All In The Family, Part 7 – To The Edge

by | Dec 10, 2018 | Uncategorized

This coming Saturday, I will say Kaddish for my father, to mark the seventh anniversary of his passing. As readers of this blog know, he and I often played and talked about music together, and a set of concerts I just played reminded me how much I miss that.

ProMusica Chamber Orchestra played Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony this past weekend. This has always been my favorite of Beethoven’s symphonies – lighter, shorter, and more upbeat than its odd-numbered neighbors, the mighty “Eroica” and the famous Fifth.  It is a workout to play – the last movement in particular goes like the wind (especially with David Danzmayr conducting!). However, it’s the slow movement that’s always been my favorite, and there’s one moment in particular that touches me more deeply than any in music. It took me until this weekend to realize why I love this passage so much – it is the most human, vulnerable music I know.  In turn, the principal bassoon, principal clarinet and horns are all asked to play very high and softly, while the cellos, basses, and timpani softly echo the movement’s main rhythm, a “heartbeat” figure, miles beneath them in the bass. Have a listen:

For these few moments, Beethoven takes us right to the edge of the abyss, but doesn’t linger too long – the flute solo which follows is the most beautiful, loving part of the piece. And that’s Beethoven in a nutshell, going from the depths to the heights in no time. These are the sorts of passages that I remember talking about with Dad – I hope he still gets to enjoy them as much as I do.

Bravos to my ProMusica colleagues – bassoonist Rachael Young, hornists Stephanie Blaha and Bruce Henniss, and especially clarinetist Ilya Shterenberg – your playing was absolutely wonderful. And a special thank you to my stand partner Joel Becktell, who had to listen to me talk about this passage every time we got to it in rehearsal – sorry, man!

Till next time,

Nat

All In The Family, Part 5 (Birthday Edition)

by | May 16, 2017 | Uncategorized

Today would have been my father’s 79th birthday. He passed away over five years ago, though for me, especially today, it feels like it happened yesterday. He gave me many different gifts, and since his passing, I’ve seen them come together in ways I hadn’t expected, but that I think he’d be pleased to see. We shared a love for many things, including baseball and the Pink Panther movies, but I’ll focus here on the two most important – music and social justice.

 

First of all, the music world is very different from the one he knew, but there are many things happening now that he would have liked.

 

My dad believed that art was for everyone, and often lamented that more people didn’t know and love the music that was so central to his life. Anyone who’s read this blog before knows I have offered many reasons why great music has such a small fan base, and I’ve tried to offer some solutions to the problem – thankfully, many others in the classical music world are working on this, too – a development I know he would appreciated.

 

I started Bach and Boombox because of the connections between all kinds of music that my dad showed me. Along with countless new classical music concerts, he also took me to many jazz performances (he’d been a jazz pianist in his early days), and introduced me to the Beatles, too. He was a firm believer in the saying – “There are two kinds of music – good, and the other kind.”

 

Nowadays, I spend much of my time sharing the joy of playing music with kids who might not get to otherwise, through 4-Way’s String Project at Woodford Paideia. My dad helped open my eyes to the inequities in society early on, and we often talked about how they could be addressed – I think he’d be especially pleased that we’ve found a way to be of service through music.

 

This past weekend, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra gave our final concert of the season, and the program began with a brief performance by violin students from the orchestra’s Play Us Forward program, most of whom come from economically challenging circumstances. On stage with them were players from the orchestra (including yours truly) and our guest artists for the evening, violinist Vadim Gluzman (who has been a big supporter of the program) and violist Paul Neubauer, who a few minutes later would give a thrilling performance of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante. In the picture below (courtesy of another ProMusica cellist – thank you, Cora!), you can see all of us, playing together – this is the kind of musical and social connection I’m sure Dad would have liked to see.

In his own music, my dad shared a great deal of himself, and you can hear his varied musical influences, from Schoenberg to Stan Getz. So to close, let’s hear a short dance for piano, performed by his friend Richard Becker, that gives you a good sense of him and where he was coming from. Like all his music, it’s both intense and subtle, and at about the 2:00 mark, it starts to sound (to me, at least) like an Earth, Wind and Fire record – a little bit of funk to finish.

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Happy Birthday, Dad – I miss you.

 

 

All In The Family 2 (Electric Boogaloo)

by | May 16, 2016 | Uncategorized

schubert-superscope-miles

Today would have been my father’s 78th birthday. Last year on this day, I wrote a post about pieces with family connections, including ones I had recently played. Well, it’s happened again – this weekend, I played another piece that takes me back to the beginning of my musical life, and it was my dad who introduced me to it.

When I was about 7 or 8, my dad got me a Superscope cassette recorder (pictured above) and a few recordings of pieces he thought I should hear, including Stravinsky’s Firebird and Mozart’s 39th Symphony. One of them was of Schubert’s 9th Symphony, with Eugen Jochum conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony.

Last night, ProMusica performed this monumental piece – you can read the review here. Before we played, our music director, David Danzmayr, talked to the audience about how his dad had introduced him to the piece as a kid, too.

Schubert 9 is a massive piece, lasting just under an hour. Its nickname is is “The Great,” but I think it should be called the “Ginsu.” Those of you old enough to remember the TV commercials for those knives will understand – “Now how much would you pay? Don’t answer yet – you also get…” Each movement is twice as long as in his other symphonies, and Schubert makes sure you get your money’s worth. Here’s a link to a recording on Spotify – make sure you’re not in a hurry!

And for those of you to young to who missed out on the commercial, here it is:

And in the spirit of Ginsu – but wait, there’s more! On my way home last night after the concert, I turned on the radio and heard Miles Davis’s remarkable “Godchild” from the “Birth of the Cool” album my father treasured. It was a nice reminder that I can still feel in touch with him, meeting up in the musical world where he spent so much of his life and was my first and most important guide.

Happy Birthday, Dad – I miss you.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxjmikpUQK8&w=550

All In The Family

by | May 16, 2015 | Uncategorized

dad-thad-dmitri

Today would have been my father’s 77th birthday. He was a composer and played a big part in my musical development. We often played music together, and talked about music (along with baseball and politics), from when I was in elementary school until he passed away three-plus years ago. I miss him terribly.

My dad wrote works for various instrumentation from chamber works to pieces for full orchestra – my favorite, of course, is the one he wrote for me, which my wife and I recorded for his Albany Records CD, released in 2006. It’s a perfect example of his musical style, which I once described as both intense and subtle. Here’s an excerpt:

You can hear the entire piece here, and learn more about my dad and his music at his website.

Classical music has long been a family business, from the Bachs and Mozarts to more modern examples like Sergei Prokofiev and his grandson Gabriel. I wrote about one of Gabriel’s works in a previous post – sometimes the apple falls a little farther from the tree!

Recently, I was reminded of the extra power music has when it’s inspired by the closeness of family.

Dmitri Shostakovich was known for music that reflected his difficult life in Soviet Russia – nearly all of his works contain sarcasm and harsh writing. However, I recently was exposed to a different side of Shostakovich, in his 2nd Piano Concerto. The piece was written for his son, Maxim, for his 19th birthday, and Maxim performed the solo part at his graduation from the Moscow Conservatory.

Last month, I played this piece with ProMusica Chamber Orchestra. The excellent soloist was pianist/composer Huw Watkins, who has a family musical connection of his own – his brother Paul is the cellist in the Emerson String Quartet. They have recorded several cello-piano works including Huw’s own – you can learn more here.

Our music director, David Danzmayer, reminded us in rehearsal of the story behind the concerto as we rehearsed the slow movement, which sounds nothing like any Shostakovich I’d ever heard. The directness and love expressed in this piece can’t be missed, and it sounds in places like Rachmaninoff:

https://youtu.be/BCTEx3w2_jU&w=330&start=456&end=536

There are lots more examples of music inspired by the closeness of family, and I’ve put a few of them on a new Spotify playlist, including my dad’s cello-piano piece and a song cycle he dedicated to my mom. As usual, it’s open to additions from you – please add your favorite piece of music that has a family connection!

In closing, I’ll share one more, that was a particular favorite of my dad’s. He was a jazz musician early on, and passed on to me a love for Charlie Parker and Oscar Peterson. One of our favorite groups was the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Band. I remember going to see them at the Village Vanguard when I was about 12 – how he got me into a place like that at that age is beyond me, but it was incredible.

Here’s Thad Jones’s best-known tune, whose title says it all: “A Child Is Born.”

Happy Birthday, Dad – I miss you.

https://youtu.be/-M2ADUgffFE&w=550