Personality Is Instrumental

Professional musicians, as a rule, are not known to be rocket scientists. Perhaps all those hours spent practicing since early on and lack of good general education are partly to blame. Before my generation becoming a musician simply meant that you couldn’t do anything else for living. The profession was often compared to working in a circus and was bunched together with a vague title of ‘entertainer’ with actors and clowns alike. A concertmaster from my home country was in love with an army officer’s daughter. In spite of the suitor’s stable job with the state-owned radio orchestra, the father of the young woman would not tolerate the prospect of such a serious involvement with a mere musician. So, she was sent out to the far corners of the globe but the fellow in love was persistent and followed her. Eventually they got married but, if my memory serves me correctly, they didn’t live happily ever after, ending up divorcing like so many others.

A couple days ago marked the 31^st anniversary of my immigrating to the United States. Although I have often questioned the wisdom of that move, at the time I had no options as my first wife had promised her dying father to return. During the first year in Los Angeles I went to my local branch of Bank of America on Larchmont Boulevard to discuss the possibility of a loan to buy a Vuillaume violin from a retiring colleague. At first the banker was very friendly and misunderstood me, taking my accented ‘musician’ for a ‘magician’. No problem, she said, but when she finally learned of my true profession, her smile froze. No, they didn’t lend money to buy furniture, especially to a musician. To no avail, I tried to convince that a violin was not like a piano collecting dust in someone’s living room. Well, I found another bank with a better attitude and took my business elsewhere. Luckily I was able to pay the loan off in no time.

Since I grew up with top musicians coming to help in my father’s orchestra, I soon learned about the peculiar characteristics players of different instrument tend to have. I have a soft spot for oboists as my favorite guest artist was the principal of the Helsinki Philharmonic, those days known as Helsinki City Symphony. Asser Sipilä was not only a great oboist but a wonderful man. As he was also a beekeeper, he would always bring honey for me. For some reason, he preferred it to be packaged in tubes. I watched him make reeds and even learned the technique of continuous breathing from him, how to blow air out with the muscles of the cheek while inhaling. In addition to him, principals came as needed from Helsinki, occasionally from Lahti, to play the rest of the wind and brass family. Also, string instrumentalists would often come to play as soloists. All in all, I met with a whole bunch of different top musicians over the years.

I learned early on that French horn players were somewhat an odd bunch. There were two brothers who both played the instrument, one in Helsinki, the other in Lahti. It wasn’t until some years later when I met the great Vitali Buyanovsky from what was then the Leningrad Philharmonic that I learned to appreciate the instrument and to understand that someone playing it could be a great person as well. His entire horn section all vibrated in unison; a splendid sound not well known on this side of the Atlantic. The visiting trumpet player suffered from the ‘rooster syndrome’ which is often so typical to that instrument. It wasn’t until much later that I met a few trumpeters that were nice and truly wonderful as people. Mr. Sipilä explained to me that when young brass players practice too much, especially when they play an instrument that goes high up and demands tremendous air pressure, blood flow to their brain is interrupted. Perhaps that occasionally results in some form of brain injury, I don’t know, but the personality of such a musician often is that of a cock. I guess the trombone is easier on the system; at least the jolly fellow nicknamed “the Duck” was very nice indeed.

Back to the winds: in addition to the aforementioned oboist I was very fond of one of the clarinetists. Mario Sgobba was an Italian gentleman who had ended up in Finland through marriage. When my father turned 50 and I was 12, I had written a composition for my father with a dedication in Italian which I had an interest in and had studied on my own. Upon my father proudly showing him my present, Mr. Sgobba started rattling away in that language, thinking that by some miracle I was fluent in it, so obviously the text was correct. Like the hornists, the bassoonists struck me as odd, but I felt that anyone taking themselves seriously tooting the big cigar all day long had to be out of the ordinary. The flutists (we didn’t often use one as our own was very good) seemed full of themselves. In addition to the violin, the flute is the most popular orchestral instrument and often players of note are excellent. However, a voice in me told never to trust one. Still, one occasionally hears simply splendid playing on that instrument. When my student Lydia Kye played a movement of the Sibelius with the Garfield High School orchestra last month, the program also featured a phenomenal talent on the flute, Angela Potter. She played with incredible brilliance, faultless rhythm and perfect intonation, and without the omnipresent vibrato many older players use to cover up their mistakes. My only gripe was that like all flutists, she insisted on using the music for her concerto. Miss Potter’s playing left some old-timers in the dust and one can only wish her the brightest future with her studies at Northwestern University with the legendary Walfrid Kujala. He in turn has at least some of his roots in Finland as his last name could only originate there.

I shouldn’t even go there, but the string players always were and still are my least favorite group of musicians. First violinists can’t understand why someone else is playing as soloist and not them, or why someone gets promoted for reasons other than skill. They can also be such petty people. Second fiddlers suffer from an inferiority complex and granted, it is not fun to have to play off-beats endlessly. True to their reputation, it isn’t difficult to find ‘experts’ in any viola section. When I make fun of them, I include myself and some members of my family in the group. Our one-eyed cat is very sensitive to the high overtones of the violin and leaves the room, however sound of viola is to his liking. Cellists are often too preoccupied with what’s between their legs and bassists can get by with murder: an out-of-tune note is a half-inch or more in the wrong place. The latter can also be deaf and yet be actively playing.

This leaves only percussionists and conductors. A great timpani player is a treasure but someone banging on a loud bass or snare drum will eventually suffer damage from the noise level. As for the last category, a slightly modified old joke is in place. In New Guinea the cannibals have differently priced human brain for sale. The cheapest is that from a great scientist but the most expensive is the conductor variety. What is the logic behind this? You have to catch so many baton-wielders to come up with a pound of brain.

The illustration on top is from an online collection of toilets. It shows how a horn can be useful even for men who don’t care for classical music. Obviously it is not of the English kind; at first glance I thought it was modified French but then realized it didn’t have any dents on it so I was mistaken. How about a Wagner-Tuba-Loo?

Life’s Blessings

One should always be careful with what one wishes for. So often something we desire turns out to be a curse. The opposite is true as well: "bad luck" or a loss of something, such as a job or position, turns out to be a blessing.

In my own case having to return to my old profession, teaching, has really been an eye-opening experience. Instead of burnt-out and unhappy people I get to work with wonderful young, and sometimes a bit older, people who appreciate what I have to offer. For sure, I end up playing more than in my previous life but even when those hours exceed forty per week, I don't feel tired. No more back pain! Since I constantly have to demonstrate passages or play entire pieces for often very advanced students, my skill level has improved back to where it would have been, had "orchestritis" not set in. Not that there is anything wrong with playing with a group, but doing so every day and not really hearing oneself destroys the quality and control of one's music-making. This is something no string player can escape from. After playing with 30 other violinists all day and ears ringing from blaring brass and deafening percussion, one isn't likely to take time to practice and undo the day's harm. A wind or brass player is in a different position, especially if they function as a principal and basically play solo lines. The number of notes they end up playing is a small fraction of what a violinist is faced with. We end up having to fake, often because the composer has written parts that are much harder than anything written in solo literature and rehearsal time is usually limited for financial reasons.

This past week I had to help a couple students with Richard Strauss' "Also sprach Zarathustra" which is not as difficult as some of the composer's other works, but a plenty hard enough nut for a sixteen-year-old to crack. I always end up emphasizing the fact that playing in correct rhythm is more important than trying to nail every one of the notes in a fast passage. The students are fascinated and somewhat suspicious when I tell them about Strauss being upset when he came to conduct his works in Boston and the string players actually were delivering what was on the printed part. He didn't want a clean reproduction but a different sound, more like an effect. Sometimes I show them the composer's violin concerto which is quite difficult for what it is worth musically, but easy compared to some of the nastier licks in his orchestral works. Even the Sonata in E flat seems like child's play on the page.

This past year has been an interesting one with students. I counted over 20 concertos, all major works which I have taught in the last 12 months, many of them numerous times. I'm especially pleased of having had two students tackle the Heinrich Ernst F sharp minor, a work that used to be known as the world's most difficult and which was one of the concertos that made Heifetz famous early in his career. I had learned it in my youth and performed it a few times with piano, even in my diploma examination program in the Sibelius Academy. It certainly doesn't feel any easier now, but most of it has stayed in my fingers. The other young Heifetz trademark was the Jules Conus Concerto which two students performed this past year, one twice with orchestra and another with piano. I can't think of another composition suiting the instrument as well. Conus had studied the violin with Jean Hřimaly and certainly knew the instrument inside out. He tinkered with the concerto for a long time and his "revised" version is quite different from the Auer and Galamian editions we normally hear. The very last line is in the key of E major in that one, too, although almost no violinist agrees with that and just about everyone finishes the work in the minor key. What intrigues me is the use of up-bows for many of the four-part chords, something very few today would attempt. All those concertos, together with countless virtuoso pieces, caprices by Paganini, Wieniawski and Rode, and almost all of J.S. Bach's Sonatas and Partitas, have kept me busy as I don't believe in "lip service". A well-demonstrated example is worth more than a thousand words. I know it is an easier approach to criticize a student's playing verbally but I don't have much respect for such teaching. Students usually need not be reminded of what they did wrong, as if they have a good ear they already know the problem. What they require is inspiration and occasionally a suggestion for a different fingering or bowing that might suit them better than what they are using. How can a pedagogue practically force a young student to give up everything else in order to become a "soloist" when he/she himself has no idea what the profession is like? Yes, playing an instrument well is as wonderful and important as it was six or eight decades ago but back then few would dream of it as a profession, with some exceptions, of course. Today we have too many "failed" musicians, bitter at their parents for not letting them pursue other interests and get a well-rounded education.

Back to blessings: a loving family has to be the most important one. Just last night I was playing a July 4^th performance with my orchestra and looking at my smiling wife and youngest daughter Sarah sitting together in the viola section, clearly enjoying what they were doing as stand partners. Our 20-year-old Anna was in the audience with a couple friends, taking a break from graduate studies which she started almost immediately after last month's commencement. Having her visit home is always a highlight in my life. I am also immensely pleased by the 15-year-old's love affair with the viola. Now I have an obligation to teach her to drive. She received her learner's permit earlier in the week and with a 4.0 GPA for the school year, I really don't have any excuses. But she'll be a fine driver and I plan on taking my time with her as I did with her older sister, making sure she is ready for any situation on the road. After all, I take pride in teaching them well whether they are my own or others.

Midsummer Thoughts

In the far North, Scandinavia, Midsummer marks the opposite of the winter's short, dark days. Traditionally it was celebrated two days after the summer solstice, as was the case in my youth and still is in Estonia, our sister country just 50 miles South across the Gulf of Finland. My mother's birthday always fell on Midsummer Eve, June 23^rd. She would have been 91 this year. On the actual longest day of the year, June 21^st, my father celebrated his birthday. Although everyone expected him to leave this life some six months ago, having fallen victim of a nasty influenza virus for which the vaccine offered no protection, he perked up and is very much alive. As he turned 97 on the "new" Midsummer Day (now it is always on a Saturday to give people a long weekend of celebration), the actual festivities were two days earlier. These pictures are from this Monday when my brother's family was able to go for a visit. The young violinist is my niece's little daughter Seena. She has a wonderful ear and has already appeared as soloist for a local orchestra. When she was playing for her great-grandfather, he was conducting from his wheelchair. Still to this day his hearing is excellent. I'm looking forward to seeing him this coming winter when I'll be in the country playing and giving a master class.

A mile from our home, across the ship canal in Fremont, there is an annual Summer Solstice Parade with other festivities. It is very popular and includes an unofficial ride-through of nude bicyclists. Everyone is amused by it and no attempt is made to curtail this activity. It was interesting to hear our fifteen-year-old discussing nudism over the phone with a girlfriend. My daughter didn't see anything wrong with it and seems to think that people would be better off and less hostile if they saw each other without the 'body armor' of clothing. Back in Finland one sees plenty of naked bodies coming out of hot saunas to take a dip in a cold lake. This is perfectly natural for people and out of politeness someone rowing by will look elsewhere. Finns love their saunas and as this picture proves, students at the Technical Institute managed to build one inside an older VW minibus. This Midsummer the portable sauna caught fire, from overuse, being heated almost non-stop for three days. As it was well built, the damage was minimal and the vehicle could be driven away and I wouldn't be surprised if it had already been fixed.

Midsummer is also a time for love, with a lot of people getting married then. There traditionally is a baby boom every March, nine months later. Partially this happens because young people tend to drink too much during the weekend and are not always careful. Interestingly this year some alcoholic beverages have had a free condom attached to the can or the bottle. It would be difficult to picture something like that happening here, prudish as we are. Midsummer is also time for magical things. A young maiden is supposed to collect either seven or nine different flowers, put them under her pillow and in her dream the future groom will reveal himself. A husband's picture will appear if one looks at the reflection in a well or spring, preferably while naked. A young woman can also listen to the cuckoo bird. The number of years to wait for marriage corresponds with the cuckooing; if none is heard marriage will take place the same year. A big bonfire is also part of the celebration and the person first hit by the smoke will be lucky in love.

We could use some Midsummer magic in present life. Today's crude oil climbed past $140 and Dow Jones fell nearly 360 points. Consumer confidence is at an all-time low and for a reason. Granted, oil companies are making record profits and thus give a more optimistic picture of America's financial shape than it would be without them. I would hate to be in charge of a non-profit organization as people are not going to be able to donate like before. According to today's New York Times many people cannot afford to keep their dogs anymore since they have to choose between feeding their children or pets. As a result animal shelters are overcrowding with a record number of pets being euthanized. Many events are beyond the means of the ordinary working class. Vacation plans have been canceled or changed. With the plummeting dollar most countries have simply become too expensive for us to visit and airlines are adding all kinds of fees to already high fares. First we were told to check every piece of our luggage, but now doing so costs money and we are supposed to carry everything on board, desperately looking for space in overhead bins. People inspecting our luggage on behalf of our famous Homeland Security shamelessly steal what they want. My eldest daughter was recently returning from a conference in Philadelphia and without thinking placed her medicine in checked luggage. Naturally the pills never made it to Seattle. This Monday she came back from Scotland from another international conference and British Airways managed to lose her two bags, a scenario more of a norm than exception today. One hears of horror stories of anything valuable stolen at airport security checkpoints, especially if one ends up beeping walking through a metal detector and not being able to keep an eye on the basket where personal belongings go. Not only are we nearing a Third World country economically, Americans are behaving in a way we would expect in Karachi or Bogotá.

Every Finn's favorite author of children's books, Tove Jansson, wrote her fourth Moomin book in 1954, titled "Moomins and the Midsummer Madness." I remember reading it, in Finnish naturally, for the first time with great excitement at the age of five. There is a volcanic eruption followed by a surge of water. Everything and everyone washes away; most of the Moomin family eventually ending up on a floating theater stage. Moominpappa decides to write a play and every critter around takes a boat to see the production, including the remaining family members who are by now chased by police. The play becomes very interactive and hilarious, and naturally has a happy ending. Water levels dropping, the Moomin family is able to return home and everything is again as it should be. Earlier this year the animated Finnish-Polish-Austrian co-production had its premier. This link takes you to a site in New Zealand. Perhaps the suffering folks around the Mississippi river could have something to learn from the film. At least it would give them a bit of comic relief.

We Like Sheep

The message in Georg Friedrich Händel's oratorio Messiah is slightly different ("All we like sheep have gone astray") but to the listener, those three words stick in memory. For an Englishman it might create a craving for a dinner of mutton, and when sung by one of the many truly excellent gay men's choruses, someone's wild imagination might bring produce other mental images. Nevertheless it is a great song, a catchy tune indeed.

Countries of sheep fall in two different categories. There are lands where the animals far outnumber people, such New Zealand (1 to 12) and Australia, with a slightly smaller ratio. I like to think a sheep farmer takes care of his flock for the wool, a great insulator, and not the meat, but unfortunately many young lambs end up on our dinner table. For instance, in Iceland meat production is the main purpose for keeping sheep, and perhaps that explains why the animals there are not very docile as, for a good reason, they don't trust the people. However, in a similar climate in the sparsely populated Falkland Islands, in the Southern Hemisphere, fine wool is their pride. Personally, I don't have a problem of having a domestic animal such as a cow ending up slaughtered when she gets old and her life is more pain than pleasure on the pasture and the farmer no longer gets milk from her. The same is true with an old hen which doesn't lay any more eggs. We are so spoiled in our quest for tender meat that we insist on growing animals in conditions where they cannot move and thus prevent their meat from becoming tough, more like that of a game animal. A Russian delicacy is to rip open a pregnant mother sow and cook the unborn piglets. I'm sure they are succulent but I'd rather put a tough old hen in a pressure cooker and enjoy the delicious soup, unless I decided to stick to a vegetarian diet.

The other category of sheep nations is the kind Händel had in mind where people end up behaving like sheep with their scared herd mentality. Countries differ a lot in this respect. America lives up to its reputation as "Sheep Country USA". Although at one point we were very much of a worker's nation, since the passage of the Taft-Hartley bill in 1947 (which President Truman tried to veto), unions and their members lost much of their power in the American society. Of course, those were difficult times with all the military men coming home from two fronts and not finding work as much of the industrial output had been geared towards making weapons and other supplies for the war. Socialism and communism seemed frightening with the Soviet Union flexing its muscle and conquering and occupying Eastern Europe as well as a third of Germany. Union leaders had to file affidavits with the U.S. Department of Labor declaring they were not Communist Party members or sympathizers. The U.S. Supreme court finally overturned that requirement as unconstitutional in 1965.

The independent, too-smart-for-us presidential candidate Ralph Nader stated in 2002: "Taft-Hartley entrenched significant executive tyranny in the workplace, with ramifications that are more severe today than ever. – It is past time for the repeal of Taft-Hartley". Most of us have experienced such tyranny in one form or another. Our unions have become weak and much of the work force isn't taking part in organized labor. Since Ronald Reagan delivered the striking Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization a severe blow in 1981, most unions have been reluctant to go to that extent with their labor disputes, one exception being the Teamsters. We thought of the striking Hollywood writers as a big deal recently, although it only meant more reruns or perhaps presenting the viewers with older treasures they had never seen before. I had just immigrated to Los Angeles when studio musicians went on strike as their demands were not met. A new Local 47 member, I had to go and picket in front of the Paramount Studios many times during early hours of the day. Of course, no one honored the picket line and all the studios had their music produced overseas, in another city or even locally, in secrecy, by greedy union members themselves. I remember the studio scene upon my arrival in 1977 when one concertmaster X would say that if I ever worked for concertmaster Y, he would never hire me again. They were perhaps six of these people seemingly hating each others' guts. But then came the strike and all these individuals formed a wolf pack, playing three sessions of illegal gigs together almost every day. That taught me a lot about people and their principles, or lack of, in this business. After six months or so, the union had to accept an offer that was lower than the studios' initial one.

Much of the sheep mentality comes out of fear. Having been threatened by a cruel and inept manager that if a lawful grievance wasn't withdrawn, one's benefits and salary would be cut off immediately, very few employees have the backbone to stand for their rights. It is a well-known fact that most people are unhappy at their place of employment and they would leave if it didn't endanger their health insurance or income at least short-term. There have been enough horror stories of people and their dependents getting sick while the person in question has been between jobs. Fortunes can disappear in medical expenses and no private insurance is going to accept an application from a seriously ill individual. If we finally become like the rest of the civilized world and start offering people universal health care, perhaps we start acting more like our European, Australian or even Canadian counterparts. Just last week France was paralyzed by striking teachers whose jobs are threatened by President Sarkozy's proposed budget cuts. My first memory of a general strike in Finland was when I was just seven and had to learn to drink black coffee as no milk or cream was available for a month. Yes, strikes can be a nuisance and should only be used as a last resort, but at least everyone in other industrialized nations knows that such an option exists. If the seemingly powerful American Federation of Musicians couldn't help their Los Angeles local with labor issues, what makes a little "Prayers Organization" think that they have any say? Come contract negotiations, their wishes and demands are like prayers indeed.

There are ordinary sheep, some black sheep, and a number of rams, but also goats and stubborn Billy-goats that don't give wool and in the latter case even milk. They are all surrounded by sheep-dogs, which often enjoy their seemingly powerful status as the flocks' middle managers. On the top you have the humans, herds' CEOs and executives, who decide whether you will live or die, but also a powerful pack of wolves, coyotes and other blood-thirsty wild carnivores. We all know many of the latter surrounding the human sheep.

"The Flock" by Millie Ballance

Robotic

The story about the Honda robot which conducted the Detroit Symphony recently seems to have become a media darling. And indeed it is quite a pleasure to watch the little shiny fellow move his arms gracefully and have the orchestra follow him admirably. As we know that orchestra musicians are supposed to play like robots these days, who better to conduct them than the real thing. Although some baton wielders might argue with this, the function of a conductor is to beat time and keep the players together and this the electronic marvel does truly well. Supposedly ASIMO is also programmed to be polite and mild-mannered and speaks to the audience and musicians with respect. No dirty looks, yelling, bodily fluids landing on nearby instruments or other often customary unpleasantness of any kind, nor toe-tapping! No wonder the musicians were smiling and the audience thrilled. Naturally the “Impossible Dream” was perfectly memorized, thus no score was needed. The printed media could replace the cranky old lady of a music cricket with an expert in computing and electronics; a most welcome change in a provincial town.

Just imagine all the money saved by cash-strapped orchestras. After an initial purchase no astronomical salaries to pay, no egos to battle with, no legal threats in the form of lawsuits either. The young pretty ladies (or handsome men) would be left alone. Name the little man in his shining armor something like Mr. Silber, and the usual donor pool would rush to help the organization. Since the robot would not know how to discriminate, even the oldest patron of the arts would be properly complimented, instead of the usual snickering behind the person’s back. “Yes, we love your money but boy, are you ugly and stinky!” No wonder Detroit’s new music man, Leonard Slatkin, rushed to say that the robot did a good job but it can’t really hear what the musicians play or adjust to their playing. Come on, name all the conductors who do hear and try to follow the musicians! It would be a short list, I’m afraid. Beethoven managed fine although he was deaf. Secondly, I don’t think it would be difficult to come up with software to remedy this ‘fault’.

The orchestra in Columbus, Ohio, might have been saved with a silvery electronic gentleman. Instead, they are becoming another entry in the list of dead and dying music organizations. As the United States is rapidly descending to resemble a third world country, more deaths will no doubt follow. If people have to choose between having food, electricity and fuel or expensive theater, opera or concert tickets, the outcome should be a no-brainer. Even multibillionaire Georg Soros recently told an interviewer that people should realize that the good times are over, perhaps permanently. In spite of optimistic opinions about the greenback going up in value and price of crude oil coming down, both continue in their seemingly unstoppable direction, one upward, the other down. Truckers have been forced to quit with diesel fuel at $5 per gallon. There is talk about ordinary gasoline reaching that mark by Labor Day. Am I grateful to be able to work at home; even the college is only a five minute walk away! I wanted to use my frequent flyer miles to attend a funeral of a close relative in Finland. I could have had my ticket but the fuel surcharge would have meant a measly $650 added to the “free” fare. The family understands.

My wife received an interesting piece of mail, regarding the bankruptcy of her beloved Northwest Chamber Orchestra. It is very evident that dark outside forces wanted the “Little Orchestra That Could” terminated, as the amount of money the trustee holds is larger than all the debts and costs of administration. What kind of bankruptcy is that? There was no reason to kill the orchestra that provided its players with benefits, other than what many see as obvious. It is a-polling indeed that some viewed the little group with its gifted conductors, Ralf Gothóni and Joseph Silverstein, as a thorn on their side. As is the case in life, one cannot awaken the dead. The group that survived for over a quarter of a century is missed.

Photo of ASIMO from
www.akihabaranews.com/fr

Dying Breed

Last month the New York Times published an article titled "Now on the Endangered Species List: Movie Critics in Print". It points out that with all the online coverage, both by publications and bloggers, there is increasingly little need for a film review in a newspaper. Indeed, many publications no longer have reviews of new movies, or they get theirs from the wire. The fact is that good critical success doesn't often add up to commercial one at the box office. Readers want fresh opinions, not those of the old fuddy-duddies whose taste is quite different from the younger crowd. Yes, sometimes there is an insightful review of a beautiful movie that one knows isn't going to shatter any records and the reader is grateful to be introduced to it. This is especially true to foreign films which are amazingly scarce in this country. Perhaps with Americans becoming more and more illiterate, reading subtitles is too much of an effort. Understanding them in French, German or Italian would be too much to ask. Luckily one can import DVDs from overseas markets and play them on a region-free player or on a computer with proper software.

A more important question is should arts be "reviewed" at all. There was a time when a paper would give its stamp of approval or disapproval on something an individual on their payroll wrote up. Often these critics had their personal agendas and preferences they tried to force upon the reader. I can't say that the average person has become smarter but since there is so much variety of opinion on the internet, who can blame a person from wanting to hear another side to the story. A painting or a sculpture may receive glowing reviews in the newspaper, especially if the writer and the artist are friends, yet someone on a successful blog can negate all that by exposing it as trash. People hardly agree on basic things such as food and drink, so it is easy to understand the vastly different opinions on literature, theater, music and yes, movies. It is amazing to read restaurant reviews as some patrons find the food and service disgusting and yet others praise it to high heavens. Word of mouth, both good and bad, is even more effective than anything online. After a satisfactory movie or tasty meal, it is easy to reach for the omnipresent cell phone and let your friends know about it. There is no need to even talk as texting will do the job. News like that spreads fast and the restaurant may find a full house the next night or the movie theater a long line at the ticket office.

In music, critics shouldn't really exist. Only someone highly educated with literary talent, and a performer or composer, should be allowed to express an opinion and even then, it should be made clear in the text that this is only one person's, not the paper's view. In a city or town where there is basically one organization responsible for musical entertainment and just one critic who writes reviews, the situation becomes unhealthy in no time. When a judge befriends a prosecutor and/or a defense attorney, impartiality is history. Sometimes these reporters have stayed with the publication for decades and are in close social contact with the local big machers. At other times there is a romantic involvement, real or imagined. In a nearby city there was a music critic who would publish reviews of a community orchestra's concerts in a suburb some fifteen minutes away. The conductor was always praised in a manner that could be best described as love letters. The critic had a first name that wasn't gender-specific and most of us thought it was a woman who had the hots for the conductor. We were quite shocked to find out that she was a he, as people didn't think of the conductor as gay. Well, the critic suddenly died and the paper decided to cease publishing classical reviews entirely. A similar decision supposedly has taken place in this town as the main paper's classical specialist received her severance package recently. I don't know the reasons behind it all, but perhaps the paper had to downsize and the least valuable people had to go. It has been great many years since I had read anything written by this critic. I remember an orchestra violinist once getting raves from her and carrying enlarged copies of the review with him, showing them to everyone ad nauseam. Some locals have lost their bullhorn, that's for sure. All I know is that during her Running Start program at the Seattle Central Community College my daughter's English professor used said critic's texts as an example how not to write. Great program that Running Start, although high schools don't like it as it robs them of funds. My Anna is getting her double BA degree in Political Science and Spanish next month at the age of 20.

I believe reviewing the arts should be restricted to only a few first rate newspapers, in cities where there is a lot offered. New York obviously comes to mind and a writer of classical music for the Times can stay plenty busy never setting foot in the local orchestra's offerings. Multiple noteworthy recitals take place daily, with fresh new faces. Art galleries are everywhere and play productions are numerous on any given day. Los Angeles is becoming another center and the greater metropolitan area has a lot to offer, so I would include the L.A. Times on the list. Critic-performer fraternizing should be outlawed and any reporter guilty of that should immediately be let go. Neutrality must be the rule of the land in the media.

In my childhood the local paper had a critic who was an alcoholic and some kind of a music teacher for adults. His mission in life was to make fun of my father and his quite excellent orchestra. Once the critic got fired, an amateur viola player continued in the same fashion, in spite of having sat in the very orchestra. This man played with his mouth always wide open and I often had an urge to stick an apple in it. When I performed the glorious Glazounov concerto, he wrote how it was too bad that I had to play such rotten Kreisler concertos. My opinion about critics didn't improve any when in my teens a Finnish well-known gay critic tried to get me drunk and to his hotel room while I was studying with Heifetz in Los Angeles. He then had the nerve to complain to my father that I didn't know what was best for me nor how to take care of PR. My dear old man was naïve and totally clueless and tried to inquire what I had done wrong to insult the critic. Although I have known great writers of music, most others have been failures in life. The good ones continue to be successful, and I don't feel sorry for any others whose jobs are threatened.

An incompetent critic's defense is "You don't have to be a cow to tell that the milk is sour". True, but sour could as well mean delicious yogurt, sour cream or even Havarti cheese. All of those beat non-fat milk, don't they?

Memorandum

Unlike most of us believe, memories are never the same twice as they are recreated each time we go back in time. Someone called this process “memories of memories”. Remembering biting into a delicious apple for instance will cause the brain to bring together the color, the shape, the smell and the taste. Over the years details change as the brain stores its information in different parts. For this reason eyewitness accounts are often extremely unreliable, and everyone experiences an event differently to start with. When a victim of a crime is presented with a line-up, they tend to pick a familiar-looking person who might be someone working at the supermarket or a neighbor down the street.

Since I installed Joost, an online television network, I have been watching old reruns of the original Star Trek series. Having not seen the episodes in a few years, my mind has altered the details slightly. At times I’m amazed how something seems unexpected, as if my mind is playing tricks. It is possible that a nasty concussion scrambled my brain slightly but a more likely explanation is time passing. Well, the fringe benefit is that the episodes seem surprisingly fresh to me, although of course I remember the basic plots. I should brush up on my Klingon, though.

As people live to be older than ever before, problems and illnesses with memory are increasing sharply. Close friends and family members are victims of various forms of dementia. Those diagnosed with Alzheimer’s carry a scarlet letter “A” on them as we tend to label people with such illnesses. My mother died as result of this terrible disease ten years ago and her younger brother suffers from the same. Naturally I wonder if this is something I’ll have to face one day. Although I much resemble my father, physically I am closer to my maternal side and have had similar health problems. But as I have no trouble reading through a Scientific American issue and comprehending it, or memorizing an enormous amount of music, I don’t see any warning signs yet. My dad has age-related dementia which mainly affects his short-term memory. Yet when my brother and his wife visited him just two days ago, he immediately said “There comes my son!” and was actively interested in what was happening in their lives. The fact that they celebrated their 45-year wedding anniversary took him by surprise. Of course some days are worse for someone at 97 and recently he insisted that he has seven children, instead of us three. Perhaps there are others we don’t know about? I should take time off this summer and pay him a visit, although crowded airports, high ticket prices with their fuel surcharges and now the latest, paid luggage, don’t make such a trip an attractive option. We complain about gas prices but over there the cost is at least double. With the weak dollar, we are like paupers over in the Euro zone. Hotel rooms start at $300 even in the smaller cities and the tab for dining out is like in Tokyo’s business restaurants.

People have a remarkable ability to block unpleasant memories, probably part of our survival system. Death camp survivors would have never been able to continue life without this skill. I myself have managed to repress a great deal, such as unhappy moments in a first marriage. It is as if they never existed. I was talking to a former student and I assumed she had stayed put as concertmaster of the same orchestra for the thirty years. I had completely forgotten about her years in Belgium, but once the topic came up, that buried information quickly resurfaced. Likewise I have nothing but loving memories of my mother, yet our relationship was often turbulent. It is also possible to filter out all the good times and remember a person who has hurt us or our family with intense hatred, even if there has been a time when the relationship was not so bad. If a daughter or a son has been murdered, or the family’s well-being seriously hurt, I don’t think it is possible to forgive or forget. We find closure when we read about the death of the evil person, either in a news item or an obituary. I know it is not the way religions and holy men teach us, but need for revenge is a very powerful feeling. Perhaps someone who has been violated gets some pleasure of seeing their torturer and his wife or girlfriend become old and sickly. A once pretty Eva Braun or a SS officer's trophy wife may all of a sudden look like Meryl Streep in the final scenes of “Death Becomes Her”. A once powerful Gestapo man might resemble the living dead when slowly crossing a street. Still, the final closure will have to wait. Horrible as it was, I understand why Saddam Hussein was lynched by the same people he used to torture, or that same fate met the dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, and his wife on Christmas Day in 1989.

Simon Wiesenthal wrote a powerful book, “The Sunflower”, subtitled “On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness”. In the first part he tells about a dying SS man at a Nazi concentration camp bringing the prisoner, the author, to his bedside. The soldier wanted to confess his terrible acts to a Jew and ask him for forgiveness. Wiesenthal remained silent. In the second part of the book 53 outstanding men and women give their replies to the author’s question: Had he done the right thing and what would these individuals have done in his place? Interestingly among these people is the only Nazi leader who took full responsibility for his actions, Albert Speer. His admission of guilt was in stark contrast to other Nazis who all washed their hands, claiming they had only followed orders. This action probably saved Speer from the death penalty and put him in prison for twenty years instead.

Admitting guilt and asking for forgiveness might indeed be enough for a Robert Mugabe or another cruel dictator to start a long healing process. Without it they are doomed and their victims and families will be waiting for the inevitable, no matter how long it will take. Just as in The Sunflower, regretting life's terrible mistakes on one's death bed will be too late.

Democracy in Orchestras

Chicago's coup of managing to hire Riccardo Muti certainly didn't go unnoticed in the American music scene. This is the same maestro that had turned down the New York Philharmonic, after all, which then decided to enlist a homegrown boy Alan Gilbert for the job, hardly a household name. I don't get excited about conductors as many of them are just overblown with ego and possess less talent than most realize. Muti is, however, a true musician and if things had gone as expected in Europe, he probably would have stayed there. He had declared never again to accept a position of Music Director in the U.S., following a less-than-ideal period at the helm of the Philadelphia Orchestra. We may advertise our brand of freedom but it is elsewhere that one sees democracy at work. The great Muti had to leave his beloved La Scala because the people under him had had "suffered" enough and protested, shutting down the institution with a strike. I wish people in American orchestras would have the same clout: our musical landscape would look very different as far as orchestras are concerned. I think Muti will fare well in Chicago, better than Barenboim who was at odds with many Jewish donors because of his political views, mainly about the situation in the Middle East. And in Chicago the orchestra is the name of the game, whereas in New York the most interesting concerts are given by visiting groups.

Every so often stories from another American landmark orchestra surface and resurface, this one in Cleveland. In the good old times they were about George Szell, the legendary dictatorial maestro in charge. Although his longtime concertmaster Josef Gingold never directly criticized his boss, he told enough details to make one understand that working under this man was not necessarily a joy, in spite of the high level of performances the orchestra consistently gave. These days the news of the Cleveland Orchestra are about their concertmaster for the past dozen or so years, William Preucil. In this time period he has managed to become a more powerful figure in the organization that anyone else. He also managed to get numerous close relatives, such as a sister, a brother-in-law and a daughter into the orchestra through what players claim have been most unfair auditions. This kind of nepotism is usually expected by the person on the podium, not a concertmaster. Finally last year Cleveland changed their audition procedures for the first time in 85 years, making it impossible for a family member to vote for his/her relative. As a sign of effectiveness of this change Mr. Preucil's violinist daughter didn't get in, and yet everyone knew that under the old rules it would have been a given. Naturally the concertmaster was very upset, and as a student of his from the Cleveland Institute at the same time filed a complaint about sexual harassment, Mr. Preucil went through a most unpleasant period. Unlike in many other cities, the local press had a heyday with these stories. I know conductors who view young females (and in some cases, males) as fair game and perhaps as "perks" of the job. They are not afraid of the consequences as these young players know that if they speak up, their careers are finished or at least greatly harmed.

I have sat through an enormous number of auditions during almost four decades, on two continents. In the past nobody had thought about screens and indeed a pretty young female violinist, often fresh from school, held a definite advantage to a middle-aged balding man with a beer belly, no matter how well the latter played and knew the repertoire. Without the identity being hidden, a conductor could almost always push his favorites (for whatever reason) through, as the orchestra members of the selecting committee didn't have the backbone to stand up against his/her boss. In the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra a violist, a girlfriend of a first violinist, was judged inadequate for the job. A little later she landed the principal position in Gotham city. She must have made remarkable progress in that relatively short time. With screens the amount of verbal commenting between the committee members seemed to increase. Often I would hear remarks that were dumbfounding in their stupidity, in the class of a music critic who praises someone's intonation when in fact it was highly erratic, or talks about "beautiful Mozart" when it was butchered enough to turn one's stomach. One of my favorite comments was about a cello candidate: "My wife says he's hard to get along with". The two of them had played in a chamber orchestra setting and they obviously didn't like each other enough. Needless to say, the candidate was disqualified based solely on this statement, as his cello playing was rather fine.

As in the finals the screens disappear unless someone has been invited directly to that round, it makes it easier for the conductor, or alternately the musician's friends, to push the person through. Yes, the players can prevent a conductor's favorite from getting a majority of "yes" votes, but the baton wielder can also decide not to hire someone that every musician has voted for. There have been bloody scenes where a brass player or a low string player hasn't made the cut and he had been promised the job in advance. But what function does a selection committee have if they are reduced to a mere rubber stamp? Instead of handing the job to the person with most qualifying votes, the conductor often acts like the Supreme Court which handed our President the victory in 2000, in spite of his lower vote numbers. Music directors sometimes like to be the jury, the judge and even the executioner.

Obviously it is stupid to determine how well a person would fit in based on a few measures of music. Some orchestras invite candidates to sit in for a week or two, sometimes based on their present job descriptions, not an actual audition. For instance, I got a call from across the border a few years ago. Someone wondered why two violinists titled "concertmaster" from this side of the border were sitting on the vacant leader's chair over there, in a B-class orchestra even under Canadian standards. The local "heroes" didn't seem to be to Canadians' taste as neither was considered for the post. In principle, the tenure system is supposed be in place to weed out misfits, but in practice it often isn't used properly. Some jobs remain vacant year after year, as a conductor is expecting a new Heifetz to plop down from heaven into his group. Likewise, tenure is granted to people who until that point have watched their behavior but then turn into little monsters.

With supposedly two million Chinese studying the violin seriously in the Mainland, their overtaking all jobs in orchestras here and elsewhere is just a question of time. They will be able to play perfectly and just as masterfully as they perform in gymnastics. They are more serious about achievement than anyone in the Western culture and work far harder. Also, as they don't have a long tradition of playing a certain way, such as those trained in Russia, making them ideal members for an orchestra. They're willing to do exactly what the conductor wants and will never question his authority or musical ideas.

The two million may not make the greatest soloists unless they have been exposed to Western tastes early on, but great musicians and orchestras have never made good bedfellows. After all, the great Fritz Kreisler in his 20s wasn't considered worthy a position in the Vienna opera orchestra's second violin section. This was at a time when a typical orchestra player was rather primitive by today's standards. As vibrato was a no-no, they must have viewed Kreisler's beautiful sound and style as an oddity. We were lucky as the score was 0 for the Orchestra to 1 for Music.

Popes and Lamas

My grandfather, from my dad's side, was a man of few words but when he spoke, every sentence carried weight. He wouldn't have done well in America with its meaningless small talk. I had tremendous respect for him and never addressed him in a familiar form, like the French "tu", although I had no trouble using it with other relatives and family friends of the same generation. He lived a few miles from our home in a house that he had built with his own hands for himself and my grandmother. Before the structure was completed she suddenly passed away after a short battle with cancer. I have only a vague recollection of her when she visited after learning about her terminal illness and I remember the tears and hugs which left a lasting impression on an almost 3-year-old. She spent the whole day with my sister and me, having previously not felt particularly close to my father's second family. After all, the responsibility of taking care of my half-brother fell upon her and my grandpa during the war, as my dad's first wife died a few days after giving birth and he was on the battle front. Perhaps grandma felt one child was enough for my father, as she herself only had two, my dad and a sister seven years younger.

Grandpa lived by himself for 15 years. I would see him two or three times a week. In the winter snow my father's car would often get stuck on the slippery hill by the house. I had to help him to drive it up early on as I was much better with the use of the clutch. My dad's instinct was just to press the gas pedal harder and naturally the car would get even more hopelessly stuck. Every Sunday grandpa would come over for lunch. We ate the big meal early in the afternoon on the weekends. For many years during the winter months my family would go over to his place for a sauna bath. During the summer we would of course enjoy the sauna at the summer home but during the cold season that wasn't a possibility. My grandpa was a masterful craftsman and was equally at home with wood and metal. Our home was full of furnishings he had created, for instance wrought iron ceiling fixtures and floor lamps with built-in little tables, his own design. Once I started to play the violin he made many exquisite cases for the instruments. I was in my upper teens and in Los Angeles when I got my first commercially produced Jaeger case.

Grandpa was an avid reader and since I treasured him so much, his favorite literature became mine as well. He was fond of Giovannino Guareschi's Don Camillo books, an interesting choice for a man who never went to church and certainly wasn't a Catholic. But the dialogues Don Camillo had with Christ in his little church must have made sense to my Vaari, and they made sense to me, too. The love-hate relationship between the town's priest and communist mayor, Peppone, could have taken place in postwar Finland. The very satirical book Comrade Don Camillo about the prelate's trip to the Soviet Union as a secret member of the communist delegation was published in time for my grandfather to enjoy it. We laughed so hard about the Russian-made tractor that wouldn't start until Don Camillo blessed it with his holy water he had smuggled from Italy. My grandfather passed away in 1967 and the author a year later.

So, in spite of never having set foot in a Catholic church until I was in Vienna and in Paris, I was well aware of many of the unique facets of the religion. Having read every word of Guareschi's books time and time again made me become interested in the topic. I was a great admirer of Pope John XXIII who managed to put a human face on the papacy. He has been often called "the most beloved Pope in history" and "renewer of the church", the latter term used even by Protestants. A very different Pope is about to visit the United States, Benedict XVI. It seems to me that Catholics in this country, at least in this corner of the country, and the present German Pope think unalike and perhaps their faith is based on a slightly different set of values. Many see him representing the past when we should look forward to the future and all the problems it seems to bring mankind. Nevertheless, the White House is planning on a grand reception, a more festive one than for any other head of state or religious leader ever before. I don't know what to think of all that pomp. Shouldn't the Pope be as humble a person as the other religious dignitary visiting here in Seattle, the Dalai Lama? "The Seeds of Compassion" event has taken place for a number of days now. Today 16,000 schoolchildren, our youngest daughter included, got to see the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists. Based on the numerous interviews I have seen, I genuinely like this intelligent yet simple man with his infectious laughter.

So, Seattle has done its best to welcome the Lama, yet I must wonder if His Holiness is impressed by all the materialism most of his local hosts exhibit. They praise a man whose religion and views they can hardly begin to comprehend. After all, he is the leader for a very simple, oppressed group of people in the Himalayas. China has made his return impossible and with the Olympics coming up, political leaders have to weigh the importance of trade relations with China versus human rights of the people in Tibet. I can almost sense the relief of our president having a "real" religious leader to impress. Many local civic and other leaders here are equally uncomfortable: Seattle is after all one of the main ports for Chinese imports. Also, the kind of wisdom this Lama represents is very foreign to the way local bigwigs think and act. Perhaps the children today with their open minds are the best audiences for the Really Good Man. A friend told me that someone quite the opposite is in charge of some of the musical entertainment for the Lama. Perhaps the Not-So-Good Man has simply made a mistake and thinks that this is a Deli Lama from Manhattan and provides an opportunity to dine on that South American delicacy, barbecued llama, in addition to shrimp, clams and other treyf delicacies his family is so fond of.

I know I would be at total ease with His Holiness, but it is hard to imagine what those two polar opposites would talk about, were they placed face to face. Who knows: the Dalai Lama might have been able to reveal to the other one what kind of lifeform he would come back as in reincarnation. A Pacific Northwest giant clam, the geoduck, would be a good choice. At least life as that immobile bivalve mollusk life would be less destructive and Nirvana thus a bit closer, perhaps in just a hundred millenia or so.

Photo of Tuomo Talvi by Ilkka Talvi 1963
The Little World of Don Camillo: Baptism

Of Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism as a term is somewhat of an oxymoron, as it refers to hatred of the Jewish people and not the much larger group of other Semitic people. From ancient Assyrians to present-day Arabs, this Semitic population populates much of the Middle East. The term "antisemitish" was first coined in mid-1800s in Germany. Many continued to use a different expressions when speaking of Jews, such as "Palestinians living among us". The word "Semitic" simply indicates that a person is a descendant of Shem, one of the three sons of Noah. Today, "Palestinian" has gained a new meaning, referring to the non-Jewish population of the area, although it wasn't until 1950 when the Palestine Post changed its name to Jerusalem Post.

We all know about the horrors of the Nazi death camps and usually blame the Germans for the death of millions of Jews in Europe. But throughout history since the Middle Ages the most intense Antisemitism has been in Eastern Europe, among the Slavic people. During the German occupation Poland was the only country where anyone (along with his/her family) caught helping a Jew was automatically subject to the death penalty. The Polish people did some murderous work of their own for which they later blamed the Germans, such as the Jedwabne pogrom on 1941. Even after the war was over, the remaining about 10% of the pre-war Jewish population, wanting to return home from the death camps in Poland, found their Polish and Lithuanians neighbors very hostile. Pogroms still took place, for example in Kraków (1945) and in Kielce (1946), the latter fourteen months after the war was over. One would have thought that people had learned their lesson about the terrible destruction hate brings. It is no wonder that most of the remaining Polish Jews rushed to leave, either to Palestine, soon to be called Israel, or to a Western country, such as the United States.

As the Polish and Lithuanian people were Roman Catholic, all this did not help the relations between the Jews and the Church. A question remains whether people committed their horrible deeds because of their religion and its old accusations of Jews being the killers of Jesus, or did the Church get a bad rap because these people happened to be Catholic. A truth is probably somewhere in between, although I have a hard time believing that a true Christian would have had anything to do with the rampant Antisemitism.

The Jews of Germanic Europe were often non-religious and wanted to blend in with the local population. Proper German was spoken by all, unlike the Yiddish of Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belorussia. It has been said that the German Jews were more German than the country's own inhabitants. Unfortunately many of them were also relatively well off during the time when Germany was struggling financially. It is easy to imagine an envious and even bitter mood spreading in Germany and Austria of this time of hardship and hyperinflation when the bankers, doctors and well-to-do shopkeepers happened to be Jewish. One can find some primitive reasoning behind the hatred of this part of population, just as Americans didn't like their "Hebrews", preventing them from entering many everyday activities, from enrolling in colleges to spending a night in a first-class hotel. In the 1930s this country had more of Hitler's admirers that probably any place outside of Germany itself. We joined WWII reluctantly after all. Some of that hesitancy to go to war would have been smart advice later on, even during this administration.

The Eastern European Jewry was hardly a target for envy. The people living in the Pale often barely eked out a living farming and those in the cities' ghettos didn't fare much better. It wouldn't have been easy to blame a starving Jew for one's own misery, unless a deep-rooted hate mechanism had existed from the childhood on. Perhaps Americans can understand this better than I do, as people in this country often grew up in such an atmosphere where the target of hate could have been a Black, Native American, Chinese, Italian, Hispanic, or a Jew. In every misery one seems to need a scapegoat. I wonder who it will be this time as our lives seem to go from bad to worse. At some point people's anger will be directed at those who seem to do increasingly well when others' suffering increases.

It would be interesting to study anti-Semitism in the United States by comparing it during the last 80 years or so in various cities. I would be surprised if New York or Los Angeles could keep up with the sentiments in Chicago and its large Polish population. Such a comparison might give insight to understanding the phenomena of hating another ethnic group. My home country, Finland, has had serious racial issues with its "Blacks", the Gypsies or the Roma. But at least the country has a clean record with their small population of Jews. Its constitution from 1919 specifies that Jews are to be treated as equals to other Finns in every respect. Yes, during the Continuation War 1941-44 Germany sent some troops to Finland to help it defend herself against Stalin's Red Army. It must have been somewhat of a shock for the German soldiers to find out that they were under the command of a Jewish officer.

The Western Washington University's Hillel, which my daughter Anna is the president of, is sponsoring their Holocaust Memorial Week this spring, as well as an "Israel @ 60" festival. Bellingham has two concentration camp survivors, one of whom, Noémi Ban, has made it her life's quest to educate younger people of the nightmare Europe lived through not so long ago and to make sure it won't be forgotten. She will be speaking and as usual, the lecture hall will be full as everyone loves the articulate and lovable old Hungarian lady. It is ironic how loosely the term "survivor" is used today. The reality show by that name doesn't help matters any. I remember seeing an advertisement for some kind of remembrance-related enterprise where a descendant of Viennese Jews was advertised as being one. Never mind that the person was born in the United States well after the war and had a worry-free East Coast childhood that hardly resembled life in Birkenau. Perhaps a couple months in such a camp would have made him a more humble individual and earned the right to call himself a survivor.

The picture above this blog entry is from the Peters Edition of a Prokofiev Sonata. It is amazing what a different spelling can do. Switch two letters and you end up with PORK OF JEW. Funny, I could swear I used to know a false friend by that name, but of course I can be mistaken.

Photo: Nazi supporters in Los Angeles give the Hitler salute
at a rally opposing the boycott of German goods. May 1934.
UPI/Corbis-Gettman, New York

Palm Springs

Yesterday's surprise unseasonal snow falling on cherry blossoms here in Seattle reminded me of Palm Springs. Not only is it possible to go up from the hot desert to a completely different climate in 15 minutes via the Aerial Tramway, the city itself had a rare snowstorm many years ago. If I remember correctly it happened during or around Christmas. This was much before today's digital cameras and roughly half of the films left for developing magically disappeared. As most of us remember, the companies only promised to replace a lost roll with a fresh one, never mind what treasures had been lost. Obviously many of the better pictures ended up as postcards or in publications in this case. It would have been next to impossible to prove that it was your masterpiece being reproduced. Even if your loved one was in the picture, it could have been taken by someone else than you.

Palm Springs was one of my favorite destinations during all the years I lived in Los Angeles. If I had a free day in the winter, I would leave for the desert early in the morning to make the first run of the Aerial Tramway in Chino Canyon to a winter heaven. There I would rent a pair of cross-country skis and spend a good part of the day under a dark blue sky (unless it was snowing). As the altitude was high and getting enough oxygen was a problem, I couldn't try to break any speed or distance records, but skiing even slowly in the middle of the woods in deep snow was truly exhilarating. It was always humorous to see tourists going up to the 20+ degree weather in their shorts. There they would be freezing in the covered upper terminal, shivering and eagerly awaiting for the next cable car to take them down. These days there are new rotating Swiss funicular cars replacing the trusty old ones I used to ride.

During the summer Palm Springs is a different story: I actually knew a person whose car was parked by the curb with windows closed and the driver's side plastic armrest melted from the heat. This probably wouldn't happen with today's materials but this was then. An air-conditioned shopping mall comes in handy in the 110-120 degree temperatures. I would hate to think what would happen there in case of a power outage during the hot season. For overnights Desert Hot Springs or some other outlying areas are much nicer, and were less expensive at least a couple decades ago. Unlike Palm Springs which has a microclimate of its own due to the pools and irrigated golf courses, the sky is clearer and at night one can see an incredible number of stars and feel one with nature.

That part of Southern California is beautiful and in addition to the Santa Barbara area still remains my favorite. Behind the 8,516 foot high Mountain Station stands the peak of Mt. San Jacinto at 10,834 feet and there is a vast wilderness area reaching Idyllwild, another pretty location. Another favorite drive of mine is from the Palm Springs area, past the Salton Sea, 220 feet below sea level, to San Diego via the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Much of the scenery is simply breathtaking and especially in higher altitudes it is difficult to remember one is so close to a hot desert as the landscape at times totally fools you.

One wouldn't expect to find much culture in a desert vacation destination and for a long time a local school auditorium offered the only venue for performing music. It was that location where I took a colleague in 1983 to hear the Helsinki Philharmonic play during their tour under the Community Concerts umbrella. The Finns were traveling by bus from either Arizona or Las Vegas, I can't remember. The buses were late and arrived an hour before the concert was to begin. The musicians must have been celebrating a bit too much. I can remember a fellow disembarking the bus with considerable difficulty and asking the audience members who were waiting outside, in Finnish yet, where he could buy beer and fast. I guess his hangover was quite severe. Once the orchestra got onto the stage and the show started, "Finlandia" was almost half way through before I recognized the composition. I was entertained watching a middle-aged female first violinist sitting on the outside who also must have had a busy night as she wouldn't tremolo with her bow. Instead she moved it back and forth like a lazy bass player. I felt somewhat embarrassed when the person I had brought with me asked if this indeed was the best my country had to offer.

A similar eyesore happened years later when I was playing in the new McCallum Theater for the Performing Arts with an orchestra. It had been brought there by a wealthy elderly board member. The conductor approached me at the intermission, asking what he should do as the host was unhappy seeing a younger woman not vibrating at all, and seemingly uninterested in trying her best. I told that there was nothing I could do: he had hired her and it was up to him to make sure she was doing what she was paid to do. Did she get into trouble? It was hardly the case; she was soon to be promoted. Testosterone is a powerful hormone and easily can overtake anything resembling logic and common sense.

The desert is a perfect place to learn first-hand the difference between Road Runner, the mighty Warner Brothers creation, and the humble little roadrunner, zooming across the road leading to the Tramway. As often is the case, matters such as people and their egos are easily portrayed larger than life, yet in reality they amount to nothing more than small critters.

photo © palmsprings.com

Wash My Brain, Please!

News media has been filled with stories of my native country’s “shockingly” successful school system. Here is a link to the story in the Wall Street Journal. Kids start school late, at 7, and usually don’t learn to read until then but become totally fluent within six months. There are no programs for the gifted, no “honor societies”. The youngsters listen to the same heavy metal and other headache-causing music and experiment with drugs as any typical Western student would. However, by middle school, they are light years ahead of most teenagers in other countries and nobody seems to understand this “miracle”. The Finns are more or less comfortable in many languages which in a small country with a highly unusual mother tongue is a must. Unlike here where the emphasis is on reading, and hopefully as a by-product, writing skills, plus rudimentary math, my countrymen as youngsters know their geography, biology, world history, chemistry, physics and even religion. The latter is taught in the individual’s own faith, or if preferred, as a course on philosophy that focuses on moral and ethical values. All the above is a no-brainer to me, and doesn’t speak so much about the country’s superior schooling as the inferior one in others, especially in America.

I am more and more convinced that population is kept ignorant on purpose. Masses are much easier to handle if they don’t ask too many questions and are easily brainwashed. To be sure of the success of the plan, just throw a fundamentalist religious element into the equation. All of a sudden there is no need for sciences. Knowledge of the Bible is enough. Those words have been translated from one language to another and back again, as in the case of Hebrew and Greek, and can easily be taken out of context and twisted in any way to suit the purpose, whatever it might be. No wonder only a small percentage of the population gives any credit to evolution as a science. We won’t believe in the lies that our world and cosmos is millions and billions years old instead of 5768. The world is flat (we can all see that with our eyes) and the center of everything. We have never been to the moon, except in science fiction books and movies.

We were told enough times that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were connected to Saddam Hussein. Now, 4,000 military casualties of our own later, people are finally feeling like they have been cheated, even if they choose to ignore the number of Iraqi civilian casualties which probably well exceeds the number of dead after our nuclear attacks on Japanese non-military targets at the end of WWII. As a result of the invasion and the murder of Saddam and his family, we were supposed to acquire an endless supply of cheap oil from Iraq. Well, the crude is approaching $110 a barrel and a visit to the gas station is always a shock these days. This, with the increase in food prices, is the real reason of the unhappiness of the masses.

Repeating a false fact often enough makes people believe in it, even those who don’t quite take the “if the President says so, it must be true” for real. In the art world a Benihana Veriyaki auditorium becomes a splendid creation in people’s minds, at least in a town that has become the retirement and nursing home for musicians and various directors alike. A new library is an architectural masterpiece even if people don’t like to visit it because they have trouble finding their way out. I look with sadness at pictures of this city’s old library that was torn down many decades ago. It reminds me of the similar institutions in New York City and Boston. Granted, it was probably getting too crowded and small, but surely there would have been a way to extend or enlarge it. At a time when anything old was undesirable, it was torn down to make space for an awful Lego-like structure which had to be demolished rather soon. Of course today we would designate the original place as a historical landmark, but it obviously is too late in this case.

Yesterday was Easter which for Christians is (or should be) the most important event of the year. Unlike Christmas which has a set day, Easter and other events following it are based on the old lunar calendar that the Jews and Muslims still use. Easter, interestingly named in English after a pagan holiday honoring the goddess Eostre, should be celebrated at the same time as Passover and even last year that indeed was the case. This year the Jewish calendar added their Second Adar month, pushing the Holidays 29 days into the future. Easter is celebrated as a festival of death and life, commemorating the murder and resurrection of history’s first true known socialist or one might even say religious communist, Jesus Christ. Interestingly, although Jews don’t give Him the credit due, Israel’s famous kibbutzim were designed after principles that Jesus tried to teach his people. He wasn’t fond of money and possessions, and would feel sick today seeing a popular preacher pray that all of his congregation members and television viewers should get a new Mercedes or BMW as they “deserve” it. Even now the authorities would have problems with Jesus, as in many societies, democratic and dictatorial alike, Christ would probably end behind bars for his teachings. The “religious right” would hate Him for befriending gays, lesbians and addicts, as according to the four Gospels (and the unofficial ones as well) Jesus always took the side of the unwanted and untouchables and was in other words a true troublemaker and rebel.

There are rumors that in a toxic dough few Antichrists of various kinds are trying to rise, in honor of their own festival, the Yeaster. Like in a septic tank, we know what ends up on the top. I won’t name any names; those who see themselves in the description know who they are.

Image from ITT website

What is in a Name?

The tradition of celebrating Name Days, or namedays, started in Medieval Europe. Children were often named after Saints, so the Catholic Church helped spread the practice, although in some countries it was first thought to be more of a pagan tradition. Scandinavia has a rich history in this area and in my native Finland every day of the year, other than New Year's Day, the leap day of February 29^th and Christmas have a name or a few attached to it. There are actually three different official nameday calendars in my homeland, one for the Finnish Lutherans, one for the Swedish minority and yet a third for the Greek Orthodox Church.

Tomorrow will be Ilkka's nameday, and if I were working in Finland, like everyone sharing this name I would be expected to provide a fancy cake for my coworkers for the coffee break. They in turn would provide the refreshments and probably sing "Good Luck", using the tune of our "Happy Birthday to You". Present giving is not usually done, unless it is something little within the family. At least when I was young every classmate's day would be recognized. You could hide your birthday but everyone knew when the nameday was. Interestingly, I wasn't named after a Saint but rather a famous Finnish rebel leader (Jaakko Ilkka) who in 1596 was defending the rights of fellow farmers who at the time were suffering from poverty and famine. He was caught riding his horse by some too-eager early bureaucrat who hastily had him executed, just to learn the next day of orders to capture Ilkka alive and bring him to Turku, Finland's former capital. It came too late as the man was already dead, but a great legend was born. There is even an important daily newspaper by that name. Some Finns in this country celebrate St. Urho's Day on the same day, March 16^th, but this is not the case in Finland itself. The following day is St. Patrick's Day, another name day, although this year it was moved by the Catholic Church to today, in order not fall on Holy Monday which this year falls on 3-17.

Yesterday was the nameday of my beloved first and second grade teacher, Matilda. It is easy for me to remember because of the close proximity to my own day. In the middle was Risto, a Finnish form of Christian, a popular name in Scandinavia, and there always was some boy in the class by that name. Matilda, along with her husband Eino Varama, was one of the most important influences in my life. A small woman of incredible warmth and wisdom, she left a lasting impression on a small boy (we start school the year we turn 7). I realized that she was deeply religious when during the very first day of school, during lunch recess, I took out a pack of cards and started playing solitaire (Klondike, 3 at the time). She came by and didn't say anything negative but I felt like she connected card playing to gambling, or in any case it wasn't a virtue in her eyes. After school I rushed to my mother's clothing store and we marched together to the nearby book store and I bought a beautiful small light blue Bible with thin pages which were gilded on all sides. The next day I waited for the first recess to start, reached to my leather briefcase and pulled out the Book, explaining that I had this, too, not only a deck of cards. Her face lit up: I can still see the smile. I also learned what miracles faith can do: in second grade she was operated on for breast cancer which at that time usually meant a death sentence. For a couple months we had a substitute, but on Matilda's day she invited me and a few other classmates to her home for a small celebration and soon thereafter she returned to teaching. Ten years later she had another brush with death because of a burst brain aneurism. I was already studying with Heifetz in Los Angeles but her husband kept on writing to me. Nobody expected her to survive the almost two-month-long coma and temperature of over 104 degrees, but one day she woke up, wonderful as ever. The excess blood was removed from her brain, but unlike in most stroke victims, her emotional capabilities were not affected. If anything, she was sweeter and more loving than ever. When I graduated to third grade, Eino Varama became my woodwork teacher. He was also a gifted violin maker and during most lessons he just wanted me to sit in his "office", playing his instruments and offering my opinions. Then he would quickly do my work for me and gave me either a B+ or A- in my report card. A couple days a week I would visit their home right after classes, which was in a big building for teachers next to the school. Our friendship lasted until they both left this world; she first as she was 10 years older than her husband, and then he later, having lost sensation in his feet and hands and most of his eyesight. But both of them remained sharp as tacks to the end. I still think of them every day.

The Helsinki University is the official keeper and publisher of the Finnish Almanac. On their web site they have scans from the almanac pages dating back to the handwritten one from 1300s and printed ones from 1500s to present. The old almanacs had weather forecasts, information on diseases, horoscopes, in addition to data on solar and lunar eclipses and other important astronomical data, such as then-known planets lining up. I helped my father with his historical research since I was little and I don't have trouble reading the old script which to most of today's readers would present a problem. One finds interesting details in these old images. For instance "Gerardus" pops up in 1695 (Oct. 3), just to disappear eight years later, probably as unnecessary. An early name, "Narcissus", goes away but resurfaces in 1735 (Oct. 27) and lasts all the way until 1907 when many old Latin-based names disappear altogether, to make space for Finnish first names. "Ilkka" takes over "Herbert" on 3-16 in 1929.

There is a Finnish saying "Ei nimi miestä pahenna" which literally means "A man's name doesn't make him worse" but could also be understood as "Your name is your destiny". There was a fascinating article in the New York Times Science section just this past Tuesday. Titled "A Boy Named Sue, and a Theory of Names", it among other things ponders why parents give their children sometimes the oddest names. The Hogg sisters, Ima and Ura, were well know in Texas, and in spite of their names (or because of them?) managed to accomplish great things.

I like being named after a rebel leader; I just wouldn't want to be hastily hanged because of a small bureaucrat's orders. There are plenty of those around, as you know.

All the Lonely People

"Eleanor Rigby" has to be one of my all-time favorite songs. It is on a Beatles album in my Cadillac's CD-changer and I must have listened to it hundreds of times in the car alone. Not many pieces of music keep on growing with each listening but this one does. I have even forgotten it is a "pop" song. I can listen to Kreisler the next minute and feel equally at home. Even the lyrics are incredibly potent and their message hasn't grown old in all these decades I've listened to the song. I even feel like I know Father Mackenzie, or a person just like him. I also love the "Yellow Submarine" which I have as a DVD, and "Eleanor Rigby" is the first real song in it. Our society and politicians would be wise to listen to the opening verse of "All the lonely people, where do they come from?" Our country is full of people like Eleanor, pictured here as a statue that the city of Liverpool put up. The denizens of that city seem to know when they have something culturally valuable, and also have the bravery of getting rid of parasitic people threatening their unique culture.

The loneliness of people brings to mind my wife Marjorie's sister Karen. She chose to become sort of a hermit and take care of her adopted son who at times had been at odds with law and society. A life-long smoker, she had been in poor health with COPD for some time. In January, soon after I posted my "Finale" essay, her son found her dead on the floor upon returning home after midnight. Among other hardships, losing both parents and two out of three siblings in a short time span would be a lot to take even for the strongest of us. Against my advice, my wife went to work feeling obligated to fulfill her duty for the pit band, and played a wrong note in a solo while tears were still flowing from her eyes. A couple weeks later a registered letter arrived from the pit band's conductor, pointing out the wrong note and accusing her of various other things, such as playing every solo in the 2,500+ hall "too loudly" and her standards not being up to the level of his "excellent orchestra". Now, we are talking about the same conductor who also directs a community orchestra and sorely lacks an ability to fix intonation in the winds and brass. At times the pitch can be hair-raising, at least during the few occasions I have agreed to sub in the pit. Dying can be dangerous to your family's health indeed. Needless to say my wife, a violinist of renown, has decided to put an end to dealing with such donkey's orifices. More details will follow on my blog in June. As I can testify from my own experience, there is life with nice people out there, but perhaps not in the place you are working.

The mail just brought a recording of the Jules Conus Violin Concerto among other great performances by Jascha Heifetz. Officially the disc is nowhere to be found and someone was asking over $100 for it on the web, probably thinking of cashing in on a hard-to-find item. To my delight, the reproduction of the recording had been reauthorized to ArkivMusic.com and I had to pay only a tenth of the aforementioned greedy request. We do have the work on a LP vinyl, but I am not about to let a student borrow that. Interestingly, these also were two lonely people towards the end of their lives, both Conus and Heifetz. The composer couldn't hear his music performed in his native Soviet Union as he was Jewish and Stalin would have none of that; neither would many other Slavic anti-Semites, the Polish included. More on that will be discussed in a future entry. Heifetz was a victim of his own fame and also having the wrong kind of people around him. Like a lottery winner suddenly finding zillions of new friends, not to mention previously unknown relatives, the old master of the violin was also surrounded by people who wanted something out of the "friendship" for themselves. When Mr. Heifetz grew older and was no longer performing, or even teaching, there wasn't much anyone could benefit from. Those who stayed true to him did so because they cared and loved the man in spite of his less-than-perfect people skills.

I was up in the wee hours last night composing a letter to a dear student who is facing probably an imminent life-and-death issue in her family. I reminded her that her grandfather will be surrounded by a loving family and friends and that he will be remembered and cherished as long as these people live. Likewise, I know that if I were to die tomorrow, I have done well as a father and a husband, and that there even are numerous students that will remember me with kind and loving thoughts. It must be scary to be old and know that the Grim Reaper will soon call and have no one to turn to for comfort. That just might be the case for a Mr. Kerfuffle: he will drop dead kerplunk! Not even Kermit the Frog will take out his kerchief to wipe his non-existent amphibian tears.