Seniority

Veikko Talvi, 100 on June 21 2011

Upon arriving at the public senior home to see my dad, I heard sentimental songs, originating many decades ago. At first the sound came from loudspeakers but as I walked on, a Roma (or Gypsy) with a golden voice came to my sight and I realized this was the home’s dance hour. The dark-skinned baritone (for a Finn) was accompanied by a skillful accordion player and the old tunes were familiar to all present. As there were more women than men, the caregivers helped out by dancing with those who hadn’t found a partner. There was sweetness in the air and I had to delay entering my dad’s section of the building. Had he possessed the strength, I’m sure he’d have been the first one on the floor. I was mesmerized by the healing power of this quite basic but sincere and melancholic music making and spent quite a while witnessing the scene.

Today no one seems to know what direction music performances should go. Orchestras are particularly at a loss as nothing simple and small is cost-effective. By seeing the pleasure and happiness on the faces of the seniors I couldn’t even begin to deny the power of live music. There he was, a singer from a minority group in my native country, probably not particularly well known, giving joy to the elderly and even to me. One doesn’t need a star soloist or a bombastic performance of a Mahler symphony to fulfill the needs of a music-loving listener. In its simplicity the slightly amplified vocal-accordion duo hit the spot.

Two serenades

My dear dad turned a hundred years old two days ago. Although his age shows by now, he was amazingly perky for the two-hour reception. I had forgotten how proper my countrymen are in such events: just about all the male visitors were wearing black suits in spite of the festivities falling on the longest day of the year. I was the exception in an orange short-sleeved dress shirt and a Moomintroll tie with no jacket. However, my old man was admiring my colorful outfit which naturally pleased me. He was serenaded by two violinists: his very first student, now up in his years, played a long czardas from memory and amazingly well considering his age. The other musical greeting was by my niece’s daughter, four generations younger. In spite of the pressure of an audience and a grown-up’s impressive solo right before, she stood her ground and her great-grandfather was a keen listener.

Midsummer Eve is tomorrow and my brother Tuomo was busy getting ready to play the keyboard for a daytime dance with one of his bands. They were expecting hundreds of participants and I was admiring the enthusiasm with which the over 70-year-old was packing his car with sound equipment. Even in my childhood I was outright envious of the pleasure my elder brother got out of playing and performing music. The fact that he never did it for living didn’t hurt. I “retired” from studying the piano at 7 or 8 (I actually used this expression to notify my teacher) mainly because I felt I could never reach the level of my sibling who was eight years older than I. The Chopin Etudes seemed too difficult ever to master for a little tyke and I listened with amazement to the skilled improvisations that came directly from my brother’s heart. So, I concentrated on the violin, teaching myself and soon others. The fiddle was my father’s instrument and I knew he would be thrilled by my rapid progress. However, I must admit that I probably never got the kind of satisfaction out of performing my brother did and still does. I can play very well, no doubt, but the love and enjoyment doesn’t reach the level of my brother. I should have followed my mother's advice and have had a career outside of music: that way I could still love it. The wise French said that one should never work in a field what they love most as it was too close to one’s heart. They also claimed one shouldn’t marry the person they loved above everyone else: that one I can’t quite agree with.

It was interesting to hear again complaints about young people losing interest in classical instruments, in spite of Finland’s generally excellent and widely available music education. In particular violin has suffered in popularity, probably because there is no way one can get instant satisfaction from it. No matter how good one’s ear is, learning the instrument takes a lot of hard work. Edison said that a genius is composed of 95% sweat. With a string instrument, particularly the violin, the percentage must be closer to 99. There are really no shortcuts, no magic bullets. My country, even during these globally hard economic times, invests a lot of public funds in classical arts, annoying the larger part of music lovers who prefer a lighter fare. Helsinki is finally getting a decent concert hall which should be ready any day now. Probably it will be packed for many years like new auditoriums tend to be, even when their acoustics leave a lot to be desired. How my country (and the rest of Europe) will be able to finance classical arts in the long run is of course a big question mark, but at least people assume the funding will come from the government or big cultural foundations which are large in number. Music there is not for the wealthy by the wealthy, a much healthier approach that we have on this side of the Atlantic.

This plane is approaching Seattle and I’m eager to see my loving family again after a week. Without them there would be very little to keep me here; add to that our gorgeous nature, a lush version of Scandinavia. My values differ too much from the American norm. Money is nice to have but it shouldn’t become an obsession. I like a system where people are taken care of, whether they are well off or less so. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of wonderful people here; they just don’t make much noise. And we have more than our share of ignorant fruitcakes: anti-science, anti-women, anti-progress but pro-guns, pro-war and pro-greed. After witnessing the care every person in my dad’s home gets makes me realize what a primitive society we in so many ways have.

Happy Midsummer to all!

Midnight Sun over Canadian Arctic

I have flown over this frozen tundra almost every middle of June for 45 years. Having been a geography buff all my life the landscape is oddly familiar. I can name the larger lakes and tell by the occasional mountains exactly where we are. For the first time I see open water where ice still should cover the sea. Lakes are frozen but the salty water isn’t. Of course floating sheets of ice are still visible but the amount of melt water is shocking. I feel sorry for the polar bears. Yes, they are great swimmers but distances to solid ground from a shrinking ice float can be many miles long. Already there are numerous prizzlies or glolar bears as their formerly separated living areas have become mixed.

Clearly our climate is changing, although certain politicians claim otherwise. Seattle may have had the coldest spring in recorded history and back home in Finland past winter was extremely cold. Yet global warming doesn’t mean warmer temperatures everywhere but more of extreme weather. Storms have become more violent globally. Last summer’s long stretch of almost 100° F weather in Finland was highly unusual; we are on both sides of the Arctic Circle after all.

Now we are over coastal Greenland. Baffin Bay was filled with fishing boats, many of which have travelled great distances. One could see numerous icebergs but mainly the ocean water was ice-free. What is shocking to see are the freshwater lakes that have appeared on the snow and ice: they seem to be all over. One mustn’t forget, of course, that Greenland was tropical at some point. Perhaps we are heading in that direction again.

Out of nowhere the Icelandic coast appears and the Boeing 757-300 touches ground almost immediately. A bumpy landing in windy weather and we all rush to the terminal. Since we are going to continue to another Schengen country, we need to go through another security check point. There are signs saying that the American and Canadian methods are not thorough enough. Perhaps so, but annoying they are for sure. This time I had forgotten to remove my very ordinary belt and the SeaTac airport security went through each inch, bending it every which way. No wonder people avoid flying if they can. This sour looking fellow had to manually check the area of my pants that the belt had covered, perhaps looking for explosives. Next time I’ll ask to be hand searched. I know these people are just doing their job but clearly the profession attracts a certain type of a person, such as the police force has members who love the fact that they carry a gun and feel powerful. Often they could be on either side of the law. By being in the police force they can shoot legally without much fear of punishment. Of course, on the other side they make much more money but there is always a risk of being caught.

Finally we are on our way to Finland. The plane’s auxiliary turbine malfunctions so an extra hour is spend on the plane. Finally a truck is able to start the engines and off we take. Three hours later we land in Helsinki. It seems like all flights are coming in at the same time so another hour is spent waiting for luggage. I see my brother and his wife and off we drive to the Finnish beautiful countryside.

The reason for this quick trip is to be present when my dad turns a 100 years old. I’ll also see some other family and friends. Then I return to my brand new grandchild Ellen and the rest of my American family. It is amazing to think that the infant and her great-grandfather are almost exactly a century apart. The world for sure is a very different place from when my father was born, with more than twice the amount of people and ever increasing number of problems. I shall also return to a liberated place. I love Lucy but despise Lucifer. The Devil has returned to his own territory: there is hope in the air. But more about that later.

Undertakers

Death Plays the Violin

We make fun of Al Gore having invented the internet, yet a major paper gives credit to a violinist for discovering subharmonics, as she calls them. Musicians are not usually the brightest of the bunch, but any string player with curiosity and extra free time surely has bumped into this phenomena. I used to drive my father nuts by playing these "undertones" five decades ago. Gut or gut-core strings, the only ones used then, made achieving such impossible-to-explain low pitches quite easy. I would play them as a joke or a curiosity without even thinking of using them in any musical context. Especially a gut D-string would accidentally go into this register if played too far over the fingerboard with the bow pressed too forcefully. It is the kind of opposite of making an open E-string whistle on demand. Yes, I was able play various scales with my undertones, but as the sound was rather ridiculous (the small size of the violin doesn't allow for much amplification for such low notes), never saw any practical use for it, other than driving people with sensitive ears crazy. Having heard Ms. Kimura's recordings I still feel the same about the value of these bizarre tones. I just returned from trying them out again in my studio and the only reaction was that of our cat running for cover. Perhaps with an electric violin which amplifies the sound artificially, such sounds could be utilized, but I'll leave that to a younger generation to discover.

It was wonderful to be young and approach any subject with an open mind, music included. It gave me great pleasure to amaze my dad. Before starting elementary school, I was explaining the concept of negative numbers to him, something he never forgot. A grown-up son of his cousin came over when I was still three years old and my dear proud father made me read news articles from the front page of a Helsinki newspaper to him. My second cousin insisted that my father had made me memorize the text and to prove his point wrote a difficult word down, asking me to read it. Correctly I said Äkäslompolo but rushed to add not knowing what it meant. I soon learned it was the name of a village on Ylläs, a low-lying mountain or fell in very sparsly populated Finnish Lapland. My relative instantly gained new respect for the little tyke and my dad was beaming.

So, early on I also discovered a new way of producing harmonics on the violin. I have never seen this being discussed, so I'm not going to reveal it here either. This technique can actually be successfully used in certain virtuoso passages and the result sounds like harmonics should. I'm sure that there are others aware of the principle and don't want to claim it is my creation, but don't want to read about this "invention" in a paper or online and someone taking credit for it. Perhaps I'll teach it to my youngest before my time is up. Interestingly, the famed pedagogue Carl Flesch came up with a harmonic invention of his own and used it in many of his editions. He claimed that while playing a fast scale down on the E-string, the violinist can simply omit the octave E from the run, going from first finger on an F or F-sharp in seventh position to fourth finger D in third, and the missing note sounds on its own. I have tried this frequently: sometimes it seems to work but more often not. Perhaps Mr. Flesch had a unique instrument that made this trick possible.

This time of the year many students are performing with school orchestras or in their own recitals. Playing from memory is an issue for many. Granted, one can feel terrified in front of an audience, even if the composition has gone fine during a lesson or in privacy. Nobody likes the idea of making a fool of him/herself and if the memory issue would make the performer sound worse, I usually let them keep the music at hand. How many times would these young instrumentalists have to play by heart in real life, even if they became respected professionals? In an orchestra or a chamber group one always uses music; it used to be a sacrilege to perform a sonata from memory unless both partners did so. The book would be on the stand, often not even opened, sort of like the Bible at hand while quoting Scripture. On the other hand, I don't think one really knows a piece of music unless it is memorized. By memorization I mean knowing the work well enough to play the notes with completely different set of bowings and fingerings, or even on a keyboard. Everyone learns memorizing differently. Some have to close their eyes, others depend on the harmony of the accompaniment. Personally I see the written music in front of me, measure by measure, enabling me to finger and bow it as I see fit at the moment. Perfect pitch comes in handy with this method. If the composition is very fast, all of us rely on muscle memory. Granted, my way will not work for everyone and often I have ask the student for help in deciding how the problem should be tackled. 

Having witnessed many great artists getting lost I know that the issue is not if one makes a mistake but when. A soloist needs a Plan B at any given time (and Plan C, D etc.). Solo Bach is notoriously difficult: Casals got stuck in a movement of one of the cello suites and instead of reaching the end, wound up at the repeat. Finally he apologized, left the stage and returned with the music. This was after playing through the music probably thousands of times! Heifetz took a wrong turn in the final coda of the Prokofiev's second concerto in 1968. As there was no conductor, it was scary going for a while. As I have written before, Oistrakh had eight major memory lapses in Vienna in his Beethoven concerto in 1967. I thought it was a freak accident but recently saw a video of another concert where he also got lost in the same work. Although I, as a listener, felt uneasy at the time, did the mishaps really matter? Of course not: the audiences were shown the human side of their superstars and they loved it.

Time for some rich, nice overtones. I leave the undertones for musical morticians, to be buried six feet under.

Change

We can argue over whether change is good or bad, but it is inevitable. Who could have seen the collapse of the Soviet Union or the recent events in the Arab world? The uneasy balance between Israel and her neighbors is about to collapse now that we so eagerly wanted to "liberate" Egypt and other countries. Our memory is astonishingly short when it comes to previous "freedom" and "democracy" campaigns. To our unpleasant surprise Egyptians want to discontinue their peace agreement with the Jewish State, and worse yet, want to become friends with Hamas and Iran. I don't think too many freedom advocates saw that development coming. The Libyans are killing each other, Yemen and Syria are in a messy situation which will most likely benefit militant radicals. In Marrakesh, Morocco, the bombing of a popular tourist cafe has all the trademarks of Al-Qaeda. Germany just arrested three bomb makers trained by the same organization. I can see bloody times ahead. Is another global war in the works? Nature has her ways of shrinking any unsustainable overpopulation, even in seemingly cruel ways.

There are many colleagues of mine who stubbornly expect the world of the classical arts to remain the same as it has been for a number of decades. Yet this is but a fantasy, based on their dreams, not on facts. My father will reach the milestone of a 100 years in a few weeks. In his youth he found a popular area of making music: playing for silent movies. He was the violinist in a piano trio, performing in the shallow pit in front of the screen. Movies were becoming very popular and the field seemed like a great way of expressing one's musical talent and making money at the same time. In America, improvising a live "soundtrack" was usually left to an organist, some of whom were incredible in their skills. Well, the talkies arrived and the seemingly lucrative careers for these musicians came to a screeching halt. My dad kept up his playing but started to conduct an orchestra instead, just for the love of music. 

I myself grew up in the time of reel-to-reel tape recorders and became quite good in recording not only my own performances but others as well. This was the pre-transistor era and changing a vacuum tube was a common event. Microphones were rather large and connecting cables had to be double-shielded to eliminate any electronic noise. Soldering wires to the tight spaces of a European three- or five-prong DIN plugs made me burn my fingertips more times than I can count. Editing recordings required skill and I became quick with splicing the tape at a 45-degree angle and attaching it to another piece with special white tape. This all seems old-fashioned now, but it is a part of the past I miss today. If someone had told me all this knowledge was going to be obsolete in a few years, I would have laughed.

Not long ago I was reading an article in the leading Helsinki daily, lamenting the fact that orchestras in my native country have trouble attracting qualified Finnish instrumentalists and have to hire foreigners instead. It isn't that there is a shortage of music education as just about every town has a publicly sponsored music school. On the college or professional level schooling is completely free and at least until now student are actually given a stipend for their living expenses. Playing in an orchestra is not thought of as a glamorous occupation, and unlike here, the musicians think of themselves as musical civic employees, not artists. As salary is tied to the common pay scale structure system, it usually makes no difference if one teaches or plays in an orchestra. At least when I was younger, I couldn't call myself a "violin artist" unless I performed regularly as a soloist or recitalist. The country has its own "soloist association" which I think I'm still a member of.

In the U.S. orchestral playing wasn't that greatly valued either as it seldom gave a musician enough of an income. Seasons were short and working hours lousy. Perhaps in certain large cities with a long tradition of orchestral music matters were better, but those would have been few. Then something happened after WWII and with the country's increased wealth it became fashionable to donate large sums of money to education and arts institutions. Cities felt a need to build mega-halls and have large orchestras to fill the stages. At the same time interest in smaller groups, chamber music and recitals waned. As the donors aged and became increasingly hard of hearing, perhaps a deafening level of brass and percussion was needed to prevent their hearing aids from whistling. Musicians' appetite for larger and larger salaries grew and soon the financial balance became impossible to sustain; the orchestra bubble began to burst, something we are witnessing now. Philanthropy continues, of course, but instead of entertainment, it is focused on global health and such issues.

Glancing through online reader comments, musicians seem to receive little sympathy for their salary and other demands. It is quite easy to discover which opinions were written by the orchestral musicians themselves or their friends. The ordinary people are far more concerned about their own employment or lack of, not to mention health care and education. State universities are increasingly taking in out-of-state students because they can be milked for full private school level tuition, no matter how low they have scored. In Seattle straight A students, even class valedictorians, haven't been admitted to our #1 school, University of Washington. The school openly admits that it prefers outsiders as it sorely lacks funds. If we as a society expect every high school graduate to continue in college, we have to make it accessible and financially realistic. Of course, one could make an argument that attending college should be a privilege for the deserving, not an automatic right.

Back home a rather significant event took place. In the recent parliamentary election a formerly small party known as True Finns scored a tremendous victory. Many of my countrymen have been horrified as they see this relatively anti-EU party as a big step back. Even foreign media calls the election a major shift to the extreme right. I'm not so sure about it. Young voters, usually uninterested in politics, perceive them as a worker's party (wouldn't that qualify them as extreme left?) which wants to preserve Finnish values and not bail out other EU countries that are on the brink of collapse because of fiscal corruption. My brother, an astute observer whose political views hardly match those of the country's conservatives, says it is a good thing for the country to have so many new faces in the new Parliament, most belonging to ordinary men and women who campaigned with ideas, not with big budgets. People have spoken and now we must listen to what they have to say, whether we agree with the message or not. 

It must be spring as I smell all kinds of changes in the air.

I'm a Fool

The phone rang and my youngest daughter, a college freshman, was on the line. We talked a bit about school but then she became very serious and told me she was going to become a vegetarian. Since all three of her sisters had gone through a similar period, I wasn't exactly surprised, especially since I knew her room mate and close friend is strictly vegetarian, or even vegan. I started giving Sarah a lecture about the pros and cons and explained that it was hard to get all the nutrients from that diet since our digestive tract is that of an omnivore. She listened to me carefully and said she had given it a lot of thought and this was going to be a long term decision. Then she cracked up and laughed out loud "April's Fools". I wanted to be upset but could only laugh at myself. My little one knows my way of thinking better than I do myself (we even share similar dreams) and she knew exactly how to get me.

A different kind of April Fool's trick was performed by our house, namely its ancient gas furnace. Last night I realized that it was getting colder inside. It was too late to call for help and I brought a space heater to our bedroom. I'm battling with rather nasty bronchitis and hacking cough; shivering unnecessarily didn't seem like a good idea. This morning a big truck pulled in front of the house and two men came for a look. They stood there looking extremely puzzled. It turned out that they had never seen a 50-year-old Lennox and didn't even recognize how the different components worked. A new one is being put in place and before nightfall the men (now there are three) are going to be finished. This new unit looks Lilliputian but is supposed to be much more effective than the old one and pay for itself over the years in the form of lower gas bills. Let's hope so, as this month is expensive with various tax payments (real estate, estimated tax, a lump  sum to be sent with our extension request) not to mention college payments (tuition plus Room and Board) for the last quarter. Our little one is doing beautifully and working hard, so every penny is worth it. She even took a violin with her to school.

I decided to get a tablet. Twice I went to an Apple store right when they opened, just to find a long line, just like at an airport security and before I could get in, an announcement was made that the day's allotment was sold out. So I started doing research or Motorola's Xoom and its WiFi version. We have two portable hotspots and I wasn't going to pay for an extra data plan. Besides, at home we have a fast wireless network. Every place was taking pre-orders for the Xoom, but Staples actually had them available for purchase on their website. A couple days later a big box arrived. I was kind of puzzled because a 10.1" tablet is small. A smaller box was inside and when I opened it, there were five tablets, not just one. The American voice in my head said "keep them, keep them" but the Finn protested very loudly. So, I was going to wait for Staples to find their mistake.

The following morning the phone rang (I was already teaching) and a woman from Staples somewhere on the East Coast left me a message, sheepishly asking if I could call her back. I did so early in the afternoon and talked with an African-American man. He checked my order number and put me on hold. Finally he came back and told about the mistake. I said that they are more than welcome to get their units back and he sounded surprised. A little later he called back and asked if I was really going to return the extra units without a fight and I said "Of course." He then told that his supervisor had authorized a sizable gift check since I was so honest about the matter. I thanked him and hung up. Sure enough, in about a half hour Staples called again and my wife answered. It was the woman who first called, and she kept thanking us. My feeling is that the company sent out quite a few of those boxes before realizing their error and customers felt entitled to all the merchandise. The unit runs on Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) and is remarkably fast. It also has Flash support. Selling those four extra Xooms would have helped with the furnace cost but my conscience would have prevented it. Honesty is not a virtue in America but I live by different standards.

If you use Gmail, don't forget to check out their Gmail Motion (Beta). It is a great idea. Happy April 1st!

Here We Go Again

Of the close to four decades I've lived in the United States, this country has been involved in armed conflicts much of the time. During my teens there was the Vietnam War. It was impossible to get objective, truthful news. Propaganda was at work: night after night we the people learned about amazing victories against the Vietcong. Someone finally tallied up the number of enemy casualties as we had posted them and they exceeded the population of North Vietnam. This all happened before our Information Age and the Internet; I got quite a different picture by listening to my shortwave radio and reading the Finnish newspaper mailed to me daily.

After Saigon collapsed, involvement in Nicaragua, Grenada, former Yugoslavia, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan followed (am I forgetting something?). Now we are playing World Police with certain Arab countries (but not all) where people are unhappy and restless. Egypt's Mubarak was corrupt but so is every other despot. We lost a partner and Israel a neighbor leader they could live with. Libya's Gaddafi is in our cross-hairs: much of this has to do with the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. Never mind that we shot down an Iranian passenger jet a few months before with many more dead. This was toward the end of the Iran-Iraq war where we took the side of Saddam Hussein, then considered our good friend.

Restlessness in Arab nations seems to be spreading although we are very selective with our involvement. Even in Saudi Arabia there have been demonstrations. The Saudis, too, have reasons to demand more freedoms. Western feminists should be screaming but I don't hear them; it would be nice to let a Saudi woman drive a car and have a life. But hell will freeze over before we take the side of their people over the reigning royalty. We ought to be fair: every country has to be treated in an equal fashion. Of course the real issue is our hunger for oil; the people may demand democracy without the slightest idea of what it is. One should be careful what one wishes for: it was important to the U.S. that the Palestinians vote. Now we (and Israel) have Hamas to cope with as the result, something we should have foreseen as a likely outcome in the Gaza Strip.

The Druze Star

The Middle East (or Near East, a term I prefer) is no closer to peace between Israel and its neighbors than many decades ago. Various times there have been negotiations but if they seemed to be heading toward a solutions, extremists on either side have taken care of the matter with violent acts. Perhaps the formula, using America as the mediator, is fundamentally quite flawed. Palestinians and their neighbors don't trust us and see us as Israel's partner (which we of course are). A new neutral party should be found, something both sides could respect. 

I am surprised that no one has thought of using the Druze in this role. Although their religion is based on Islam, Muslims don't consider them their own. For one thing, they are perhaps the most pro-women society on Earth. Also, they are not allowed to convert outsiders: nobody can enter or leave the fold. Though they represent just a small percentage of Israel's population, they willingly serve serve in the armed forces, many having reached high positions in the military. Of the neighboring countries, there are sizable populations in Syria and Lebanon. As the Druze are respected by both Israel and her adversaries, wouldn't that make them an ideal mediator? They should have no trouble seeing issues from both sides. 

Perhaps we have left the Druze out of the picture on purpose, fearing that peace just might happen. A scary thought indeed.

Then and Now

Opening this morning's New York Times was uneventful. There were the usual bad news about our involvement in other countries' affairs. Often I wonder if certain foreign problems purposely get so much attention so that we the people wouldn't notice our domestic mess. Perhaps we should be more careful about encouraging other nations to pursue democracy, a concept they have little or no understanding of. Why is it it so important for us to remove the leaders of Egypt and Libya and yet be quiet about North Korea?  If the restlessness spreads to Saudi Arabia and the price of crude oil triples, would we be equally eager to support to end the friendly monarchy's rule there? We seem to have forgotten about our demands for an election in the Gaza Strip: against our expectations the Hamas won and we, along with Israel, were most upset by their victory. One should be careful with what one wishes for.

Of course I had read all those news a day before and not just from an American perspective. One of the greatest things about the internet is the ability to follow what's happening globally as seen through very different eyes. I'm comfortable in reading enough languages and when I'm not, Google's Translator comes in handy. Naturally the latter requires that said translations be reinterpreted, but with a bit of logic that isn't usually a problem. Pages from Mandarin to Hindi to Arabic open with ease.

It was a short night as we had to get up very early after working late last night. I had set the coffee maker's timer and by the time I got to the breakfast table my wife Marjorie had finished reading the paper, in addition to consuming a respectable amount of high quality java. The Arts section was open, and a review and picture of a string quartet caught my attention. I'm certain that the Takacs Quartet played their Schubert program beautifully, but the photo was disturbing. Are such exaggerated physical motions needed for this great and heavenly music? Shostakovich or Ginastera might have been more understandable, but lovely Schubert? I have seen almost identical pictures of other groups regularly and wonder if all that circus is truly necessary. In the picture underneath I have placed photos of the Joachim Quartet, the true founder of this art form, and Takacs group, next to each other. Joachim made violin playing and chamber music a very serious affair. Thanks to him recital and solo repertoire changed greatly and a virtuoso's encores no longer consisted of imitating animal sounds.

Joachim Quartet (top), Takacs Quartet (©B Harkin/NY Times)

I am fascinated by early performance practices, especially when we have some actual proof of how music was interpreted. Old photographs are more truthful than paintings. The artists made Mozart look pleasant and even charming, yet books tell how homely and unattractive he was in real life with his pox marks and other facial features. Naturally in early photographs action shots were not possible as exposure took time and people had to look very proper. The famous Joachim Quartet looks almost stern in photographs, and based on listeners' accounts their performances were very serious business indeed. From early recordings we know how Joachim himself played: his interpretation of solo Bach seems almost contemporary and is certainly not covered under a coating of constant vibrato or other trademarks of Romantic playing.. We can easily imagine what his quartet must have sounded like. Joachim was revered in continental Europe: his funeral in Berlin was like that of a Kaiser. All that respect and admiration without any gimmicks on stage!

Naturally resorting to showmanship and cheap tricks is nothing new. Being a musician was for a long time comparable to that of a circus member.  We seem to have gone back in time, as nowadays we unfortunately enjoy our musical encounters more with our eyes than with our ears, as if concerts were intended for deaf people. Everyone should enjoy a blind person's experience: bouncing around and madly waving bows or batons obviously would be of no use.

Interestingly, the same New York Times issue had a picture of Emanuel Ax at the piano, playing another all-Schubert  recital at Alice Tully Hall. He looked like a serious musician, an old-timer. Joseph Joachim would have approved.

Brave New World

The drama in Detroit with the symphony will soon come to a head. What it will be is anyone's guess. This is a no-win situation: by striking for this long (half the subscription season), the musicians have made sure that even if matters return to "normal", it will be next to impossible for the institution to market 2011-12 season as if nothing had happened. Will the present subscribers be given a refund? Why would anyone bother to invest in entertainment that may or may not take place? Management has greatly upset the lives of the musicians. First there was anger and outrage, now desperation. If there were plenty of available well-paying orchestra jobs available elsewhere, only a fool wouldn't try to leave the ship that's taking in water faster than the pumps can get rid of. Unfortunately, a long-time orchestra tutti musician is not going to have an easy time winning an audition. Yes, he or she may have all the routine in the world, but the decreased quality and accuracy of playing is no match to a young person fresh out of one of the top schools. At least with string players, orchestras don't want to hire artists, no matter what they claim. They are after worker bees who are able to play most correctly and who don't possess strong musical ideas of their own, i.e. musical robots. Youth is a big plus as the new hire's health will most likely remain good for many years to come.

But let's move to a much happier topic. Florida's New World Symphony is an anomaly in America's music scene. For over twenty years, it has been a unique place for those who really want to play in an orchestra, a sort or post-graduate school where you get paid something for your work. Since similar institutions are hard to find, the New World can be very selective: the acceptance rate in about 3%, based on the figures available. What makes the orchestra unique is that hardly any other musical group has managed to flourish in Florida. There are plenty of concert halls, one fancier than the next, but they all depend on visitors. As it is common, people rather donate large amounts for a building than for operating costs of an organization. Who needs local entertainment when long-distance groups are waiting to fly in, away from the snow and cold to the balmy beaches of Miami and surrounding areas?

New World Center,  photo by Michael McElroy for the NY Times

Until this point, the New World Symphony hasn't created enough of a local following to warrant using one of the mega-barns. Now matters are quite different: a few days ago they got to open the new New World Center, created by Frank Gehry–Yasuhisa Toyota team. It has a supposedly excellent 750-seat concert hall, small in today's standards but one that brings intimacy between the musicians and their audience. There are excellent auditoriums for a 1000 or fewer listeners all over Europe. America, believing that bigger is better, is sorely lacking in these. Based on initial reports of the venue and its acoustics, I would be surprised if it didn't become a very tempting destination for chamber and other smaller orchestras and well as chamber music groups and recitalists (if there are any left). Clearly not an ideal place to listen to bombastic orchestral works, it might be exactly that for most of the real musical treasures that seldom get performed today, being "cost-ineffective" for a 100+-member group. If I loved alligators, snakes and hurricanes, I could see myself living nearby and becoming a regular visitor to the place, as little as I like the idea of going to concerts.

With a maximum three years allowed in the group, the New World Symphony doesn't have to cope with other orchestras' often unpleasant issues, from union negotiations to tenure. Everyone there is eager to give their best and there is genuine joy and excitement in music-making. I have to think back many decades to remember what that was like. Top music schools have often good orchestras but the students play in them because they have to, a very different setup from the New World. The founder of the institution, Michael Tilson Thomas, is perhaps the best person to train these young orchestra musicians. Mr. Thomas still manages to be true dynamo in spite of his 66 years of age, and is probably a better fit than anyone else in the country for the orchestra transplanted in Miami Beach. Granted, Gustavo Dudamel is exciting to watch, but Michael Tilson Thomas knows better what it is like to be a true American musician.

A new concert hall is always a gamble. Surprisingly few architects and acousticians truly understand the difference between great and adequate. As a large amount of money is spent constructing an auditorium, it is usually praised to high heaven by the media, brainwashing the would-be audience. Sometimes it take a few decades for a child to declare that the emperor has no clothes. Criticism is generally not allowed as long as one of the creators is alive. Sometimes we wish the white elephants, such as the Philharmonic a.k.a. Avery Fisher Hall, would simply go away. This smaller newcomer will probably be treated kindly by future generations. The hall seems to be ready for new directions in music presentation with its built-in multimedia equipment, something that today seems mandatory and inevitable.

All's Heimers

We all start forgetting as we age. Many become victims of various forms of dementia. The scarlet letter"A" refers to the dreaded Alzheimer's disease these days although there are other causes for dementia, some of which are just signs of aging. I don't yet greet my image in the mirror but just this morning realized that I had forgotten to pay our real estate tax a month ago. As my mother and her younger brother both suffered from Alzheimer's, I know there is a genetic possibility that I'll suffer the same fate, but hopefully I have succumbed to another illness by then. And on my father's side people stayed unaffected for much longer.

One of dementia's first signs is disappearing short term memory. Often I feel like our society as a whole is becoming demented. We seem to have forgotten the reasons for the economic scandal which started the recession and our country's downhill slide just three years ago. Initially there was a lot of anger against the bankers' greed and resulting enormous financial compensations even when the financial institutions themselves had to be rescued with taxpayer money. This recent article on Bloomberg.com is one of the increasingly few attempts to show how much political clout Wall Street has, and how it managed to weather scary times and end up with bigger bonuses and profits than ever before.

Our government rushed to the rescue of the very rich, yet left the victims of the banks' greed, the homeowners with their mortgages, fend for themselves, in most cases unsuccessfully. Even I know several people who have lost their homes or are at default due to their inability, or sometimes reluctance, of paying for a loan that is far greater than the property is worth. Many of these people suffered a terrible blow when their jobs disappeared and with that their health insurances and pension investments. The way we count the number of unemployed gives a completely false, overly optimistic picture of destitute people. Even with the extended jobless benefits there are millions that don't show in the statistics. They haven't been able to find a new job, many of them in the 50+ year age group, and have given up hope. As I personally know, threatening to discontinue health coverage is used by companies and organizations as a way of blackmailing an employee to accept an illegal demotion. Few have the brains and means to fight back. America being the capitalist dream country, many people prefer to have their own business. When that doesn't survive, there is no public safety net.

As long as a person has employment and benefits, in our society he or she is not going to worry about his neighbor. With our short attention span and "me here now" focal point, most of us refuse to think that a disaster might strike us next. People don't want to pay for taxes that might benefit the unfortunate. But people get sick and lose their jobs, even those who eagerly have voted for tax cuts and against universal health care coverage. I hope they will remember their ideology when they are faced with hard times. Rising health care costs, together with the insane amount of money we spend on education, will quickly result in a bubble that inevitably leads to bursting. At this rate we are rapidly becoming another India with its super-rich and untouchables. Already our society shows increasing intolerance to different faiths and our caste system is alive and well. One of the principal reasons parents rush to make their offspring apply to the most prestigious colleges for undergraduate studies is hoping that they will meet a partner from an upper class. Basic education is pretty much the same in hundreds of colleges, both public and private, yet big money is spent in hopes of a successful U-Harmony dating service.

It strikes me as odd that this country of ours thinks of itself as perhaps the most Christian country on the planet. Our founding fathers decided in their wisdom to keep religion and state separate. Yet politicians today increasingly speak about bringing prayer and faith to public life. If we really thought along the teachings of our Judeo-Christian heritage, we would all be socialists and care about the well-being and safety of our brothers and sisters before our own. This hardly is the case: the Christ in which so many believe is actually the Antichrist. Our favorite preacher promises everyone wealth and new luxury cars if we pray for them. If 40% of people take the biblical story of Creation as a fact, what is the point of trying to teach them science or history in schools and colleges? Since my wife and youngest daughter played on two violas for the local Finnish Lutheran Church on Xmas morning, I was present there, too. The visiting pastor spoke about the first Christmas in her sermon and how the message of the birth of Jesus was first given to the poor untouchables of that time. She then went on to ask the rhetorical question of if the Messiah was born today, who would be informed first? Being a Finn, she obviously thinks differently of life's true values from most of us here. I thought her logic was perfect.

Back to dementia. After losing one's short term memory, sooner or later the patient forgets about present time altogether and starts living in the past. My father will turn 100 this coming summer unless he is taken from us before then. Living in a care facility he has become "institutionalized" and doesn't really follow today's events. His thoughts and dreams are most often back many decades when he was much younger. People long gone are still alive in his world which is a much simpler place from today. When an old person has little to look forward to, it is a blessing to be able to live in the past.

In our society we also like to pretend often that nothing has changed. A prime example is the world of fine arts. For instance, orchestra musicians have a hard time accepting the possibility that today's younger people may not find their trade as valuable as did the generation and two before. Of course classical music is still important, as are other art forms. Times have changed, however. Do we still have the need to spend an entire evening and small fortune to attend a concert when a better performance of the interesting composition is a few keystrokes or a compact disc away? A painting is easier to study on a large monitor screen than trekking to an art museum. How many of us would think of doing research today using nothing but a library as a resource? Who would be willing to give up the cell phone which many people seem to have practically glued to their ear? How many still take the time to write thoughtful personal letters and send them via snail mail? Even that qualifies as an art. People's writing skills have disappeared with texting and electronic messaging on social websites. Grammatic rules don't matter any longer for most: reading postings and emails is often painful. The younger generation prefers electronic shorthand and resulting short utterances to speaking; many don't even check their voice messages.

So, with the New Year, let us look at ourselves and our lives objectively and not allow any kind of dementia affect our thinking. Past is important, but it is history and we have to make sure the future will be tolerable for our children and grandchildren. Spend an afternoon at the library, unless it has been closed for lack of funds, and another one taking a walk in the nature. Just leave your cell phone and iPod at home. Enjoy life the way it was meant to be.

Perfect Sunday

This day couldn't have been better. I had no students until tonight due to rescheduling. Full moon can be seen through a thin cloud cover. Flakes of snow have been falling; not sticking to the ground yet as it is a couple degrees above freezing, but enough to change one's mood. Whereas cold rain can be depressing, the sight of fluffy snow is an upper. Today is also our daughter's first wedding anniversary and it brings me tremendous joy to know she's very happy. Online we saw pictures from Bellingham, an hour and half north from here, where our youngest is enjoying early winter scenery. An incredibly deep eighteen-year-old, she naturally goes through both highs and lows with her emotions, but in these pictures she radiates happiness among close friends at her college. At that age I could have written a manual about loneliness, having been sent to study in distant countries where I knew no one and barely spoke the language. I'm grateful that she hasn't had to go through the same. Quite the opposite: she is best friends with her roommate, and from her dorm window she can see the building where her big sister works on campus. In spite of a five-year age difference, the siblings have the kind of loving closeness most families can only dream about. Those two are living proof that we have done well in what really matters in life.

I have often questioned the wisdom of having become a violinist. In my youth, it seemed like an exciting new field, an available option for the first time as a serious profession. Performing from early on in countless recitals and as a soloist with orchestra, I could never have pictured myself sitting in an orchestra for a career. Teaching was always fun and rewarding; an occasional job in an orchestra was interesting at best. After ending up back in this country I realized that life in music would never be the same as it had been. Playing in the Hollywood studios was strange, although decades ago there still were a number of great instrumentalists who were doing the same work as I in their retirement. Perhaps I should have remained in sunny California, although I really felt like an alien with the smoggy climate and millions of cars always on the move. At least the Pacific Northwest reminded me of home and it was a good place to raise a second family.



Fritz Kreisler with his terrier

Having the extra time this morning, I listened to old recordings of Fritz Kreisler. I always felt closeness to his playing and his compositions and arrangements. Piece after piece, or song after song as today's younger generation would say, the masterful artistry brought tears to my eyes and reminded me why I had chosen this path. This was music at its best: nothing Kreisler did followed exactly what he had written on the page. As I see it, string players in an orchestra may think of themselves as artists, but the job they are doing is often as mindless and emotionless as working at an assembly line. It leaves very little room for individuality. Initial excitement about a new job wears thin rapidly. Likewise, the person overseeing the conveyor belt is seldom an artist, but rather the workers' foreman. To me, present day's full-time professional orchestra represents a music factory where a product is manufactured in a hurry.

Dear old Fritz didn't care about dots and dashes. The length of an individual note varied from one performance or recording to another; a held note could well be shortened from two measures to a quarter and a rest taken. Yet everything was done to perfection. Not one measure was played mechanically or even together with the accompanying pianist or orchestra: meet you at the bar line was the name of the game. Every portamento and glissando had a purpose and was executed to perfection, as if adding little spice to a dish. What a far cry from a conductor screaming "more slides" to the poor violin section! The master's silken seductive tone and endlessly varying vibrato would melt even the most frozen of hearts. I finished the emotional session by listening to two interviews of Kreisler, one on his 80th birthdays, the other close to the end of his long life. The former is available through YouTube for everyone to enjoy, the other not. Kreisler's speech with its accent and intonation reminded me of Ben Rosen, a colorful sheet music dealer in Los Angeles, whom I had written about in this blog quite a long time ago. In the later interview the maestro had trouble finding English words and often reverted to French or German.

This afternoon I am in love with music again, as if I had celebrated my golden wedding anniversary with the violin. I am as removed from the blasting orchestral music as I was in my youth. The life and art I miss probably doesn't exist any longer, at least in this society. The dwindling number of people still attending classical music concerts is not likely to ask for old-fashioned recital but expect fast and loud orchestral music, just as the moviegoers demand to see special effects and chase scenes, with a sound track ready to burst one's ear drums. Yet Casablanca and other great films from the past will survive in spite of being shot in somewhat grainy black and white, with a monaural, at times scratchy sound track, but with beautifully composed musical scores. They will outlive most movies made for the masses today. Likewise, I believe the good old times with music will return. It certainly would make more economic sense to support recitals and chamber music concerts than to sink millions after millions into mediocre orchestras.

Of course orchestra music needs to be performed, too, but since groups have grown in size, it is not economical for them to perform great masterworks that call for a classical or chamber orchestra only. Bigger is not better: a small but beautiful painting is often far more enjoyable than a gigantic canvas displayed in a museum, depicting a battle scene. A beautiful recital could be taken to people anywhere, even in a small town. In fact it is out of its element if presented in a mega-barn. Intimacy needs to return. We are entitled to our tasty hors d'œuvres and bonbons.

It is no wonder classical music is having a tough time today. Of all the beautiful music composed, only a tiny fraction can be heard in concerts. The most sublime works are heard only on recordings, some as old as the ones I listened to this morning. There is a whole world out there to be rediscovered. Put Bruckner, Wagner, Mahler, Richard Strauss and the likes to rest for change. And cancel all world premieres unless the composer has something meaningful to say. A beautiful theme is a lot sweeter to listen to than crazed banging by the percussion.

Art that pleases one's senses – what a revolutionary idea.

The Odd State Of Arts Affairs

About five months ago I wrote about auditions and promised to return to the topic at a later date. A lot has happened since that time: a one-time famous orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, is on strike and the National Ballet at the Kennedy Center has decided they can't afford an orchestra for this season, thus performing to recorded music. One seldom hears positive news. San Diego's orchestra is celebrating their centennial. For two years the group had ceased operating but got back on its feet with a much shorter season and reduced salaries, and of course, thanks to the largest donation ever made to an American orchestra in 2002, $120 million. At some point, a competitor to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Diego's present base salary is barely more than a third of its northern neighbor. Aside from Mr. & Mrs. Jacobs, the orchestra still hasn't been able to broaden its support base and depends on less than three thousand donors. However, for the time being the show goes merrily along.

Like some other orchestras, the Oregon Symphony has taken deep cuts but appears to be surviving. Unlike the musicians in Detroit and many other places, they are willing to face reality and don't claim they deserve something the organization's finances cannot support. I wish them continued success and brighter days ahead as they are worthy of a successful life. Portland is too far from other big cities for its music lovers to travel to a concert elsewhere. The only other option would be broadcasts in HD format streamed to a movie theater, something denizens of cities and towns without a decent orchestra might also welcome. As a former long-time student of mine just won a position in the Oregon Symphony, I would like to see her content in her new workplace.

Many ideas have surfaced regarding re-inventing classical music performances. Some seem like copies of my suggestions: the New Jersey Symphony has transformed itself into an ensemble on wheels and intends to serve the entire state. Granted, New Jersey is not very large in area, but the musicians will be on the move a lot nevertheless. During my days in the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra every program was performed in numerous locations. One of our favorite venues was a suburb of San Diego, El Cajon. On paper it seemed crazy to travel two and half hours in one direction to play in a lesser known place, but that city had the most enthusiastic audience; the auditorium was the perfect size for a chamber orchestra. I can't remember a concert there that wasn't a delight to play and even the acoustics were pleasing.

There is a geographical limit beyond which people stay away. Or rather, a potential audience member is only willing to drive a certain amount of minutes to attend a performance. Thus arts organizations, which insist on performing only in their home auditoriums, can at best serve only a relatively small portion of our overall population. Even in New York City, many of the boroughs are simply too far for music lovers to make the commute, at least regularly. If the event is something spectacular, an exception will be made perhaps once a year, but then we are talking about something on a grand scale, such as the Three Tenors shows used to be. A symphony orchestra is not very interesting to look at, unless the players are young and eager. Often it seems like musicians don't really want to be there, playing the same old stuff with the same old boxer (no, not the dog) on the podium. I can visualize screens appearing in concert halls, with close-up video of players otherwise unseen, to add the element of a show to the concert. This of course already happens in major sports events and rock concerts. Unfortunately, music is best served when observed with ears, not eyes.

The present system or protocol of auditioning instrumentalists for a vacancy is rather bizarre. Orchestras have more or less agreed on which snippets of which compositions are to be heard. Ask for something else and candidates are ready to protest. After a mandatory 2-2½ minute introduction of a Mozart concerto a violinist is prepared to play a total of 10 to 15 minutes of orchestral excerpts. A typical example is the first page of Don Juan, a Richard Strauss war horse. Most violinists taking auditions know it by heart, as well as the opening of a certain Schumann symphony movement. However, these works are not programmed all that often and when they are, audiences expect to hear the complete work, not just a minute's worth.

Certainly an orchestral jury member will get some idea how a musician sounds from this material, but two contrasting Bach movements, a Paganini Caprice and segment of a major concerto, the exact spot given right then and there, would be a better indicator of an individual's musicality and technical ability. Every finalist should be made to play a quartet movement with orchestra members, of a work no longer widely available or newly composed for the occasion. As rehearsal time has become more and more in short supply, prima vista a.k.a. sight-reading should be the skill for which most points are given. A conductor used to have as many as twelve rehearsals for a program behind the Iron Curtain; we are lucky if four are allowed. If a candidate has perfect pitch and plays decently, hire him/her right away! I can count with the fingers in my two hands the people I've heard over the many decades who can actually read well. The opposite is more often the case: a person sounds good and the snippets have been learned and memorized to perfection, but the reading stinks. Yet orchestras perform certain repertoire, such as Pops programs, often with one or maximum two rehearsals. 



Drawing by Kari Suomalainen

Simple math will give an orchestra musician a minimum of 50 hours of different material to play in any given season, often quite a bit more. Those hours translate to 3,000 minutes. In four years that adds up to 12,000, and 15,000 in five. Every one of those minutes should be performed at the highest level, not just the required ten to fifteen, presented at an audition. So perhaps an orchestra hires a player based on how he/she manages 0.08% of the task. The first page of Don Juan isn't even the toughest spot of the work! I remember an in-house audition, nowadays forbidden in most groups, where the conductor gave a couple passages of a Bruckner symphony as sight reading. I was horrified and none of the individuals trying out, including a maestro's favorite, could play the material at all; yet it had been in the orchestra's concert repertoire the previous week. Truth is often ugly. Does it really matter that a few pre-selected passages are played well, when later, especially after having earned tenure, everything is faked?



If a person's appearance becomes an issue, with video close ups and possible broadcasts, we can say farewell to unbiased auditions. Odd-looking individuals won't have a chance and the eye-candy effect will become an increasingly important factor. In many cases, orchestra managements are reassessing the tenure clause in contracts. Ballet dancers cannot remain graceful forever, and no one expects to see a 250-lb upper middle-aged ballerina on stage. The dancers have to learn to do something else for a living; why not musicians who at present hold onto their positions until rigor mortis sets in?

Thinking forward, here are some New Rules to meet today's industry requirements: after a successful audition, offer winning candidates a trial period of 2 months. The qualified player might be seated next to the section leader for half that duration. A psychological evaluation should be mandatory, to prevent bullies and sociopaths from entering the workplace. This goes for the music director as well. Every four years, an audition, recital, or orchestral re-audition would determine renewal. Non-biased adjudicators must be selected from the outside, to prevent "friendship bonus points" from entering the decision making process. And finally, disruptive or back-stabbing behavior would be cause for immediate dismissal.

These rules probably sound harsh to musicians, yet they are in effect for professional sports; nobody questions them. Great team spirit is essential, as well as top individual performance. Every few days we read about a coach being fired and a new one hired. If there are issues with an orchestra, replace their music director and management. Like professional sports, orchestras and other such arts organizations are entertainment and people like to get their money's worth. Playing a solo, a recital or even a chamber music performance counts as art: blindly following the interpretive ideas of an egotistic conductor as a member of a 100-person orchestra doesn't.

Sheets Decomposing

Zarzycki Mazourka cover

Publishing music is a strange business. Trying to get hold of sheet music of a lesser-known work is tricky. If the composition is no longer protected by copyright laws (which are different here and across the Atlantic), often the best bet is to find a PDF file online, either for free or as a benefit of belonging to a "club" that specializes in scanning out-of-print and other old material. I have often wondered why it is so easy to print a book on demand (much of the giant selection of Amazon.com is produced this way) and have it at one's doorstep in a couple of days, yet waiting for sheet music can take forever. Early last winter I decided to search for a copy of a French piece for solo violin which I had learned soon after its publication in 1950s. I placed five orders, two domestically from businesses which advertised the work being available through them, and three from European sources. In a couple weeks I got an email from a domestic distributor, saying the composition wasn't in stock but would arrive later. One European source refused to send the four-page work to America as the publisher had a representative here. I waited and waited. Another online store over there said the sonatina was "unavailable" but in three months a copy was sent to me from London. Then, a domestic source sent me the music five months later, on the same date when the first American store informed me that the work was "out-of-print." At the end, I was the proud owner of two brand-new copies, to replace the torn original.

The French used to print music on paper high in ground wood, similar to what you would find in your Daily, just a little thicker. Oversized, the sheets would soon appear as if they had been through a great war. At first musicians used "glue paper" to fortify the page edges and rebuild corners to facilitate page turns. Later plastic tape took over but it turned yellow in a couple of years, then fell off. Publishers in other countries weren't much better, and Russian editions were even worse than the French. The Soviet system couldn't care less about copyright law and as a large number of my countrymen visited Leningrad and Moscow, a lot of "illegal" sheet music of Western composers ended up back home for almost nothing. A tourist didn't have a great selection of merchandise to choose from: sheet music and LP recordings were very popular in addition to the one liter bottle of vodka the Finnish customs would allow.

Groundwood-based paper had an advantage to more expensive pulp product where the fibers are separated chemically, the stuff in finer books and magazines. The old stuff bends more easily and even large books of music are easy to open. We have among others a collection of all the popular concertos from early 1900s  as one publication. Even the thick piano part opens up without an effort. Compare that to today's Fritz Kreisler Favorites album which won't stay open no matter what magic tricks one performs. Ivan Galamian used to get mad at me, as he insisted that I played his version of the Kreutzer Etudes: during the lesson the book wouldn't stay open. Not that I had spent too much time on the material, but it was somewhat embarrassing to have the music close itself after a few measures. He might have been hard of hearing but this was a dead giveaway. I still blame the high-quality paper…

The old scans often include images of the back cover(s) with advertisements of what the publishers thought to be important works at the time. It comes as no surprise that we have never heard of nine out of ten composers listed. Age isn't kind to composers, or authors of books for that matter. Getting a publisher never guaranteed lasting fame or success. Yet those works were widely performed at one time, which is evident from old concert programs. A composer's own favorite work didn't often match public opinion. Max Bruch was convinced that his second violin concerto was his best composition. He eventually refused to see any violinists who wanted to play for him, as they all wanted his input on the ever-popular G-minor first one. Heifetz was one of the few champions of the second concerto: perhaps his recording of it discouraged others from playing it and becoming a staple. He "ruined" the Conus and Glazounov concertos, not to mention many by lesser-known composers, by recording them so superbly. I was surprised to find a PDF file of Bruch's third violin concerto as it doesn't appear on any list. I played through it and it isn't the composer's best effort, although decent enough to deserve an occasional performance. There are a lot of treasures among the scans of long-forgotten works. A student of mine recently performed a beautiful Prayer by Henry Hadley, who had been a conductor of the local orchestra long ago. The young lady's father had discovered the old print somewhere.

An email from an online sheet music store (the physical ones have just about all disappeared) recently presented a question: What Exactly IS Urtext? Needless to say, they were having a sale on Henle Urtext Editions. The explanation they gave was somewhat vague as that title is used as a marketing gimmick, as a sign of something "better" than normal. As our library has numerous Urtext versions of the J.S. Bach Sonatas and Partitas, plus quite a bit of other such material, I am somewhat skeptical of these editions. Composers have always made mistakes when writing their manuscripts in ink and even many printed first versions have obvious errors in them. The wonderful short Sonata Op.1 by Karen Khachaturian has a missing accidental in the violin part in the beautiful slow movement. As much of the material is written as a canon, the piano first plays the correct version and the violinist should notice the mistake immediately. The recording by Heifetz hurts one's ears as he plays what the print says. No one had the courage to tell him he was wrong.

A slur for a string player means two different things: a bowing or a phrasing. To everyone else it is always the latter. Unless the composer was an accomplished violinist, a work cannot usually be played as indicated. We know that Bach played the violin among other instruments, but primarily he was an organist. Obviously no one takes the long slurs in Wagner or Richard Strauss as indications of bowings, although I have known a conductor who thought otherwise. Galamian published the first modern Bach edition where all dynamics are as Bach wrote them (a few echo effects) and any guidance or help to possible phrasing are left out. However, he offers us fingerings, and the slurs are not consistent with the manuscript. There is a messy copy of Bach's original at the end of the book but that is of little benefit, just more of a curiosity item. I much prefer Joachim-Moser or Flesch editions as underneath the edited version, a clear printed copy of Bach's markings is shown. A violinist can easily base his/her interpretation on the lower line but at the same time see what one of these old master fiddlers was thinking and why they made the changes they did. Starting with an unmarked edition of Bach with permanently discourage all but the brightest students, or make the teacher work overtime with his pencil.

To me any edition without fingerings or bowings would be a blessing. The more famous a violinist the editor was, the stranger the markings usually are. Most of them had been spoon-fed the works as children and they seldom gave any thought to why they used a certain fingering or bowing. Yes, David Oistrakh played a beautiful Beethoven concerto, yet his markings in that composition, and many others, are odd and defy logic. Zino Francescatti was a fabulous virtuoso and outplayed everyone else in much of the repertoire, yet he decided to alter compositions and many of his fingerings are without real purpose, other than perhaps enabling him to exhibit his incredible vibrato and "fat" sound. Fritz Kreisler was famous for never playing the markings which he published. If you examine the music carefully, you'll notice that the fourth finger indication is almost absent. He wanted to sell a lot of his compositions and arrangements, and knew that most of the potential customers had weak pinkies. Some of the more useful editions are by violinists who never made it big, or weren't child prodigies, and thus had to be more analytical.

What we need is an Amazon.com store for music, with print-on-demand and an option for no-frills editions without any edits. Better yet, have all the music available on touch screen display, allowing markings to be inserted and stored for printing or viewing with a similar device. This would be truly an orchestra librarian's  or a pedagogue's dream!

Swiss Army Knives

About ten days ago I was busy repairing a watch and grabbed a rather large Swiss Army knife, to use one of its sharp blades. Sure enough the unthinkable happened and I almost lost my left thumb. Quickly applied pressure for twenty minutes or so reduced the bleeding but it took longer than that to wipe off all the blood from the table and floor. The left thumb is not very important when playing the violin; however I was happy to realize that no major nerve was damaged in spite of the deep cut. Although combining many features in one tool can be handy, it does none of its intended tasks well. Enclosed is a picture of a Wenger $1,400 monster with 87 implements and 141 functions. The Giant Knife weighs two pounds (almost a kilogram), so I don't think it would make a useful addition to my tool and knife collection. Victorinox and Wenger are the two manufacturers of Swiss Army knives. After competing for a hundred years, the former bought the latter in 2005, promising to keep both brands alive.

We seem to be fascinated by products that perform multiple tasks. Today's cellular phones, especially smart phones, are a good example of this. Often it is necessary to read the manual before learning how to perform the primary function the phone: placing a call. If dialing is done with a slide-out  QWERTY keyboard, one needs a magnifying glass to see the numbers. Of course frequently called numbers can be turned into icons with a person's picture, but that is not an easy procedure for someone past 50. Countless times I've had to help people with muting the ringer or adjusting the volume. Naturally most manufacturers follow their own logic as to how this is done. Even turning the device on and off isn't always obvious.

Recently I read a study which claimed that today's younger people are shying away from actually talking to each other on the telephone. More often they prefer texting which forces the "conversation" to be short and the reply isn't usually immediate. Other option is to use a social network such as Facebook. A private message via that service has replaced emails for many. When electronic mail became common, advice for good etiquette was to keep messages short. Telegrams from your parents' era first became email, then instant messages and now texting. Instead of saying "you are so funny" or "I enjoy your sense of humor", a "lol" or a smiley will do. Most of us use a computer to access email and social networks but this all can be done with a smartphone. Again, it can and is done, but not with the same ease as with proper equipment. The phone has become today's Swiss knife, with more and more functions added in every new model. Finnish Nokia just introduced a 12 MP camera with the largest sensor in a phone. HD video has been taken for granted for some time.

Phones and other devices using Apple or Android systems do brisk business with small add-on programs or gadgets, taking a sizeable cut from paid purchases. These third party applications often leave a lot to be desired; also the same theme is repeated over and over again. How many HP12C emulators do we need? A stopwatch needs only one good design as its sole function is to measure time elapsed. Occasionally I use Nokia's Linux-based N800's tuner and metronome if nothing else is available and check the mail or the stock market on my 3rd Generation iPod Touch. Since I am blessed, or cursed, with perfect pitch and my inner pulse is almost as accurate as the electronic device for tempo, and I much prefer seeing text on a 25-inch screen than trying to make out words on the little device's less than four, none of this technology is any more essential than the corkscrew on the Swiss Army knife. I also have a collection of fine cameras and would use the one included in a phone only when a picture is important to have and there is no real camera at hand. It is impossible to attach a decent zoom lens to a slim phone body without the result looking like the knife pictured above. Yes, while killing time waiting at an airport, a little device might become handy to read the news, and in case the flight was delayed or canceled, finding alternate connections would help. I still wouldn't use the phone to purchase my tickets or make hotel reservations while planning a trip, although I admit having done that while on the road. Avatar, the popular film, looks amazingly vivid on my daughter's Samsung Vibrant's AMOLED screen, but four inches is still four inches and I have to keep the phone close to my face to enjoy the picture.

To a point a personal computer is also a Swiss knife of sorts, expected to perform all kinds of tasks, including music, photo and video editing. This has resulted in more and more complex operating systems. The first computers I had in early 1980s could not multi-task nor show graphics. Online services were few and they worked at snail's pace. Color wasn't available, neither was email as we know it. But the computers were also much simpler and crashed less often. Nobody expected to see what a document looked like until it came out of a noisy dot-matrix printer. WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) didn't become a reality until few years later. Originally developed for XEROX, it was first adapted by Apple and later the PC camp. We early users didn't know what we were missing and yet the technology was exciting and life went on. It would be interesting to see today's youngsters stuck with an early computer: it would be a head-scratcher for sure.

But let's go back to the ever inflating operating systems: when I downloaded the upgrade to iPod Touch which made limited multitasking possible, the device became less reliable than before. Windows has always had its share of problems. I started with Version 2 which was useless in any practical sense. Much later Vista became an embarrassment to Microsoft and although Win 7 is a great improvement, I have never seen so many blue screens of death as in the two machines here that run it. While writing this a big chunk of text was lost to the blues: if I need to be certain that my text is safe, I either use an XP computer or a Linux one which almost never has issues on any kind. Her leaving for college any day now, I made sure my youngest got a nice MacBook Pro. Expensive, yes, but worth it for the lack of headaches.

A couple days ago, out came the SIM card from a fancy smartphone and went into a much simpler Nokia N96. Theoretically it provides the same benefits as its fancier cousins but it drains the battery much less and thus I don't have to recharge it every day. It has a two-way slide: one side for dedicated buttons for multimedia, the other for an old-fashioned dialing pad. I can still take 5 MP pictures if needed and browse the web. Texting isn't quite as convenient as with a full keyboard and the predictive mode only works for English. Minor annoyances: I can always send a regular email from a real computer or the iPod, using a portable MiFi hotspot.

Next time the real tools will come out instead of the Victorinox. The latter will be used for emergencies only. With the phones the jury is still out.