apologies Elaine.

My experience with music has always been about the thrill of the performance and the satisfaction of writing music. As I’ve matured I’ve been able to marry this with the joy that I get from being a teacher. The problem, as Elaine so eloquently stated, is that much of the energy that we as musicians and teachers exert seems to go for naught.

However, when the great performance does come along, or more importantly a student makes a connection or gets a flash of insight, it nourishes the soul and provides the motivation to continue, often far out of proportion with the reality of the situation.

If you play golf, you know what I mean. You can have a round of 100 strokes, but it’s the one or two magical shots that you remember an hour after the clubs are back in the garage.

The Eastern Music Festival is over and Marta and I have been back in the St. Louis area for almost a week. For the past few days we have been intentionally avoiding anything that resembles effort, though today marks the beginning of our return to business as usual as we continue to prepare for the new school year.

With my week off has come a week away from the blog. I am back now, but as summer ends, so does my ability to make daily updates. Hopefully I won’t have very many long stretches of apathy like last year, but I doubt I’ll be able to keep up the 4 or 5 posts per week that I’ve managed for most of this summer. Either way, my goal is to keep updating this and keep growing as a blogger.

To put the finishing touches on EMF I wanted to briefly discuss three three concerts that occured during the final 8 days of the festival.

The first of these was the 5th (or 4th, officially) EPO concert of the season. The program included Gershwin’s American in Paris, the Glazunov Violin Concerto, and Dvorak’s New World Symphony. German violinist Julia Fischer was another in the line of prodigies and my favorite soloist of the season. She plays with a sense of unbridled joy and her energy was infectious. I also learned that in addition to her violin engagements, she will be making her debut as a concert pianist this season. The Dvorak was fine, though I find his Symphony No. 8 a more interesting piece of music.

The second concert of the three was the final Eastern Chamber Players concert and specifically the Copland Vitebsk Piano Trio performed by pianist Gideon Rubin, violinist Courtney LeBauer and Marta. I am of course grotesquely biased, but I thought it was an excellent performance of a surprisingly (I had never encountered this work before) piece. The work requires careful counting of difficult entrances and a the unison violin/cello quarter-tones require supreme attention to intonation. Impressively done by the entire ensemble.

The final EPO concert featured a bit of unusual programming. It opened with the premiere of the concert adaptation of Bright Sheng’s ballet score The Nightingale and the Rose. This was followed by both of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe Suites before closing with Barry Douglas performing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. Even though I’m not a big fan of Bright Sheng’s music, I have enormous respect for his talent and competence as a composer. It was a well-crafted piece with several moments of absolute brilliance. I should remark that when Barry Douglas came on stage for the dress rehearsal dressed in shorts I just couldn’t get over the resemblance to Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski. I don’t think Bridges could have performed the Tchaik with nearly the brilliance of Douglas and though I wasn’t there, I’m sure Barry had his tux on for the concert.