Post-concert high/slump

I’m tired. Beat. Exhausted. And glad that I’m finally done with my concerts. Phew.

I don’t know why it consumes my life thus, but for the past few weeks, I feel like I’ve put my life on hold to focus on this music. Now I’m glad to be done with it all and have my life back again.

Since we never get reviewed, I’ve decided to post my own review/thoughts of the concert. (I mean, heck, it’s my blog, so I should be able to do what I want.)

I am always amazed at how well our concerts come together. Yes, we made some mistakes. I came in at the wrong time on some piece. We lost pitch on some of the long a capella pieces. The accompanist played more than a few wrong notes. But overall, I thought we did quite well.

We were a galaxy away from where we were just six days ago, when we sounded, um, very insecure in too many spots. However, in the few days that passed between our last rehearsal and our concerts, it sounded like we improved 500 percent.

I did not bother pitching this concert too hard to the press or to reviewers—nor did I really tell my friends about it. I thought we had a lot of cool ideas for the concert, but to be totally honest, I wasn’t sure how the execution would go. Even as late as two days ago, I wasn’t sure how it would all turn out.

First, there was the issue of the music. One piece, as I mentioned earlier, sounded like mush. Then there was another piece that sounded like Handel, but for Handelian music, I prefer to just listen to/sing the original thing.

Then there was the issue of type of music. Here we are a hoity toity choir that usually sings contemporary classical music, and for this program, we sang pieces about rabbits and skunks and mickey mouse.

Then there were my own inadequacies. I’d say three-quarters or more of the choir has done two-thirds or more of the pieces in the program. I was not one of those people. We were left mostly to our own devices to learn these pieces and plink out these notes that had a zillion bizarre accidentals in ridiculous keys that are not violin-friendly. One piece in particular has been the bane of my existence for the past two months. I did not have this piece completely learned until a week ago. In fact, this was going to be my if-I-don’t-learn-this-piece-I-will-opt-out-of-singing-in-the-second -half limiting reagent of a piece.

In spite of all of these potential challenges, I thought we put on a good show. The audience seemed to like the lightheartedness and humor in the program. I still wasn’t in love with most of these pieces, but I did tolerate them enough to enjoy performing them.

We had a decent turnout today, but a dismal one yesterday—maybe 50 people tops? Which means we don’t break even on concerts (since the space rental is probably $1K, the parking attendants we had to hire was $200, and we had a stage manager that cost several hundred dollars. Not to mention, paying an instrumentalist. 50 people times $20 per ticket is barely $1000.)

We did some pretty beautiful music-making. Quite frankly, as much as I would love a larger audience, if it weren’t for the financial sustainability aspect, I wouldn’t care so much about a dismal turnout. Music is music regardless of whether 5 or 500 people are in the audience. It is just as beautiful to make and just as powerful of an experience.

I had the opportunity to speak with some new audience members after the concert. Granted, it’s not like they would ever admit it if they thought the concert was lousy, but a few of them gushed about how great we sounded and said that it was a “crime” to have this low of an audience turnout after how much work we “must’ve” put into the program. It is people like this who make me smile regardless of turnout.

On the other hand, it is quite disappointing to have so many people work so hard on the music and not have people appreciate the music. For many of us, the concert repertoire takes over our life for the two months preceding the concert.

And after almost every concert, I grapple with this—was it worth it? All of that memorization? The hours put into it that I could be putting into something far more productive? Do I derive enough fulfillment/gratification from this to warrant all of this? I can’t objectively answer that right now, since I’m on a post-concert high.

As opposed to?????

I went to Whole Paycheck today to get some ingredients for an asparagus tart and a strawberry balsamic gelato. I'm in the sugar section contemplating whether the extra cost that WP charges warrants the convenience and premium quality of their fair trade ultra-virtuous cane sugar, when I saw out of the corner of my eye, on the bottom shelf, a packet of sugar that proclaimed that it was vegan. Vegan. VEGAN. (I thought I'd bold it for you and repeat it three times in case you missed that.)

Vegan?

Um, as in the sugar contains no animal products or the sugar wasn't fed an animal-based diet??????????

Which compels me to start a list of top 10 idiotic food labels.
1. vegan sugar (as opposed to the carnivorous kind? The kind that eats eggs? The kind that has dairy products in it?)
2. organic salt (Salt=NaCl= a chemical (actually, a mineral to be precise). Moreover, most salt is iodized. Not to mention, isn't salt just harvested from the ocean? Someone please tell me how salt can be "organic".)
3. labeling something that has 0.49999999999999 grams of trans-fats "0 grams of trans-fats". Last I checked, 0 ≠0.499999999999999999. Or else my GPA in undergrad was a perfect 4.0.

Ok, I'll continue 4-10 in another thread, since I need to finish baking this tart.

Sick, sick, sick.

Where do people get such bizzarro ideas!?!?!?!? They come in silver, too. (Click on the "Limited Edition" tab on the left.) Personally, I don't think this--oh, never mind. I don't even want to go there. . ..

Oboes—don't like em staccato

Oboe is one of my top three favorite instruments. (Well, actually, my new love of late is the English horn, but I've only started listening for them in the past few years—ever since a friend played a beautiful accompaniment to a soprano part. I don't remember the name of the piece, but it was a lovely soprano/horn duet by Mozart. We certainly didn't have a horn player in any of my high school or college orchestras.)

But after listening to someone play a version of the rondo from Mozart's "dubious" violin concerto K271 transcribed for oboe, I decided I really don't like staccato oboe playing.

I barely recognized the piece.

I don't know why the oboe sounded so. . .abrupt and reedy and foreign, but it did. It was so unlike the straight, clean sound of sustained notes that I associate with an oboe. (Like that opening solo line in Saint Saëns' Bacchanale from "Samson and Delilah", to give you a clichéd example.) But perhaps this oboe=beautiful sustained notes is a bizarre association/bias on my part?

I can't think of any pieces off the top of my head, but surely, I've heard oboe played really really staccato before? And no, I don't mean just staccato as in enunciated eighth notes (e.g. the first movement of Albioni's oboe concerto or Haydn's oboe concerto). The rondo was really really choppy.
viz. (Eighth) note. rest. . . . rest. . . .rest. . . .rest.
note. rest. . . . rest. . . ., etc.

Have I simply tuned out this style of playing in the past because it doesn't sound the way I expect an oboe to sound??

What to do with $42 million. . .

$42 million dollars. What would you do if you had $42 million to wast--er, spend? Go on a vacation? Retire? Start a philanthropy?

It's not exactly a problem I have, unfortunately, though the first thing I'd probably do is quit my job and travel for a year. Then I'd buy a house someplace-- perhaps one here and one in Paris or in the Italian countryside? Oh, and I'd buy a house for my parents and my brothers, too. Nothing lavish. I don't care about size so much as long as there is a hammock in the yard and it comes with a dishwasher and gas range. Then I'd resume violin lessons and perhaps learn to play the piano.

But back to $42 million. If you've been following the news (I'm about 4-6 weeks behind, so think back to April), then you know what the significance of $42 million is.

Well, I just received my "reminder" notice for the $600 tax rebate check. . .the one that I already got wired to my account (ten days ago, I'd like to add) and have already mailed off to Myanmar and China to go towards relief efforts. The reminder notice kindly informed me that I should expect it in the mail any day now.

According to MSN, the federal government spent $42 million to mail these tardy notices out. Is this possible? Did they really spend $42 million of tax money to tell me something that I already know about and certainly didn't need a reminder notice for?

First of all, this is as dumb as my workplace putting paper notices in everyone's mailbox whenever a holiday rolls around. I got one for the upcoming Memorial Day holiday "reminding" me that I don't need to come into work on Monday. Duh. Like we don't all know (and secretly live for) this? At least my work place only wastes half a ream of paper, labor fees to copy and file this notice into everyone's mailbox--which couldn't be more than $40 total per holiday. Still, multiply that by 8 or so holidays a year, and that's $320 and several reams of paper and copier toner wasted.

But $42 million is not exactly pocket change to send out needless reminders.

When it comes to getting money, we are a very motivated bunch. If there is news about the government sending us checks in the mail, rest assured that in some way or another, people will find out. Heck, I don't even own a TV and I knew about the stimulus check. And if for whatever reason people don't find out via friends, family, news, word-of-mouth or other networks, they will be pleasantly surprised. Either way, there is no need to send out notices to people that tell them that their check is on their way. None. Especially if it costs $42 million.

Second, it's one thing if the government were rolling in the dough and didn't have any financial problems. $42 million is still an obscene amount of money to waste. But we've got the subprime thing going on, the $311 billion federal deficit, the trade deficit, the weak dollar, people in a tizzy because of rising gas and food prices, baby boomers starting to retire, growing medicare/medicaid costs, failing schools that fail to produce proficient students, etc. Not to mention the earthquake in China and cyclone in Burma and that war bill that might be as high as $1.2 trillion to date.

Surely the $42 million could've been put to better use?

And don't even get me started on the $112 billion the government spent to pay each of us back $600. That's fodder for another post, perhaps.

Post-stealing and critics who say useless things

Will the people at Disintegrating Organic Tissue Matter kill me if I use one of their posts again as fodder for my own post? Ok, so I won't do that, except to mention that I was practically seething when I read this review of Hilary Hahn's recording of Schoenberg's violin concerto that they refer to in their post.

I'm seething for different reasons than they are. For more details, you can read the post and then my comments on their site.

Hahn is not one of my favorite players (I grant that she plays beautifully, and that she's a virtuoso; it's just a matter of playing style for me), but this CD review is is a bit unfair.

Without the extraneous comments, it would've been a fine appraisal of her interpretation of Schoenberg's Violin Concerto, but she taints an otherwise positive review of Hahn's playing with projections of either a)how she used to play: "wooden", "obedient", "the kind of virtuosic but rather empty fireworks piece that she seemed to me well suited for" and "slightly thin tone"or b)how the author thinks she might've played the piece: "clotted", "ferocious virtuosity". Either way, ouch.

I'm not saying that critics aren't allowed to have negative opinions. It's one thing if the author was negatively reviewing this particular recording. But she gives this recording a fairly good review, and talks about other unnamed recordings of Hahn in which she sounded wooden, obedient, ferocious, etc.

This is both irrelevant and unfair to her. Or maybe not. For all I know, maybe this is common practice among reviewers. It's fine if they can do it respectfully and keep it brief, as this critic does.

But this projection of how Hahn used to or might have sounded adds absolutely nothing in this particular case. Can you imagine a review of her when she's 35? Are people going to continue bringing up her past flaws?--e.g. "Ten years ago, Hilary Hahn used to have a brash style. But this recording of xyz shows her more refined side. It doesn't have the rough edges of her recording of x."

Ok, now I must go study my Chinese and music.

Absurd mother's day conversation with my mom

I called my mom yesterday to wish her a happy mother’s day. Of course, instead of talking about motherhood and lovely brunches and flowers as other normal mother-daughters might, we talked about none of these things. Well, ok, I did ask her what she did, so that took up 5 minutes of our conversation.

Instead, a big chunk of our conversation was spent discussing less, um, quotidian things.

me: (hearing some weird meowing noise) What was that? You guys have a cat now?

mom: Oh, no. That’s our dear dog.

me: But that was a loud meow, not a bark. (Actually, it sounded like a cat in heat, but I didn’t know how to say “in heat” in Swahili.) Our dog meows now?

mom: Yeah, evidently, they start making weird noises when they get old. Soon they’ll start making weird noises in the wee hours of the night, b/c they sleep during the day and stay up at night and get bored.

me: That’s worse than a rooster. It’ll keep you up all night. He’s going to carry on like this till he. . .

mom: Oh, he’s alive and well. No signs of going anytime soon. Although your brother was like, “Oh, you’re bringing him to the new apartment when you move?” I mean, what kind of question is that? It’s not like we can just leave him behind. Poor thing. . .. Though now all he does is pee, poo, and sleep and doesn’t really contribute much to society. . ..

me: As opposed to before when he was churning out symphonies like Beethoven.

mom: Well before, he added spice to our life by occasionally running away and giving us a scare.

me: This was better?

mom: So your dad wants to have a funeral for the dog when he dies, but it’s absurdly expensive.

me: Wth. (Ok, I didn’t really say that. My parents don’t speak that lingo.) a full-on funeral for pets? With pallbearers?

mom: Well dead pets are considered biodegradable waste here, so theoretically, that’s how you’d dispose of its body.

me: Ewww. Someone would have to stuff him in a bag, then. Why don’t you just cremate him?

mom: Well, what I think your dad really wants to do is get him stuffed. But yeah, I meant cremation when I said “funeral”. They’re evidently quite expensive.

me: Ok, cremation is not a funeral. Why don’t you just bury him—you know, under one of these trees that he’s peed on in this apartment complex.

mom: I’m sure the owners of the complex would love that. No, I think we’d have to bury him at the local park where he used to run around. Sometime at night, perhaps. But that’s not feasible.

me: Why not? It’s not illegal to bury one’s beloved dog, no?

mom: Well, I don’t know that it’s something that anyone has ever done, so there may be no law specifically about furtively going to a park in the dark of the night and burying one’s pet, in which case, it’s not illegal, no. But I don’t want to have to do anything with it, so dad would have to carry him and bring a shovel to the park by himself. It might look suspicious.

me: Well, can’t he just take a cab to the park?

mom: Now, do you really think a cab is going to let someone carry their dead pet aboard?

me: Who said anything about telling the cabbie that he’s dead? He can just carry him like he’s sleeping on his lap. He won’t move. There’s nothing odd about carrying a sleeping pet on your lap and bringing a shovel on a cab.

mom: Well, he’d still have to dig a pretty big hole by himself.

dad (passing by or maybe heard just this portion of the conversation—to my mom:) What are you guys talking about?

mom: Oh we’re trying to figure out how you’re going to bring our dear dog to the park when he dies, to bury him.

dad: You guys are sick sick sick (walks away and lets us continue).

mom: Well, as I was saying, so technically, you are supposed to dispose of pets in biodegradable trash.

me: Eww. You mean you have to stuff him in a trash bag?

mom: Yep, though it has to be a clear trash bag for biodegradable trash.

me: Ugh. That’s even worse. So he’s going to be in a see-thru bag in a heap of trash? That’s how he’s supposed to end his life? That’s so inanimate.

mom: (evidently talking to the dog) Yes, dearie, we’re talking about your funeral arrangements.

me: Omg. Does he understand what we were talking about?

mom: Nah. He doesn’t even understand “dinner” or “food” anymore, so he’s certainly not going to understand a complicated discussion on the logistics of his burial/disposal.

me: Well, does he look sad or annoyed?

mom: Not a bit. Actually, as much as I’d love to keep talking about the garbage laws of this land, you should get to bed. It’s getting late.

me: Yeah, probably. Well, on that morbid note, happy mother’s day.

mom: Thanks. Now get some sleep.

But since I can't sleep after the lovely conversation we just had, I am up at an absurd time blogging about this instead, whilst imagining clear garbage bags stuffed with our poor beloved dog.

He's quite the beautiful dog.

Doesn't he look very pensive and intelligent here?

Please don't amp the bassoons

I am too behind on my music and other things to legitimately post (but evidently not too busy to troll around on other blogs), but I had to comment on this idea of amplifying bassoons.

Short summary: guy, who is normally more of a rocker dude goes and hears Beethoven's Ninth, which, at the risk of sounding clichéd, was and is still probably one of the greatest, most groundbreaking things written at the time. Guy doesn't like it. At all. Wife doesn't like it either.

Guy speculates on why he didn't like it:
1. Beethoven underestimated himself. He was deaf, so he couldn't have known that the Ninth really would've been fine with less instrumentation. (aside: people who have an IQ that is not as high as Beethoven--which probably includes 99.99 percent of the human population, and certainly the aforementioned guy who didn't like the Beethoven's Ninth--should not ever say that Beethoven "underestimated" anything. I'm sure Beethoven knew full well what the orchestration he called for sounded like.)
2. The current venues are too "big" to frame Beethoven.

Guy offers several brilliant solutions, one of which is to mic up the bassoons, because they weren't loud enough.

I don't have time (or more accurately, patience) to read this more carefully or read this guy's other pieces to figure out whether he's kidding, but let's give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he is kidding. Let's also ignore the fact that the sentiments "the bassoons weren't loud enough" and "Beethoven was deaf, so he unwittingly used too many instruments in the Ninth Symphony" somehow don't logically fit together.

If I were a doctor prescribing antidotes for such attitudes, I would tell this guy to go listen to a live performance of the Berlioz Te Deum or Requiem. The former calls for 12 harps and only four bassoons, but the latter calls for 8 bassoons, 12 horns (French), 16 timpani, 18 violas, and 18 double basses. (It calls for other instruments too, but fifty violins is much easier to find, than say, 18 violists.) In fact, in the original score, Berlioz says that on truly grand occasions, "if space permits, the chorus may be doubled or tripled and the orchestra proportionally increased." (from my CD notes)

Although I have performed both pieces, I don't think I have ever seen a full orchestration of either of these pieces, much less a doubling or tripling as "space permits". I mean golly. Can you imagine 24 bassoons and 36 horns, etc. etc.? It makes me wonder whether Berlioz was a bit of a megalomaniac. But I'm digressing.

I'm sure if the unwowed-by-Beethoven's-Ninth guy listened to some Berlioz, he would find that the bassoons do not, in fact, need any amplification.

Read here.

I've been me(i)med!

I suppose playing a game of virtual tag is friendlier than virtual playground bullying. But still. Grumble grumble grumble. Gripe gripe gripe. I have been tagged by the folks at Detrius. So now I am "it". Here are the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you. (last part done.)

Sounds straightforward enough, right?

Problem #1: the books I'm currently reading and computer are not in the same room, so the closest five books are a hodgepodge of books--none of which have an obvious "fifth sentence", much less "next three sentences" I could easily post.

2. If I had been asked this a week ago, I was reading Infidel and could've offered you a far more interesting and straightforward three sentences. But no. So now you are stuck with a long-winded post.

The closest book happens to be my Chinese book.

Sentence 6 and 7 read: (there is no third sentence)
Wáng lǎoshī jiāo wǒmen yǔfǎ hé Hànzì. Wǒ hé Pàlánkǎ hái yǒu yíge Zhōngguó lǎoshī.
王老師教我們語法和漢字.我和, etc. etc.

Second closest book to me: Feynman's Lectures on Physics Volume 1.
Problem: no page numbers! So then I turn to section 12-3.
However, for many systems the charges are very much better balanced, in particular for oxygen gas, which is perfectly symmetrical. In this case, although the minus charges and the plus charges are dispersed over the molecule, the distribution is such that the center of the minus charges and the center of the plus charges coincide. A molecule where the centers do not coincide is called a polar molecule, and charge times the separation between centers is called the dipole moment.

Third closest book to me was Edward Tufte's Envisioning Information. P. 123 is the index section, so no sentences.

Fourth closest book to me (they are all equidistant, actually, since they are sitting on bookshelves, so it's a matter of which one juts out the most) is a Peanuts cartoon book. Nary a page number to be seen.

Fifth closest book is another Feynman book, No Ordinary Genius. Aha. Finally, a normal book with normal pagination! (Stage direction: tagged victim eagerly flips through the pages and looks at pg. 123) On p. 123 is an image of a petition letter that Feynman was asked to sign, and below that, a letter Feynman wrote to reject the letter.

I'm sure the next closest book might have normal text (um, actually, no. It looks like it is a Hungarian language book.) , but I think five is more than enough.

So now I get to tag five people. But since I don't know if these will keep reappearing, I'm not going to "tag" anyone. I'll make it a voluntary meme. Thus, the next five people who read this post, if you want to participate, please post your findings in the comments.

And now back to our regular program. . ..

Teary-eyed by Bach

This week, every time I have listened to Bach's chamber music, I have become uncontrollably weepy. Sometimes if I listen to a particularly moving recording of something I like (e.g. Szeryng playing the Chaconne) I get teary, but I'm usually not weepy.

Earlier this week, I heard the Oistrakh father-son combo playing Bach. It wasn't an interpretation I liked too much (too too much vibrato), but even through such a filter, the true Bach shone through. It made me cry. I started thinking about Mary Contrary, and the heavens and all of that philosophical stuff. Bach has that effect on me, as does listening to the rumbling waves of the ocean or watching a beautiful sunset.

Can anyone can listen to Bach without somehow being moved by it? Not that I'd hold it against anyone if they told me that they're unmoved by his music. (Though I might wonder if they have a heart of steel.) But can people who say they don't like classical music really not like Bach?

He was my first love. No matter how many times I've listened to him, and no matter how my tastes in classical music have evolved, I can't seem to "outgrow" Bach. Yes, I go through my different phases of music and composers and styles. Sometimes I don't listen to him for months. In fact, usually, given my choice between a good string quartet and Bach, I'll choose the former. But eventually, I come back, seeking that honest, simple-yet-soulful, heart-on-my-sleeve-but-not-obnoxiously-so sound. Bach just sounds very grounded to me—like a pillar of a great monument.