Gerald Elias's Blog, page 4

Symphonies & Scorpions: Shanghai in the Rain

WELCOME TO THE 21st DAILY INSTALLMENT OF SYMPHONIES & SCORPIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL CONCERT TOUR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF CITIZEN DIPLOMACY.               

I INVITE YOU TO READ THE ENTIRE BOOK, ONE DAILY EPISODE AT A TIME, FOR FREE, OR YOU CAN PURCHASE THE BOOK IN ITS ENTIRETY (with photos not found here) IN PAPERBACK OR KINDLE, HERE.

ENJOY!

(P.S. If you FOLLOW me, you’ll be sent all future episodes automatically!)

Shanghai: Sunday, May 4

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6:30-6:45 ACOUSTIC REHEARSAL Shanghai Oriental Art Center 7:30pm CONCERT Shanghai Oriental Art Center CHARLES DUTOIT, conductor BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV, piano

Shanghai in the Rain

Ronan, Chan, and I embark upon a morning excursion to Old Shanghai, which according to the concierge is a hop, skip, and jump from where we’re staying. After several hops, skips, and jumps, we’re totally confused. First, we can’t find the subway station two blocks from our hotel until circumnavigating a few monstrous skyscrapers. Then, once we exit the subway at Nanjing Road station, we can’t figure out what direction to walk. That wasn’t all our fault; the concierge threw us a curve when she said all we’d have to do is walk along Nanjing Road pedestrian street. Not true. What we needed was perpendicular.

When we finally figure out which end is up, the rain comes down. In a Family Mart we find cheapo umbrellas that have the store logo emblazoned all over them, but as long as we stay dry we’re amenable to being walking advertisements.

The situation improves markedly as we near our destination. We take refuge from the rain in the cozy Qing Yuan Tea shop on Fang Bang road in the Huangpu District. We’re the only customers and are treated to a half hour of tea samplings by a charming young lady who not only knows her tea, but her English as well. For such cordially personal service, of course we have to buy a whole bunch of stuff—tea, teacups, goji berries. The essentials.

[image error]Sampling tea in Old Shanghai

Entering the heart of the Old City—all for tourists now, but the evocative traditional Chinese architecture is still intact and wonderfully nostalgic—we browse shops and restaurants before entering Yuyuan Garden. Wow!

Yuyuan Garden was first conceived in 1559 during the Ming Dynasty by Pan Yunduan, governor of Sichuan, as a comfort for his father, the minister Pan En, in his old age, but it wasn’t completed until 1577. Pan Yunduan must’ve had quite the resources in his day. The garden not only boasts a maze of captivating land and waterscaping, but intricately ornate, wooden structures as well. The soft rain adds to the contemplative beauty of the place and also serves as an incentive for the tourist hordes to stay put in their dumpling restaurants, thereby providing us with improbable and welcome tranquility.

Exiting Yuyuan Garden we encounter the aforementioned hordes at the local food court, which puts to shame anything we call a food court back home. The walls of the sprawling two-story edifice are an unbroken line of booths where freshly fried, broiled, baked, roasted, and steamed goods are delivered faster than a Henry Ford assembly line and placed on counters for diners to choose from, cafeteria-style. The dishes are snatched up by diners as quickly as they’re churned out. Everything from chicken feet to pork dumplings (I don’t really know which part of the pig is the dumpling) and all for chump change. The three of us eat like there’s no tomorrow for ten bucks each.

There is rest for the weary because I have it in the late afternoon. No sightseeing, just vegetating in my room. And with a 7:30 concert preceded by a 15-minute acoustic rehearsal at 6:30 there’s no need to bother with dinner. But don’t cry for me, because my palatial hotel room could well have been a destination on anyone’s sightseeing list. A tour guide would come in handy because you could get lost in the bathroom alone, with all its mirrors, glistening marble, and walk-in closet.

Bruised but Victorious

PROGRAM: Glinka: Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op.43 Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, Op.14 (encore) Bizet: Farandole from L’Arlesienne Suite No.2

As a conscientious stand partner, I never pass up an opportunity to get Caroline to laugh, if at all possible in the most inappropriate moments. Shortly before the downbeat, she maneuvers the top of our unwieldy music stand about ninety degrees in order to nudge it a couple of inches higher so that both the music and conductor will be in our line of vision. As Caroline rotates the stand, for a moment all I can see is its back. Before she has a chance to finish her task, I complain in my best Teamsters voice, and not unlike some stand partners who don’t get along, “Hey, what-a-ya doin’? I can’t see da f—— music!”

We have our first casualties of the tour tonight. Two violinists are out sick, one with a nagging head cold exacerbated by the flight from Beijing so she couldn’t hear anything. The other violinist has been rehabbing from an injury and only recently returned to working part-time. She has only been playing the first half of concerts, which is usually the easier half, and therefore the less rehearsed. When recently she completed her portion of a rehearsal that lasted about fifteen minutes, Dutoit sardonically quipped, “Good gig.” On this occasion she has flu-like symptoms. She made it to the hall, but it’s being reported she’s “flat on her back,” in the dressing room. A couple days later, after she had recovered, she told me, all smiles, that she had blood coming out one ear.

The Rachmaninoff is also the recipient of some ill treatment. Abduraimov started out edgy and every time there’s a quick tempo he makes it faster, rushing so far ahead on occasion that Dutoit and the orchestra can’t keep up, throwing things out of whack. The audience, on the other hand, is blinded by the razzle-dazzle. Unaware of, or unconcerned with the intermittent tug o’ war, they demand an encore. Abduraimov exhumes a melancholic vignette by Tchaikovsky, as maudlin as the Rachmaninoff had been manic.

Playing Well with Others

The Symphonie fantastique in the second half of the concert is another kettle of fish entirely, with excellent pacing and controlled passion. It’s amazing how well together the musicians of the BSO play, because if I were forced to describe one thing that makes it challenging to play with them, it would be their tradition of playing what we call “behind the beat” (i.e. after the conductor’s gesture rather than simultaneous with it). I’m not sure how this comes about, but every orchestra has its own signature, its own sound that develops over generations, and how it responds to a conductor’s beat is part of that signature. It’s neither good nor bad, it simply is, and with the BSO it seems to be as true today as when I was in the orchestra with Seiji Ozawa. When we play pizzicato, it sometimes leaves me guessing when the popcorn’s going to pop, so I just fix my sights on concertmaster Malcolm Lowe and pluck my string when he does. It used to exasperate Colin Davis, who, when he was the BSO’s principal guest conductor, repeatedly asked to hear the sound simultaneous with his beat. On the other hand, in one of my first years in the orchestra we played the Coriolanus Overture by Beethoven with Eugene Ormandy conducting. He seemed totally unfazed that he was a half measure ahead of the orchestra, but in that particular piece, which is something of a rhythmic jigsaw puzzle, I was not nearly as unperturbed as he was and felt a sense of extreme aural vertigo until the piece mercifully ended.

Remarkably, even though it sometimes feels as if everyone is waiting for the first person to dive in, the BSO almost always maintains its fine honed accuracy. Though from time to time Dutoit has explicitly requested that we play precisely with his beat, for the most part it doesn’t seem to bother him when we don’t. And at other times he drives the tempo forward, his beat is ahead of us by a second or two, and he has to wait until we catch up, though if you had your eyes closed you’d never know. In any event it keeps us on our toes and makes for a lot of excitement. The audience demands an encore from us after the Berlioz and, unlike the Rachmaninoff, in this case they’re justified.

Painful Lessons

After the concert, I join violinist Bo Hwang and cellist Jonathan Miller at the twenty-four-hour restaurant in the hotel for a late, light dinner.

The first time I auditioned for the BSO as a tenderfoot nineteen-year-old, it was Bo who won the job. The preliminary round took place on the stage of Symphony Hall in Boston. Though I’d had the thrill of performing at Carnegie Hall in a youth chamber orchestra as a teenager, I had never played alone in a hall with such wonderful acoustics, and simply placing my bow on the string seemed to get the most beautiful sound to soar into the balcony. When I was selected as one of the finalists—this being my first serious orchestra audition—I have to admit my head was a little swelled.

The final round took place at Avery Fisher Hall, the home of the New York Philharmonic, while the BSO was on tour. The reason for that odd arrangement was that it was the only available date left in the season when Seiji Ozawa and the orchestra were in the same place at the same time. I felt confident that I’d at least make a good showing, and who knows, maybe even grab the gold ring.

I walked out onto the stage, tuned my violin…and my stomach sank to my knees. The sound of my violin projected about 14½ inches, and then just stopped dead in its tracks. It was the deadest sound I had ever heard. I didn’t know what the hell to do. Should I just play as I normally did and hope the committee, which was seated in the audience behind a screen, didn’t think I had a namby-pamby sound? Or should I force the issue and try to muscle it out, risking some ugly, coarse playing? I couldn’t decide which was better or worse and ended up thrashing unsatisfactorily between the two extremes, whereas an experienced musician like Bo knew what to do; how to get the most out of the instrument while maintaining poise. But I was still a greenhorn and my audition went downhill from the get-go. Nevertheless, it was a valuable learning moment, and helped me understand that it takes more than just moving one’s fingers to be a good musician. I also took some solace with the knowledge that Fritz Kreisler, the early 20th-century virtuoso, was turned down for a job with the Vienna Philharmonic when he was a young man. That’s where the similarity ends.

Bo has always been as fine a gentleman as a violinist, and even though he has a teenage grandson he looks ten years younger than me. He and Jonathan have been friends even before I joined the BSO in ’75, and one would often find them backstage at Symphony Hall deeply absorbed in the ancient Chinese board game of Go. Jonathan, a very well read and philosophical sort, will soon be retiring after forty-three years in the orchestra. He’s a dedicated musician and the standup imitation he does of a caged baboon he once saw at the San Diego Zoo is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

Our waitress, dangerously balancing a tray with one hand while serving us with her other, spills a couple bottles of beer. No harm is done and we tell her not to worry even as she apologizes profusely, but I think her boss is going to take it out on her because she’s replaced by another waitress and doesn’t return. When we leave, we tell her boss it was just an accident and she was a great waitress. Jon thought the boss replied, “I won’t give her any shit,” but I think he said, “I won’t shout at her.” In either case, I hope what he said was true.

***

Click on the title if you’d like to purchase Symphonies & Scorpions in its entirety. It’s available in two paperback editions, one chock-full of black-and-white photos, the other with color photos, and in Kindle.

NEWS FLASH: MY FIRST POLITICAL THRILLER, THE BEETHOVEN SEQUENCE, IS SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE ON SEPTEMBER 8! A MENTALLY UNBALANCED MUSIC TEACHER BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! PREPOSTEROUS? STAY TUNED.

Symphonies & Scorpions: The View from Floor 64

WELCOME TO THE 20th DAILY INSTALLMENT OF SYMPHONIES & SCORPIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL CONCERT TOUR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF CITIZEN DIPLOMACY.               

I INVITE YOU TO READ THE ENTIRE BOOK, ONE DAILY EPISODE AT A TIME, FOR FREE, OR YOU CAN PURCHASE THE BOOK IN ITS ENTIRETY (with photos not found here) IN PAPERBACK OR KINDLE, HERE.

ENJOY!

(P.S. If you FOLLOW me, you’ll be sent all future episodes automatically!)

Shanghai

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A Notable Transformation

If Beijing is totally different from the way it was thirty-five years ago, Shanghai is different from anything, period. If Beijing is enormous, Shanghai is mind-boggling. The lobby of our Shanghai hotel, the Grand Hyatt, is on the fifty-fifth floor of the Jin Mao Tower office building, which when it was completed in 1998 was the tallest edifice in China at 1,380 feet. My room is on the sixty-fourth floor, and the building ascends another twenty-nine stories. Looking out my hotel room I have a panoramic view of a vast sea of skyscrapers far below me, and dozens of others puncture the heavens above.

When I was last in Shanghai in 1979 it felt like a well-preserved blend of traditional China with a European twist. Toward the end of the nineteenth century the US, Germany, France, England, and other European countries plunked themselves down along the banks of the Huangpu River in an area called the Bund, where they established financial and trade centers, and had a glorious time divvying up China into zones of influence.

I had been unable to sleep at the customary hours because of the time change that first morning in Shanghai in 1979. I woke before dawn and decided to take a walk. With the recent end of the Cultural Revolution still a palpable reality we had anticipated our freedom of movement to be short leashed, but to our surprise we were left to our own devices and given unrestricted leeway to wander wherever we chose.

I started my solo expedition along the waterfront and was most impressed with dozens of elderly folks engaged in group tai chi, which, like dim sum, was at that time almost unheard of in the US. Like a corps de ballet in super slow-mo, its amateur practitioners exhibited amazing grace and balance.

By the time the sun rose, I found myself in a maze of winding streets in an old neighborhood, amidst a scene straight out of The Good Earth: the spider web of alleys, endless rows of tiny shops, highly-pitched chatter, old men wearing long beards, long robes, and round caps sitting at sidewalk tables playing mahjong and drinking tea. The only things missing from the scene, and rightly so, were opium and Wang Lung pulling his rickshaw.

As I meandered, a young lad, clad in a military-like school uniform sporting short pants even on that blustery March day, summoned up his courage and silently traipsed alongside me. I might have been the first westerner he had ever seen in person and I had a sneaking suspicion I would be the subject of animated conversation at school and the dinner table. “Yes, I’m sure he was American, and he didn’t know anything!”

Though we didn’t speak a word of each other’s language, we quickly established an easy camaraderie as we ambled along side by side. When he finally decided it was time to part company, I pulled a pen out of my pocket. We had been encouraged to carry little gifts with us to demonstrate that the capitalist Americans are truly friendly folks. Our official briefing packet, provided by the National Committee on United States-China Relations, suggested:

“Americans visiting China should consider taking along mementos of the United States, to present to hosts and guide/interpreters. An instant-print camera of the Polaroid or new Kodak variety is a very popular and successful ‘ice-breaker:’ the photos are welcome souvenir gifts for hotel staff, drivers, escorts, school children, and others with whom the traveler has come in contact.”

This seemed to be an ideal time to put my best foot forward. What little kid wouldn’t want to show off a souvenir from America?

His reaction surprised me. He stopped in his tracks and, puffing out his chest, struck a proud pose curiously reminiscent of Chinese propaganda posters from that era of the proud socialist worker, and thrust an outstretched hand in front of him. No translation necessary: “Stop right there!” the gesture said, refusing my offer outright. Yet there was no anger in his response. All I could read was pride and self-respect, which in such a young kid I thought remarkable. So I smiled and waved, and his prior hand gesture morphed into a friendly mirror of mine. He then turned and marched away. I wouldn’t be surprised if that kid, now in his late forties, is premier one day. Maybe he is already.

At a cursory glance, the intermingled swirl of Europe and traditional China I observed from my previous trip to Shanghai now seem to have become charming sidelights, having given way to an ultra-modern, fantastic (in the literal sense), vertical city. Mega-skyscrapers up to and over a hundred stories have sprouted everywhere, with two notable features: They’re all given breathing room so that each building is clearly visible from any distance and angle; and they’re all architecturally imaginative and unique. Not necessarily beautiful, as everyone’s definition of beauty is different; but at least intensely interesting and impressive, and far more engaging than their squatter and more massive cousins in Beijing. The Shanghai Tower going up across the street, directly in front of my hotel room window will, when completed in 2015, be the world’s second tallest building, weighing in at 2,073 feet high and 121 stories. Yet when you see the finished image of it on the billboard at the construction site, it looks like an amazingly delicate, gently unwinding scroll. I’ve never been in a city with such a futuristic vision, and that it has all been built in the last couple of decades is almost incomprehensible.

[image error]Shanghai. Not your typical city.

The main misgiving for someone like me, who’s concerned about the effects of humanity’s energy consumption on the world’s climate, is considering the vast amount of energy it has taken and will take to build and maintain all this superhuman construction. Even given China’s commitment to developing wind and solar power, it’s hard to imagine keeping up with a growing and more affluent population.

 On the positive side, I’m pleasantly surprised to find out from the tour guide assigned to our bus that many of these mega-skyscrapers were designed by American architectural firms. Considering the level of cooperation needed to construct such unique and huge structures, this seems to me a positive development for the future relationship between our two intensely competitive countries.

Dumplings in the Din

With no concert tonight, I’m attending another invited guests dinner with symphony patrons. When I signed up for it, I thought it would be a good way for me to sample some of the best in local Cantonese cuisine without having to search for it, but maybe on this occasion I’ve outwitted myself. I’m a little tired and would be happier with a quiet night on my own, but it would be bad form to beg out at the last minute, so here I am. The dinner is at the ritzy Whampoa Club, a traditional landmark on the Bund.

Making interesting small talk at our table is next to impossible. In addition to being tired, the ambient noise is so cacophonous I can barely hear the elderly lady sitting next to me, and what I can isn’t getting my creative schmoozing juices flowing. I would like to overhear more of what Mark Volpe, two seats away, has to say about the recently resolved situation of one of the greatest American orchestras, the Minnesota Orchestra (Mark’s home turf), in which bitter labor strife, precipitated by the management’s and board’s threats to cut the pay of the musicians by over thirty percent and reduce the size of the orchestra, resulted in a lockout of the musicians and nearly drove the hundred-ten-year-old organization to extinction. Major touring and recording projects were put on hold or cancelled. Their beloved music director, Osmo Vanska, resigned as the lockout wore on without an end in sight. The musicians could not understand why an organization with a healthy endowment and which could afford a $50-million expansion of Orchestra Hall could demand such draconian cuts. Ultimately, after fifteen months, the longest work stoppage in American orchestra history ended. A settlement was reached in which the musicians accepted a fifteen percent pay cut, a significantly higher contribution to their health plan, and a reduction in the size of the orchestra from 95 members to 84. One piece of good news was that Vanska agreed to return. Straining to read Mark’s lips, I get the sense that he believes the situation could and should have been handled much less painfully, with which I’m in full agreement. 

On a more mundane level, Mark patiently explains to a patron who doesn’t know much about orchestra dynamics why the cymbal player gets paid as much as a violinist. I appreciate that this patron is willing to learn; if only the Minnesota board had been as open-minded. What would the alternative be? Mark asked. To be paid by the note? How would you calculate that? The cymbal player might not play as many notes as a violinist, but if he were to play a wrong one, you would surely hear it more! If a violinist calls in sick, the show can go on, but if the cymbalist is ill you’re in real trouble. And, after all, an orchestra is a team whose players work day-in, day-out with each other. If you replaced your cymbal player with an outsider, it could change the whole synergy, not just with the rest of the percussion section, but with the whole orchestra. Then there’s the marketplace. If you want the best cymbal player, you have to be ready to pay him for his expertise.

I manage to raise my voice high enough above the desultory din to ask Mark something I’ve been curious about. “Mark, what exactly do you do on tour?” I had imagined that as managing director he would delegate most of the grunt work to mid and lower management. Was this trip more of a paid vacation?

Mark tells me he still has to keep up with the day-to-day stuff running the shop back home, overseeing marketing, development, running the plant. (The BSO is a major property owner in the area around Symphony Hall in Boston and Tanglewood in the Berkshires.) Mark is also a lawyer and there are always legal issues involved in the BSO’s multi-faceted business enterprises. Plus, he’s done about twenty interviews since we left Boston with news media in China and Japan, keeps a close eye on logistical personnel for the current tour, and maintains ongoing conversations with local presenters and politicos with an eye to the future. Not a vacation.

***

Click on the title if you’d like to purchase Symphonies & Scorpions in its entirety. It’s available in two paperback editions, one chock-full of black-and-white photos, the other with color photos, and in Kindle.

NEWS FLASH: MY FIRST POLITICAL THRILLER, THE BEETHOVEN SEQUENCE, IS SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE ON SEPTEMBER 8! A MENTALLY UNBALANCED MUSIC TEACHER BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! PREPOSTEROUS? STAY TUNED.

Symphonies & Scorpions: Expenses, Then & Now

WELCOME TO THE 19TH DAILY INSTALLMENT OF SYMPHONIES & SCORPIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL CONCERT TOUR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF CITIZEN DIPLOMACY.               

I INVITE YOU TO READ THE ENTIRE BOOK, ONE DAILY EPISODE AT A TIME, FOR FREE, OR YOU CAN PURCHASE THE BOOK IN ITS ENTIRETY (with photos not found here) IN PAPERBACK OR KINDLE, HERE.

ENJOY!

(P.S. If you FOLLOW me, you’ll be sent all future episodes automatically!)

Beijing to Shanghai, Saturday, May 3

Feeding the Stomach and the Soul

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Caroline Pliszka is not only a stand partner nonpareil, she’s also the ultimate activity planner. Along with associate concertmaster, Elita Kang, we’re up’n at ‘em at 7:00 a.m. for an excursion to the Temple of Heaven. We arrive by subway just as the park opens so, by God, it’s not crowded! And the sky is blue!      

The stunningly ornate temple, iridescent as a peacock, was constructed between 1406 and 1420 during the reign of the Yongle Emperor, who also oversaw construction of the Forbidden City in Beijing. The temple complex was extended by the Jiajing Emperor in the 16th  century, who used it to pray for bountiful harvests.

Hmm. Let’s think about what kind of harvest that means in today’s terms: Say the average daily per capita food consumption in China is a modest pound. That’s 1,500,000,000 pounds, or three-quarters of a million tons of food per day. Multiply that by 365, and you’ve got 273,750,000 tons of food per year. I guess the Emperor’s prayers paid off. For now.

For me, even more impressive than the temple is the life of the park itself and the activity within. Scientists tell us nature abhors a vacuum, and by 9:00 AM, when we have to leave to return to the hotel, the tide of humanity flooding the previously empty park with a goodly number of those 1½ billion folks suggests this law is true for social science as well. Interestingly, these outdoor lovers are predominantly adults, many of them elderly. Even more remarkably, they play games with each other. Now, that’s not something one routinely sees in American parks. Older folks in America don’t play games very much. Competitive sports, yes, with scores and winners and losers. Tennis, golf, that kind of thing, but not so much playing simple games just for the joy of it. Personally, I think it’s a great idea. I think we’d live longer. And more happily.

I watch some games I’m familiar with, like badminton, except these guys don’t bother with nets. Just hitting the birdie back and forth is sufficient fun and exercise. There’s also an intriguing two-person game in which each participant holds a wooden paddle in each hand, and from paddle to paddle balances a rubber ball, winds it around his back, and flips it gently to his partner a few feet away, who does likewise. It appears to take quite a bit of skill, as there are some old guys managing to keep the ball from ever touching the ground, compared to some younger novices who are having a hard time preventing the ball from taking on a life of its own.

There’s also group tai chi and other disciplined exercises of that sort. For the less athletically inclined, there are card games galore played at small tables, where crowds of onlookers surrounding the players peer intently over contestants’ shoulders.

[image error]Temple of Heaven, with BSO violinists Elita Kang and Caroline Pliszka.

Playing the Numbers

If my off-the-top-of-my-head calculations about food consumption in China are pie-in-the-sky, the numbers BSO orchestra manager, Ray Wellbaum, rattles off to me on the bus to the airport are down-to-earth.

The 1979 Boston Symphony tour to China cost about $600,000. This one costs more than four times as much. The airfare alone is about $3,000 per musician. There are about 150 musicians with their significant others plus staff, so just getting us to work on this tour equals the whole ‘79 budget.

Then there are hotels rooms. They were less expensive than I thought, only about $200 per night. Ray says these days you can still get group discounts at hotels, but no longer from airlines, and that China is still cheaper than Europe. I don’t know about Japan, but let’s say the $200 figure pertains there as well. That’s $200 per night multiplied by 12 nights, multiplied by approximately 100 rooms per night (not 150 because there are some shared rooms). That’s a quarter-million dollars for beds.

For food, each musician received about $1,400 per diem, so that’s $140,000.

What am I leaving out? Two weeks of salaries of course, both for management, staff, and musicians. In 2014, BSO musicians receive a base, pretax salary of about $2,300 per week. Multiplied by 2 weeks and then by 100 musicians, and adding overages like principal pay, seniority, FICA, pension, and health care contributions, that expense totals an easy half mil. I don’t know what the tour staff and managers’ salaries are, but I’d guesstimate you could tack on another $100,000.

Then there are Maestro’s fee and paydays for all the support teams I mentioned earlier. No doubt there’s more. This is just a rough estimate.

In the past, Ray made advance trips to scout out accommodations and the like, which was standard practice, but he said there’s little need to do that anymore. The BSO now relies on word of mouth from trusted partners in the industry, and has confidence in relationships with travel companies who are experts in working with symphony orchestras. And with the Internet and instant communications these days there’s no need to do advance trips, but if they ever need a volunteer I’m more than happy to make myself available.

Sponsors help underwrite some of those formidable costs. These days, they are often multinational corporations, and for this tour the lead sponsor is EMC2, an American multinational headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts that offers products and services enabling businesses to store, manage, protect, and analyze data. Sometimes local businesses, like the State Street Bank, also provide essential financial support.

Then there are the concert presenters, who pay the orchestra a substantial fee for their services. As they too need to make ends meet, they derive income from advertisers and sponsors of their own, with the rest of their costs passed down to the concertgoers in ticket prices. By anyone’s measure these are expensive. Japan concert tickets, for example, ranged from about $125 to $375. Fortunately, the BSO has been a very popular brand in Asia for more than a half century, starting with the lengthy tour in 1960 under Charles Munch and continuing through the twenty-nine-year reign of Seiji Ozawa.

***

Click on the title if you’d like to purchase Symphonies & Scorpions in its entirety. It’s available in two paperback editions, one chock-full of black-and-white photos, the other with color photos, and in Kindle.

NEWS FLASH: MY FIRST POLITICAL THRILLER, THE BEETHOVEN SEQUENCE, IS SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE ON SEPTEMBER 8! A MENTALLY UNBALANCED MUSIC TEACHER BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! PREPOSTEROUS? STAY TUNED.

Symphonies & Scorpions: Duck, duck…duck!

WELCOME TO THE 18TH DAILY INSTALLMENT OF SYMPHONIES & SCORPIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL CONCERT TOUR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF CITIZEN DIPLOMACY.               

I INVITE YOU TO READ THE ENTIRE BOOK, ONE DAILY EPISODE AT A TIME, FOR FREE, OR YOU CAN PURCHASE THE BOOK IN ITS ENTIRETY (with photos not found here) IN PAPERBACK OR KINDLE, HERE.

ENJOY!

(P.S. If you FOLLOW me, you’ll be sent all future episodes automatically!)

Beijing, Friday, May 2

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10:30am-1:00pm REHEARSAL National Centre for the Performing Arts 7:30pm CONCERT National Centre for the Performing Arts CHARLES DUTOIT, conductor BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV, piano                         

Duck, Duck…Duck

Finally, a good night’s sleep. Six-and-a-half hours, but that’s all I need.

I awake to a cool morning and blue sky, the rain having cleansed the heavens of carbon emissions. As if transformed by the change in the weather, the guard at the second rehearsal is much more accommodating and we breeze right through security like a spring zephyr.

I can’t leave Beijing without eating world-famous Peking duck, but there being no more free nights, I have to make do with a pre-concert “early bird” dinner. With Ronan and Chan, we pay a visit to a nearby Peking duck restaurant called Sijiminfu that my hutong guide recommended. Six or seven courses of duck parts in different guises, along with soup and side dishes. Fantastic! I’m a sucker for crispy skin. The only course less than delectable is the duck broth soup, which Chan poetically likens to warm dishwater.

Restaurant service in this country has so far been peculiar. Waitresses walk up to the table, offer no words of acknowledgement let alone welcome, and take your order without a nod of recognition. You can’t even tell if they’ve understood your order. At first, I chalk this up to my Western bias of how things are done, but then Chan, as if reading my thoughts, says, “You know what they need in China? Customer service.”

The orchestra arrives en masse at the National Centre thinking we have the security routine down pat. Wrong. The new guard unaccountably decides we are once again a national security threat. He won’t let anyone through, even after getting into a brouhaha with three of our heavy hitters: Guido Frackers, President of Travtours; Jasper Parrot, Dutoit’s manager; and Ray Wellbaum, the BSO’s orchestra manager. The guard does his personal best imitation of the Great Wall, stalwartly holding his ground against the invading barbarian hordes, until Frackers takes it upon himself to order the musicians through. The guard frantically shouts and waves his arms. To help him save face, I suppose, Frackers consents to having our IDs inspected. An uneasy truce. It would have been interesting had we been denied access to our own performance.

I suggest that a less confrontational way of resolving the disagreement might have been to offer the guard our complete cooperation: Have the orchestra do an about-face, return to the buses, and invite the guard to announce to the audience, with the US ambassador in attendance, “Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that the concert tonight is cancelled because I couldn’t be certain this group of a hundred Americans carrying instruments was truly the Boston Symphony.”

At the same time, I feel for the guy. I’m sure he had regulations drummed into him, was just trying to do his job, and was scared to death he’d lose it if he did the wrong thing. He got caught in the middle of a bureaucratic snafu like I’d gotten stuck in the line at the Forbidden City, where it was almost impossible not to be carried along like a leaf on a river. In a country of 1½ billion people, plus or minus a few hundred million, maintaining order is serious business. What a frightening prospect if such a huge population decided to thumb its nose at authority and go its own way, or ways! Government would be incapable of exerting any control at all. So, government resorts to repression, or rather suppression, as the lesser of two evils; nipping in the bud any action that it perceives might trigger anarchy. Better to detain people, throw some in jail, or just basically harass them than let their message spread like wildfire. On one hand, human rights get trampled, but imagine the chaos of a country like this losing control! Not that I agree with it, but that’s why I felt for the security guard. A loss of control of the situation, even for something as inconsequential as whether to allow foreign musicians to enter a concert hall, might have repercussions, because once the cat’s out of the bag…

A Moving Performance

PROGRAM: Mozart: Symphony No.38 in D, K.504 (Prague) Mahler: Symphony No.5

A much more positive encounter takes place when we finally manage to make it to the backstage, where BSO violinist Xin Ding has an emotional reunion with her old violin professor, Zhenshan Wang.

Xin studied at the Beijing Conservatory from 1992-1995 and credits Wang, one of China’s preeminent violin teachers, for seeing her true potential and giving her the confidence to realize it. “He turned my life around,” she told me. Wang, himself, had an elite pedigree, having studied in Hungary with the great Jewish Polish violinist, Bronislaw Huberman, before returning to China. Wang’s performance career, however, was cut short by the Great Cultural Revolution, when forced manual labor permanently ruined his manual dexterity.

After Xin left China for Boston in 1996, the two stayed in touch by phone and Internet, where Xin shared photos of her baby son. Tonight’s concert will be the first opportunity for Prof. Wang to see his protégé perform with the Boston Symphony.

He has picked an ideal occasion. The Mozart/Mahler program concert goes beautifully, and I’m wide awake for this one. What a difference a day makes! Prof. Wang says he was impressed beyond all his expectations at the sound of the orchestra in the Mahler, and was deeply moved.

[image error]BSO violinist, Xin Ding reunited with her childhood, Beijing violin teacher, Prof. Zhenshan Wang.



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Audiences in China are so much different than in my more familiar stomping grounds of Japan. And why shouldn’t they be? In Japan, the more they like something the more the applause accelerates, but it never varies much in volume, only in duration. Here in Beijing they were hootin’, hollerin’, whistlin’, and stamping their feet. Harpist Jessica Zhou’s family, occupying two entire rows she had bought for them, led the chorus. At $140 per ticket, I’d say they had the right to express their enthusiasm however they wanted.

It’s traditional in many countries to present the conductor with flowers onstage at the end of a concert. The conductor will then typically offer the bouquet to one of the women in the orchestra, particularly one who might have had a big solo. Tonight, a lovely young lady presented Dutoit with the bouquet. He gave her a peck on the cheek, as is also customary, which he appeared to relish. But instead of handing the flowers to a female musician, Dutoit marched to the back of the orchestra and gave them to principal trumpet, Tom Rolfs, who, as usual, had played the immortal trumpet solo at the beginning of the Mahler magnificently. The crowd roared. Not to be outdone, though, when Dutoit went to shake Tom’s hand, Tom took it in his and kissed it, which provoked an even louder roar and created a fine segue into our encore.

***

Click on the title if you’d like to purchase Symphonies & Scorpions in its entirety. It’s available in two paperback editions, one chock-full of black-and-white photos, the other with color photos, and in Kindle.

NEWS FLASH: MY FIRST POLITICAL THRILLER, THE BEETHOVEN SEQUENCE, IS SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE ON SEPTEMBER 8! A MENTALLY UNBALANCED MUSIC TEACHER BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! PREPOSTEROUS? STAY TUNED.

Symphonies & Scorpions: Scorpion Kebab, Anyone?

WELCOME TO THE 17TH DAILY INSTALLMENT OF SYMPHONIES & SCORPIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL CONCERT TOUR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF CITIZEN DIPLOMACY.               

I INVITE YOU TO READ THE ENTIRE BOOK, ONE DAILY EPISODE AT A TIME, FOR FREE, OR YOU CAN PURCHASE THE BOOK IN ITS ENTIRETY (with photos not found here) IN PAPERBACK OR KINDLE, HERE.

ENJOY!

(P.S. If you FOLLOW me, you’ll be sent all future episodes automatically!)

Beijing: Thursday, May 1

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10:30am-1:00pm REHEARSAL National Centre for the Performing Arts 7:30pm CONCERT National Centre for the Performing Arts CHARLES DUTOIT, conductor BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV, piano

First Rehearsal, Under a Cloud

My feeling yesterday was, what’s this big deal about air pollution? It could be worse. Well, today it is. Though not nearly as bad as had been reported a few months ago, or in Salt Lake City during the worst of its winter inversions, the brown haze provides some justification to those musicians who had brought face masks.

It’s May Day. For most of China’s workers it’s a holiday, and the city is swarming with vacationers. For us, it’s our first rehearsal. The National Centre for the Performing Arts, affectionately referred to as the Egg, looks to me more like something out of a 1960s Asian sci-fi film about a mutant armadillo that had grown to hellish proportions. Inside are a concert hall, opera hall, rehearsal halls, recording studio, and all the supplementary storage and dressing spaces.

Scheduling rehearsals on tour is a balancing act. Some of the factors that are taken into consideration are orchestra fatigue; whether and how often the repertoire was recently performed; the difficulty of the music; extra-musical considerations like positioning of offstage musicians; and the acoustics of each concert hall.

Limits on the number and length of rehearsals, including rehearsals on tour, are painstakingly laid out in the CBA. Some tour rehearsals may be 2½ hours, others 1½. Others, called “acoustic rehearsals” last only 15 minutes—yes, that’s not a typo—and usually take place an hour or so before the actual performance. Acoustic rehearsals are intended simply to get a sense of what the hall sounds like and, if there’s time, tweak a few spots in the music. The musicians can usually tell within minutes what particular challenges a new hall holds—the degree of reverberation or lack thereof, individual adjustments in projecting the sound, whether we’ll have to sustain notes longer than usual or play them shorter, whether the brass and percussion instruments lining the back wall  need to be reined in, etc.

But I’m jumping ahead of myself, because first we have to pass through the National Centre security desk, which turns out to be no mean feat. The guard on duty today must think we’re all members of the banned Falun Gong, because he carefully examines each of our passports and ID tags, and eyes us with a great deal of suspicion. Yes, yes, brass players may indeed look like security risks. And percussionists? Is there a single one who doesn’t look subversive? But string players? Come on!

Once we’re all assembled onstage, Ray Wellbaum, the orchestra manager, since retired, introduces representatives from the firms that provide logistical support to the orchestra: security, concert managements, travel manager this, travel manager that. A whole orchestra unto itself.

After about thirty seconds of Night on Bare Mountain, the musicians exchange the same glances of chagrin and mild dismay you have when sizing up your host’s tuna salad that’s sat in the sun too long. The hall’s acoustics. To be fair (and polite), the sound is not lacking in clarity. On the other hand, it’s excessively bright and shallow, and tends to separate the various instruments, rather than blend them. From where I sit, the trumpets seem to be in another hall entirely. The priceless instruments the orchestra had schlepped all the way from Boston won’t be heard at their best, but there’s nothing that can change that now. Trying to distill my perception of the acoustics into a single thought, it dawns on me. As we play, I whisper to Caroline, “This hall makes our fiddles sound like they were made in China.” Again, she thinks I’m pretty funny, but I’m being only half facetious. My quip makes the rounds, but I didn’t intend it to be deprecating because Chinese violins have improved greatly over the years. And, I seriously conjecture, since the Chinese have a different musical tradition, maybe they also have a different concept of the ideal sound. Though the halls we were to play in over the next week proved my theory shaky, you can’t say I wasn’t open-minded.

At our rehearsal intermission, Slava Uritsky and I discuss the acoustics. I tell him my cultural concept theory, that the Chinese might have a preference for this type of sound, but he thinks I’m wearing rose colored glasses. In that case, I joke, maybe the Chinese government permits only a single party-line opinion regarding acoustics, which reminds Slava of an ass-covering saying they had in Russia during the tight-lipped Soviet era: “Of course I have opinion! But I disagree with it.”

Though we’ve already performed the repertoire, Dutoit again rehearses thoroughly, which helps shake off the cobwebs after four days of not playing together, and will hopefully prevent unwanted surprises at the concert.Yet as we rehearse Mahler Fifth, I find my mind wandering from over-familiarity with its swollen proportions, and recall Oscar Wilde’s aphorism: “Nothing succeeds like excess.”

The worst part of the rehearsal has nothing to do with music, though. Strangely, the air quality inside the concert hall is noxious, even worse than outside! Some of the musicians don their facemasks. We look forward to the concert with some trepidation. We later learned the foul air was not the result of Beijing’s “normal” air pollution. Rather, it was a gift from an equipment truck idling in the cargo bay just outside the stage area.

Buy-Buy Communism

After the rehearsal, a lot of musicians are absorbed into the masses on the Wang Fu Jing—the broad pedestrian shopping street near our hotel which thirty-five years ago was flooded with a blue sea of Mao jackets—for a spate of jolting consumerism, where today you can buy anything and everything from a Louis Vuitton to a Big Mac. Mao would roll over in his grave. Bells on bicycles—out. Bells and whistles on smart phones—in. A bowl of rice for dinner—out. Continental cuisine—in. The iconic Mao jacket—nowhere to be seen.

Back in ’79 the authorities encouraged (i.e. instructed) us to purchase whatever high quality souvenirs or traditional artwork we wanted to take back to our loved ones at state-owned Friendship Stores. The stores that the Chinese themselves shopped at were strictly utilitarian and for local consumption only. After browsing around the Friendship Store, picking up a few tchotchkes to buy, my eyes rested upon an antique silkscreen scroll painting of a wizened soldier seated on a tired horse. Somehow the artist had managed to capture a striking aura of dignity, heroism, and camaraderie between the man and his mount, returning home after long battles either won or lost. I asked the young sales girl the price. Hesitant with her English, she consulted her glossary. “Fifteen dollars,” she said with a smile. “Really?” I asked. That was hardly possible. She apparently sensed my disbelief. “One moment, please,” she replied, and again checked her price list. “I’m sorry,” she said. “One hundred fifty dollars.” Still, that was an incredible bargain. Then she frowned and said, “Wait here, please.” She went off and had a whispered conversation with her superior, returning with a big smile. “One thousand five hundred,” she said triumphantly, pleased that her English had come so far so quickly. I thanked her and stored the painting in my memory.

 Having failed as an art connoisseur, I wanted to buy some silk cloth to take home to my wife, Cecily, who has a knack with a needle and thread. As they didn’t have plain silk fabric at the Friendship Store, after much inquiry I managed to find a dilapidated, no-frills department store where “the people” shopped, on the Wang Fu Jing. On the way I practiced the word seh, for silk, that I had just been taught by Carl Crook, an eminent China hand who was also the interpreter the BSO had hired for the tour. The high-pitched word, seh, sounds a bit like air slowly being let out of a small balloon. I was the only Caucasian in the store and, unable to spot the fabric section on my own, needed to ask the sales clerks where to find the silk. I summoned up my courage but was self-conscious about pronouncing seh with the proper inflection. After receiving a blank stare from the sales clerks after three halfhearted attempts, I decided to go for the gold and let it rip. The sales people’s faces lit up with recognition.

Nowadays the Wang Fu Jing is lined shoulder-to-shoulder with the same international retailers and food establishments you see in New York, London, or Paris. And it’s by no means rich foreigners jamming these stores, though the prices are daunting. Some of the Chinese people who spoke to members of the orchestra said their preferred shopping strategy is to vacation in the States, engage in spasms of retail therapy at much lower prices—even for Chinese-made goods—and come out ahead in the end.

If the US wants to affect political change in China—whether it should even try is another question—it need do nothing more, having already set in motion the wheels of long-term social evolution by encouraging a capitalist template. It may be just a matter of allowing time to let the politics take its cue from the economy. As a middle class emerges, and as the rich and poor extend society in opposite directions, all three of those groups may eventually demand a voice in the future. In China, they think of time in terms of millennia. It might not take quite that long.

Thought for Food

Intersecting the Wang Fu Jing is a narrow pedestrian alley that leads you into a bustling, boisterous world of traditional Chinese tourist schlock and street food. Even more crammed with people than the Wang Fu Jing, it’s lined with stands peddling everything from traditional lanterns to miniature Xian soldiers, and from chestnuts to scorpions on skewers, which come roasted or live and wiggling, depending upon what you’ve got a hankering for at the moment.

[image error]Scorpion kebab, anyone?

The scorpions seem to be a highly popular item indeed, among young and old alike.  There are at least a dozen kiosks selling them, and each kiosk had hundreds of skewers ready for the downing. As I consider whether to indulge, I try in vain to envisage a scorpion farm. Before deciding, I need to find out the answer to a very important question: Aren’t scorpions poisonous? The answer I’m offered: Not these. Their stingers have been removed. Whether that’s true or not I’ll never know, because ultimately I take a pass.

I’m an adventurous eater, and over the course of my entire lifetime there have been very few foods that I haven’t managed to shove into my mouth. I’ll devour just about anything that isn’t moving, and have even eaten some things that were. My parents, steak-and-potatoes folks for whom veal parmigiana was the limit of culinary adventurism, used to be aghast at the stuff I happily funneled into my gut.

I have the great good fortune to have eaten in some exquisite restaurants all around the world—Italy, France, Japan, Peru, you name it—and could tell you in boring detail some of my most memorable meals. But never have I gormandized for an entire week as I did with the Boston Symphony in China in ‘79. Almost all of our meals were served banquet-style in the dining rooms of our hotels and, as a “going away” special treat we were taken to a famous Peking* Duck restaurant, where the ingredients of every course included a different part of the duck. [*Now, of course, we say Beijing, but the duck hasn’t changed its name.]

You wouldn’t believe how many parts a duck has! As was the custom, we all sat at big round tables. To my right was violist Robert Barnes, who still played with the BSO at the time of the 2014 tour, but has since retired. We had just been served our third or fourth course, which Bob was digging into with gusto. Having examined this particular dish carefully, I said, “Hey, Bob, you know what that is?” He shook his head and continued unfazed. I persevered. “Bob, don’t you want to know what it is?” He replied, “I don’t care. It’s good. But, OK, what is it?” I said, “They’ve split the roasted duck head down the middle. You’re scooping out the brains.” Bob took a closer look and, blanching, decided he wasn’t hungry anymore. He asked, “You want to finish mine?” I thoughtfully replied, “Sure, but only if you don’t want it.” Works every time.

Among the few things I couldn’t get myself to choke down at one of those banquets was sea cucumber. It has the color of and shape of a good ole cuke, all right, but has the texture of an oversized slug. Another was a fertilized chicken egg, prepared Vietnamese style; that is, modestly boiled and then, when cracked open in all its rheumy glory, oozes onto your plate with bits of fetal feathers, beak, and body. Obviously, there are many people who find that delicious, and maybe it is. More power to them.

One delicacy that barely passed muster was live sushi. Thirty years ago, in America if you said you ate sushi, the uniform response was a disbelieving widening of the eyes, followed by, “You ate raw fish? Yuck.” How we’ve progressed! But I had qualms when, in an upscale Tokyo sushiya, I was proudly presented a whole fish artfully sliced and displayed on a vertical skewer…and, with gills flapping, clearly still alive. Because a thoughtful friend was spending a lot more than she could reasonably afford in order for me to sample the best that Japan had to offer, I downed what I considered an appropriately polite amount of the fish. But never again.

The other food that I have tried once and will avoid for the rest of my life is another very popular Japanese food called natto. More about that later because my stomach’s getting queasy just thinking about it.

I’m not making value judgments here. I wish I could enjoy it all without exception. The point is that we all have cultural biases about food. Icelanders eat horse and fermented shark. Peruvians eat guinea pigs. Americans eat chopped liver. Food is an integral part of culture, and by experiencing it without bias helps us understand each other. Another international language, perhaps? A thought for food is food for thought.

Putting Walmart to Shame

In a narrow lane off the pedestrian street I pass a booth selling a forest of colorful chopsticks and make the fatal mistake of glancing for more than a nanosecond at a two-pair set. The proprietress pounces, though I haven’t even come to a full stop. She shouts, “Good price! I give you good price!” I smile, shake my head, and resume my pace. The good lady runs after me with a calculator and punches in 180 Yuan, about $30. I laugh. She counters, “One-hundred-fifty!” I say, “No thanks,” shake my head more emphatically, and try to make my escape. She grabs me by the sleeve in a viselike grip and yanks me back. “How much?” she demands. I say, “No, thanks,” yet again, since I don’t know how to say “I was just window shopping” in Mandarin. She says, “One-hundred!” with desperate finality. I smile, bracing myself to be wrestled to the ground. Still holding on to me for dear life, she spits out, “How much?” In an effort to dislodge her I offer something preposterous. “Thirty.” About five dollars. With the speed of a poker player holding a royal flush, she counters. “Forty.” Admiring her tenacity and believing strongly that professional entertainers, as we both are, should be compensated, I agree and purchase the two pairs of blue and white porcelain chopsticks, plus holders. I give her fifty. She seems delighted with the transaction. A cross-cultural win-win. If only our two countries could find common ground so efficiently.

Disneyland East

Linda, my hutong guide, told me there were beautifully peaceful gardens adjacent to the Forbidden City, but security on this extended May Day holiday makes a visit infeasible. The police funnel millions of tourists—that may not be an exaggeration—into one line, regardless of what particular sight they’re hoping to see. It’s even worse than waiting on line for Pirates of the Caribbean, especially with police and military personnel making their quietly intimidating presence felt.

Waiting on that sleeping dragon of a line is not my cup of tea, so I duck out, narrowly escaping before passing the chain link gate of no return. Many of the tourists, I’m told, are rural Chinese folk making their first excursions into the big city. I spot befuddled Chinese tourists at street corners, scanning the horizon this way and that, unable to make head or tail of city maps. I consider asking if they need help with directions, but suspect they wouldn’t appreciate the irony.

Though my walk back to the hotel is only about a mile, I risk my life several times crossing major intersections. This must be where Beijing drivers vicariously exercise their freedom of expression. Neither red lights, stop signs, police whistles, oncoming traffic, nor pedestrians for that matter, seem to interfere with the drivers’ creativity discovering new ways to get from Point A to Point B. Poetry slam in motion.

Just as I get back from my excursion, thankfully unscathed, the sky darkens with real clouds and a welcome thunderstorm pummels the smog. I have just enough time to dart into the Starbucks next to the hotel as the first drops fall. The storm scours the air, at least for the moment, while I open my package of chopsticks and admire the fruits of my recent hard bargaining, relieved I got off so easy. I shudder to think what could have happened had I glanced longingly at the scorpion kebabs.

Behind, and Under, the Scenes

The subterranean corridors of the National Center are austere and uninviting, an opinion I share with Jasper Parrot, Dutoit’s manager from London, as we traipse underground from the bus to the wardrobe trunks. He replies that at least they’re clean, citing some backstage areas in Russia as examples to the contrary. I mention my experience conducting at the Teatro Nacional in Lima, where next to the so-called Green Room, more like a neglected mop closet, is an open elevator shaft with no elevator and no barrier to prevent an express trip to the basement. Maybe that’s for the bad conductors. Mr. Parrot, who has also been Vladimir Ashkenazy and Andre Previn’s manager for ages, is a very perceptive, engaging guy, with a beautifully polished English accent. All in all, the type who might work for MI6 without anyone ever figuring it out. I’ve clearly been reading far too much Le Carre on this trip.

Going to Concerts Now and Then

PROGRAM: Mussorgsky: Night on Bare Mountain Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43 Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.5 in E minor, Op. 64 Encore to be determined

As I warm up onstage prior to the performance I notice two things: The air has thankfully been purified, and the audience is very much like classical music audiences the world around—generally affluent, older, and experienced concertgoers, with a smattering of hyper-enthusiastic university-aged students. This is in stark contrast to 1979, when the Chinese government deemed it imperative that our performance in Beijing was open to the general public. The cost of a ticket then was pocket change, and so we played to the masses at an indoor stadium in Beijing.

For a great many budding musicians, Nirvana is to perform in Carnegie Hall.  I know it was for me. But over the years I’ve found that my most rewarding performances have been for audiences who have very limited opportunity to hear great live music. On those occasions their passion becomes palpable and is one of the things that will always make a live performance superior to any kind of recording. I’ve loved playing in Carnegie Hall but the concert in Beijing that night in 1979, with the BSO musicians sitting side-by-side with the Beijing musicians—was special. The audience’s response wasn’t as refined, perhaps, as in New York, or Vienna, or London, or even in today’s Beijing, but it was overwhelmingly heartfelt and spontaneous.

Playing With Eyes (Half) Closed

Halfway through tonight’s concert, jetlag and lack of sleep ambush me. By the time we start the Tchaikovsky, the final piece on the program, I feel as if I had driven 2,500 miles nonstop through  unending night from Boston to Salt Lake City, with no coffee. I keep scolding myself, “Don’t close your eyes. Don’t close your eyes.” If I do, I might easily find myself in snoozeland. I don’t think anyone can tell how much I’m struggling—maybe Caroline can—but it’s torture.

I try not to think about that time long ago at Carnegie Hall, when I sat behind one of our former violinists during a Bruckner symphony performance. This particular gentleman was an amiable old guy who liked to drink. When we were on tour he really liked to drink. During the slow movement of the Bruckner he started listing to his left. Then his head drooped. Then he started snoring. Bruckner can sometimes do that to you even without Johnny Walker’s assistance. With Carnegie’s acoustics it’s not a great idea to snore too loudly, so Lenny Moss, his stand partner, by nature an excitable guy, elbowed him in the ribs. “Wake up! Wake up!” he whispered with alarm, as the music dragged on. Our hero, the consummate pro, raised his head, and with great dignity but slightly slurred diction, intoned, “Why should I?”

My personal struggles with Mr. Sandman aside, the performance gets the tour off to a rousing start. Maestro is in fine form, revving the Night on Bare Mountain engines from the first note. Mr. Abduraimov, performing with reckless abandon in the Rachmaninoff, is enthusiastically received. And, with Tchaikovsky Fifth, what’s not to like?

***

Click on the title if you’d like to purchase Symphonies & Scorpions in its entirety. It’s available in two paperback editions, one chock-full of black-and-white photos, the other with color photos, and in Kindle.

NEWS FLASH: MY FIRST POLITICAL THRILLER, THE BEETHOVEN SEQUENCE, IS SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE ON SEPTEMBER 8! A MENTALLY UNBALANCED MUSIC TEACHER BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! PREPOSTEROUS? STAY TUNED.

Symphonies & Scorpions: Beijing

WELCOME TO THE 16TH DAILY INSTALLMENT OF SYMPHONIES & SCORPIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL CONCERT TOUR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF CITIZEN DIPLOMACY.               

I INVITE YOU TO READ THE ENTIRE BOOK, ONE DAILY EPISODE AT A TIME, FOR FREE, OR YOU CAN PURCHASE THE BOOK IN ITS ENTIRETY (with photos not found here) IN PAPERBACK OR KINDLE, HERE.

ENJOY!

(P.S. If you FOLLOW me, you’ll be sent all future episodes automatically!)

BEIJING

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Arrival

Like many of the structures we were to see in the new China, the arrival terminal at Beijing Capital International Airport is of monumental proportions, with a vast, star-canopied ceiling. Little did I know that the constellations in the terminal ceiling, artificial though they were, would be the last stars we would see for days in China’s smog-cloaked cities. Here’s my instant analysis of why everything is so colossal: 1) It reflects China’s grand vision in the brave, new world, particularly at this ascendant point in their history after earlier centuries of humiliation. 2) They needed a lot of space for the 2008 Olympic Games.

We remove our tagged and numbered luggage from the baggage claim carousel and lug them to a designated area, from which they’ll be delivered directly to our hotel rooms. Due to post-9/11 security concerns, especially in the US, this practice has become less the norm, but is happily in effect for the Asia tour.

Our tour guides shunt us to several chartered buses waiting in yellow-lit gloom to transport us to the hotel. Years ago, there was a veteran BSO violinist who was, with one exceptional personality quirk, a most kindly, unassuming man, for whom civility was life’s guiding principle. Let us call him Dr. Jekyll. The one exception was an unrestrainable compulsion to be at the head of any line. He always took the first seat in the front row of the first bus, so that he could be the first in line at the hotel to be the first to get his room key. Pity the musician standing in front of Dr. Jekyll exiting a bus, for at that moment he became Mr. Hyde and took no prisoners. One day, long ago, we were at Logan Airport, waiting to board our flight. Let’s call it Gate 10. Of course, Dr. Jekyll, always in jacket and tie, had been standing there for a half hour. Gradually the entire orchestra lined up behind him. Then came the announcement over P.A.: “Ladies and gentleman, the gate for the flight to La Guardia has been changed from Gate 10 to Gate 11.” The musicians roared with laughter because all we had to do was turn 180 degrees, but that made our disconsolate colleague, abruptly transformed into Mr. Hyde—the last in the line.

As the buses approach Beijing, it looks more like driving into the Bronx from the Hutchinson River Parkway than being in China. Nothing is particularly characteristic of my mental image of China, and nothing seems familiar from 1979.

Except for historic landmarks, downtown Beijing is totally transformed with massive new buildings and glaring with lights. Cars, instead of bicycles, now create the traffic jams, with air pollution one of its unwelcome byproducts. The blue-green sea of government issued, Mao-inspired peasant garb, which had in the previous era supplanted traditional Chinese apparel, has in turn been totally replaced by Western fashion.

Our hotel, the Grand Hyatt Beijing, is huge, glitzy, and chichi. So luxurious, in fact, that it makes me uncomfortable. How many stars can a hotel have? One or two would be fine with me. This one seems to have as many as the airport ceiling. Am I waxing nostalgic for the warm and fuzzy days of Third World socialism? It’s hard to complain while being enveloped in such comfort, but still, isn’t there a middle ground somewhere? After all, this is supposed to be the Middle Kingdom.

FREE DAY Wednesday, April 30

Multitasking at Breakfast

My sleep deprivation strategy worked perfectly…for three hours. I awake at 3:30 AM, toss and turn for another three and concede defeat. No big deal—sleep is overrated, and anyway I have a free day to recover.

The Grand Hyatt provides an elegant and extensive Western/Chinese breakfast buffet. I join cellist Mike Reynolds at his table. Like me, Mike is a BSO substitute. We have a cordial friendship when we see each other from time to time at Tanglewood, though limited by sitting at opposite ends of the stage, so I figure breaking dim sum together will be a good opportunity to get to know each other.

Like many musicians, Mike has diverse interests, which he tells me about as I inhale platefuls of delicacies and cups of coffee poured from a silver pitcher by the strolling waiter. Mike’s a prime example of a musician under whose feet grass will never grow. Besides his occasional “moonlighting” with the BSO, he’s the cellist of the eminent Muir String Quartet, teaches eighteen hours a week at Boston University, runs four summer music festivals, has a foundation providing grants for schools nationally to buy string instruments, and is helping a private owner to sell a bunch of Stradivarius violins. I don’t write this as a front man for Mike, but more to show what a resource it is to have a symphony orchestra, with its musicians, in one’s backyard.

Mike reminds me that, to my surprise, he and I once read string quartets in Philadelphia back in the ‘70s. I have no recollection of that encounter, but have no reason to doubt the acuity of his memory. I should ask him how I sounded.

I could spend the whole day here eating everything from the carvery ham to the rice porridge next to the dumplings—luckily, the breakfast tab is included with the room, because I’ve easily eaten a per diem’s worth—but decide that too much pigging out on the first meal of the tour might not be in the best of taste.

H utongs, the Traditional China

[image error]Traditional Dazhiqiao hutong’s main thoroughfare.

Now that I’ve been put to shame if I let grass grow under my feet, I arrange to take a guided walking tour through two of Beijing’s traditional hutongs—specifically defined as alleyways, but more generally means neighborhoods—which are fast disappearing from the urban landscape. I want to get a glimpse of the pulse of life as it used to be, which now claws for finger holds in ever-diminishing isolated pockets behind the pillars of China’s raging economic capitalism and repressive political communism.

My guide, Linda Z, (to protect her identity, not her real name) meets me at the hotel. Thankfully, she’s fluent in English, having graduated from the Xi’an Translator’s University some years back. A young lady and mother of one, as are the overwhelming majority of mothers in China, her husband is a commercial artist. From the hotel, we take a subway to our first hutong. Dazhiqiao, pronounced something like dodger-chow, is representative of these neighborhoods of one and two-story houses. It’s refreshingly quiet and tranquil, especially given their proximity to the bustle of major avenues and intersections. Dazhiqiao’s main alleys are lined with vendors selling everything from fruits and vegetables, groceries, and household items, to mechanical repair.

The incessant drone of choking traffic quite suddenly becomes a distant memory. Only a car or two straggles along. Bicycles or honking motor scooters are more the ticket for zigzagging among strolling pedestrians. The owners of the few cars that manage to park along an alley have barricaded their tires with pieces of scrap cardboard. “Why do you think that’s so?” Linda asks me. I lamely guess, “So hubcaps won’t be stolen?” Wrong. It’s to protect the tires from having them urinated on by the local canine population, providing yet an additional and powerful disincentive to drive cars here.

The original homes in the hutong, of well-to-do merchants, public officials, and high-ranking military men, were impressive structures with backyard gardens. But as the population increased over the past couple of centuries the gardens were filled in, helter-skelter, by building after building, creating a honeycomb of living quarters, most of them very modest. One could quickly get lost in the haphazard labyrinth of passageways and end up at the doorstep of someone’s tiny abode. Yet there are dabs of greenery everywhere—the occasional fruit tree or patchwork garden—and the stillness is appealing, even though many of the older, formerly grand structures slowly crumbling under the weight of time and the burden of cumbersome city building regulations add a tinge of melancholy.

Caged songbirds adorn the exterior of many homes. There are public bathrooms and baths for the many houses that have no plumbing. The narrower alleys are pedestrian only, and in Dashila, the second hutong we visit, just a stone’s throw from the entrance to the colossal Forbidden City, I simultaneously touch the centuries-old brick walls on both sides of Money Market Hutong, so named because it was the location for major Qing dynasty banks.  

Only a block away is a major pedestrian street, where multitudes frequent traditional shops. Neiliansheng, a shoe shop, was founded in 1853 for making officers’ boots. The store is now famous for their custom-made shoes where the likes of Mao Tse Tung and Chou En Lai were customers. Replicas of their revered footwear are on display. Liubiju is the name of the pickle shop founded in 1530 where gallon-sized blue and white ceramic jars boast an endless variety of pickled vegetables, most of which I can’t identify. Zhangyiyuan, a tea shop founded in 1910, has walls lined with bins of dried tea, where the employees can sort, measure, and package your purchase with the skill and swiftness of a Las Vegas card shark. Ruifuxiang is a silk shop founded in 1893 and noted for its high quality, particularly for all of one’s bridal needs. Tongrentang is a traditional Chinese medicine shop, famous for its herbs and outstanding doctors who used to serve the imperial families during the Qing dynasty. With ancient ginseng costing thousands of dollars, it’s gotta make you feel better, but they don’t allow photos because they unabashedly display banned substances such as rhino horn.  

As we complete our walking tour, Linda explains that there are many reasons for the decline of the hutongs, the main one being the profit motive. Hutongs occupy valuable space, and big, tall, new buildings suck in a helluva lot more revenue than rundown, little, old ones. Many entire neighborhoods were totally obliterated for China’s 2008 Olympics. In fact, a person who asked me not to mention his name told me that his close relative returned from shopping one day to find his house had been razed to the ground. Clearly, the social costs of urban overhaul, in terms of disruption of traditional ways of life, have been a secondary consideration. There are also complex regulations that discourage incentive for renovation and restoration. It is easier and cheaper for residents to pack up and move to new, clean, faceless apartment blocks than to try to restore the charming but rickety structures in which they live.

As a musician, I’m very empathetic to the plight of hutongs, as they parallel the precarious state of the world of classical music. These days, where value is all too often understood only as a black bottom line, the future of symphony orchestras and hutongs hang in the balance. Linda tells me of the beginnings of public outcry over the assault on hutongs, that the dubious wisdom of wholesale tearing down of communities is being reconsidered, and that the government is beginning to intervene in stopping the most unscrupulous development. Like Pops concerts added to the classical mix of symphony programing, some hutongs are even being “reinvented” with trendy boutiques. Whether those infusions ultimately become unlikely saviors or simply accelerate the decline remains to be seen.

Free Speech, Sort Of

I’m circumspect about bringing up anything related to politics with Linda, but as we walk along a bustling lane I allow an oblique reference to social change and heavy-handed government to escape my lips, reflecting upon the numbers of hutongs torn down for the recent Olympics. Sensing my unease, Linda replies, “Don’t worry. I’m happy to talk about it. Just not here.”

Once we’re out of earshot, I ask how free she feels to talk about politics in general. She replies, “It all depends on who you’re talking to. If it’s just with friends who share your beliefs, or with a foreigner like you, it’s OK. But if you try to go to someone in authority with an idea to create change, even if it’s for the general good, you could possibly get into trouble.” She must have sensed I share and empathize with her point of view, because she is amazingly candid with me, a stranger, and has no compunction expressing her thoughts about the role big money, big development interests, and government have had in the decline and the elimination of many of the hutongs that are clearly so dear to her.

Mealtime

After a tasty lunch of crispy duck served with sesame buns at Made in China, the hotel restaurant, jet lag stealthily creeps up on me like a not-so-gentle sledgehammer, and I take the rest of the afternoon off. In the evening I join a group of BSO patrons and a handful of musicians for an invitation-only dinner at Lost Heaven restaurant, located in the former US Embassy complex, which has since been converted into a mini-mall of expensive boutiques. Retail diplomacy?

There are thirty patrons joining us on the tour. Many have opted for the full tour; others for either the China or Japan leg. They’re provided tickets to most of our concerts, but otherwise have a separate, highly structured sightseeing itinerary. So by and large they travel apart from the orchestra and only intersect on occasions like this. Many of the patrons are professionals, current or retired, with fewer of the blue-blooded Boston Brahmins that reigned over the BSO in past generations. Some of the patrons are BSO Overseers, or sit on the Board of Trustees. Others are simply fans of the orchestra who just love music, and figure what better way to have a travel vacation in Asia than to live it up with a symphony orchestra and mix with the musicians?

In 1976, my first year in the BSO, we toured Europe. There was a reception in a forebodingly austere dining room with a 300-foot high ceiling in a castle outside Vienna, which conjured up chilling visions of Teutonic knights…and worse. It reminded me of the setting of Hitchcock’s classic spinetingler, Notorious, where Ingrid Bergman is slowly poisoned with doctored champagne by her Nazi husband, chillingly portrayed by Claude Rains. At an ornately set table the length of a football field, I found myself sitting next to an ancient BSO patroness who had bright lipstick extending far beyond the normal boundaries, and who wore three watches on her left wrist. (I couldn’t see how many she had on her right.) Making small talk was not easy. I limited myself to saying things like, “great sauerbraten,” “lovely,” and “hmm.” At one point she delightedly surveyed the surroundings and, placing her multi-watched hand on my arm, exclaimed, “It’s so wonderful to be back to where our roots are.” If not for my father having taught me to always be respectful to the elderly, I would have replied, “Speak for yourself, lady.” I also refrained from drinking the champagne.

But it’s not just a one-sided affair for the patrons’ benefit. No fewer than sixty-six positions in the BSO and three on the conducting staff are endowed chairs, most of them in perpetuity. That means that the cost of maintaining a musician in that chair, which I’d conservatively estimate at an average quarter-million dollars a year in total compensation, is at least in part underwritten by the donors of that endowed chair.

Each of several tables of ten at the restaurant is named after a composer. I sit at Mozart along with two other musicians and engage in pleasant chitchat with seven patrons, who for the most part are enjoyably down to earth. There’s a lively discussion of why there are so few women conductors, which evolves into the broader issue of gender equality. Like the table-naming, the affair has an air of artifice, but it’s a very important and very humane way to make contact with the people who provide the vital support symphony orchestras desperately need.

***

Click on the title if you’d like to purchase Symphonies & Scorpions in its entirety. It’s available in two paperback editions, one chock-full of black-and-white photos, the other with color photos, and in Kindle.

NEWS FLASH: MY FIRST POLITICAL THRILLER, THE BEETHOVEN SEQUENCE, IS SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE ON SEPTEMBER 8! A MENTALLY UNBALANCED MUSIC TEACHER BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! PREPOSTEROUS? STAY TUNED.

Symphonies & Scorpions: Takeoff!

WELCOME TO THE 15TH DAILY INSTALLMENT OF SYMPHONIES & SCORPIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL CONCERT TOUR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF CITIZEN DIPLOMACY.               

I INVITE YOU TO READ THE ENTIRE BOOK, ONE DAILY EPISODE AT A TIME, FOR FREE, OR YOU CAN PURCHASE THE BOOK IN ITS ENTIRETY (with photos not found here) IN PAPERBACK OR KINDLE, HERE.

ENJOY!

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Takeoff!

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For those who enjoy flying, Flight JL17 from Boston to Narita is almost bearable. For those who don’t have a special hankering for thirteen hours of enforced inactivity, it’s torture. I hear complaints of not being able to fit a carry-on bag under a seat, not being able to reach one from the overhead compartment, of an intensely painful shoulder, of intensely painful ankles, of intensely painful pulled cuticles, and of a mouth “so dry I could die.” I think the record was broken for “Oh, shits!” on a single flight. And all that’s from a single colleague. And then we take off.

It’s a far cry, indeed, from 1979 when the red carpet was rolled out for us on our chartered Pan Am 747, which provided ample and luxurious elbowroom for the impressive assemblage of musicians, managers, staff, board members, and corporate sponsors. Don’t forget that in ’79 the Boeing 747 was only ten years old, and flying on one was an adventure in itself. Our flight was the first commercial landing of a jumbo jet in China—ever! Pan Am stewardesses, renowned for their high-class service, stylish uniforms, and perky little caps, literally let down their hair during the long flight and schmoozed amiably with us musicians. For many of us it was our first time on a jumbo jet or first class flying, so having a chance to climb the spiral staircase to visit the lounge in the executive cabin was alone worth the price of admission.

[image error]Flying first-class on Pan Am in 1979.



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In the old days, many of the BSO’s flights were booked as charters. Though that might sound lavish, there were practical reasons for this. The combination of an unusual and inflexible schedule (i.e. we had to be on stage and ready to play at the appointed hour, or else) and the large number of personnel made it a challenge to find suitable regularly scheduled flights. In addition, at the BSO there was a policy—unwritten, perhaps—of leaving a seat empty between musicians. Again, this may sound extravagant, but the odds of playing one’s best are enhanced when a musician doesn’t have to sit twisted like a pretzel for several hours on the way to the concert hall. Considering the commercial airline cost of tickets for the hundred-and-two musicians in the orchestra, plus fifty-one empty seats in between, chartering flights became a reasonable expenditure.

Back in the Stone Age actual meals were served on domestic flights, and for a time airlines engaged in food wars as they competed for passengers drooling at the prospect of steak and lobster dinners between Dubuque and Des Moines. The going got so good that it became possible for passengers to pre-order specific menus if the standard fare was not to one’s liking. Word was passed among my colleagues: “Psst. Order the vegetarian meal. It’s better.” Or the kosher meal.  Or the Hindu meal. (Yes, there was such a thing.) Even short flights had good food. For a time, we took the late-night Braniff shuttle back to Boston after the last Carnegie Hall concert on New York tours, and though we were served a “snack” of cold fried chicken, an apple, a bag of chips, and a beverage, there were colleagues who felt this was inadequate.

For Martin Hoherman, the BSO’s former assistant principal cellist, food was just the starting point. Martin was a fine and courteous gentleman who spoke with an accent of European nobility and bore an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Clean. His particular tour quirk was to abscond with anything not nailed down and which didn’t have a price tag. Beware, hotel towels! We were once on a flight during which one of the musicians complained to the stewardess that there was no soap in any of the lavatories. Immediately, a chorus of the entire orchestra piped up in unison: “Martin!”

Regardless of the comforts graciously provided by Pan Am in 1979, by the time we landed in Shanghai everyone was exhausted and with the extreme time zone change we couldn’t tell up from down. Typically, on an international tour an orchestra has a day or two of R&R before any scheduled commitments. But because the ‘79 tour was such a lightning strike and carried so much political import, convention was thrown to the wind. We didn’t even go directly to our hotel when we arrived. Rather, we were shanghaied to an auditorium somewhere in Shanghai for a concert of ancient Chinese music.

Imagine the scene: a hundred seriously jet-lagged musicians sitting in a very dark theater where, to the unenlightened listener what might be construed as a series of random grunts, whines, bonks, and the occasional pluck emanated from stage. I was seated near the back of the hall and within minutes I saw heads nodding. Shortly thereafter the music onstage was accompanied by harmony of a different sort—the snoring of my colleagues.

Coffee, Tea, or Conductor?

Somewhere over the Klondike, and in between the dozen or so movies provided for my individual viewing pleasure (an option that was definitely not available in 1979), I roam the aisles in order to avoid paralysis of the lower extremities, and pass an hour or two gossiping and listening to dirty jokes with colleagues and staff.

Even more fascinating than the dirty jokes is a conversation with managing director Mark Volpe, who recounted the intricate high wire ballet act of how Charles Dutoit was hired to replace Lorin Maazel.

The first challenge had been how to deal with Maazel’s ongoing illness. He had already cancelled concerts in Denmark, Munich, and New York, but had remained doggedly determined to conduct the tour. Yet there was more than a suspicion he would remain incapacitated for some time. The question was how to respectfully provide him the wiggle room to rescind his commitment before it was too late to find a replacement. Volpe cited to me instances of conductors who, like professional athletes, will insist, “I’m fine” even when they’re deathly ill. As with many musicians, conductors probably feel that being on a stage is a big part of what keeps them alive; that sense of being needed, of creating something. I think the other side of the coin is true as well: the fear of not being needed is greater than the fear of death. (When Maestro Stanislaw Skrowacewski, ninety-one years old, frail, and almost blind, heard of Maazel’s infirmity, he volunteered to fill the void for the grueling tour. With great respect, Volpe politely declined his offer for obvious reasons, though it should be noted that Skrowacewski had recently conducted his beloved Minnesota Orchestra—where he had been music director from 1960-79—to great acclaim.)

Ultimately, in consultation with Maazel’s physicians, it became clear that Maazel’s infirmity would put him on the sidelines for the foreseeable future.

The next step was to find someone to replace Maazel who not only was of equal stature but was also an audience favorite in China and Japan. Presenters have great clout in these decisions because they’re the ones who have to sell the tickets and pay the orchestra its fee, so it’s their asses that are on the line. They had to be assuaged. In Japan, they hedged. They pressed to have Maazel for at least the final of the three concerts. Failing that, they expressed some desire for Seiji Ozawa to return to the podium as the hometown, nostalgic hero. Volpe went as far as having conversations with Ozawa, who had also suffered from recent bouts of ill health, and together they decided it was not a good idea. The presenters also were reluctant to change programs, even from the gargantuan Mahler Fifth to the more manageable Mahler First, which might have made finding a willing and ready conductor much easier. So, Volpe’s hands were tightly tied in that regard, too. Fortunately, Dutoit was amenable.

Working with the Chinese presenters proved to verge on the surreal. According to Volpe, when the BSO works with established and respected tour managements like Konzertdirektion Schmid, based in Germany and New York, there’s a clear line of authority and decision-making. The current president, Cornelia Schmid, by the way, was a violin student at Tanglewood once upon a time before going into management and succeeding her father in the family business. Working with the Chinese presenters, most of whom are government bureaucrats whose considerations were more political than artistic, was a different kettle of fish. Making decisions among them was like a game of hot potato, and Volpe sometimes didn’t even know if the person he was talking to knew there was a potato.

Meanwhile, there were still obstacles finalizing arrangements with Dutoit.

First, he was already committed to another engagement in Singapore. With his long and cordial connection to the BSO, he was willing to disengage himself from that concert. Fortunately for us, that was the only scheduling conflict, as he had planned a vacation after that. I imagine there were a lot of cancelled travel arrangements involved in untangling that part.

 Second, would Dutoit receive the blessing of the presenters? As a former music director of NHK Symphony in Tokyo and with all those tours to China, that seemed a slam-dunk. Ongoing discussions went on among the BSO, the presenters, Jasper Parrot—Dutoit’s manager in London—and Dutoit himself in Cologne.

Third, all hypotheticals aside, could he get to Boston in time to rehearse? He had a concert in Cologne on Monday and the first rehearsal of Mahler Fifth in Boston was scheduled for Wednesday morning. He hadn’t conducted the piece for a long time and his score was at his Montreal residence. Solution: the BSO recruited someone to go there, find the score, and overnight it to Dutoit in Cologne to give him time to study it on the plane to Boston.

Maazel’s withdrawal, deciding on possible replacements, narrowing the list down to Dutoit, and working out all the details to hire him all took place over a very frenetic weekend, with communications covering three continents and twelve time zones. Volpe says that Dutoit is the real hero for saving the tour, but I don’t think there are too many managers able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat as he and Tony Fogg. Tony, with typical Australian understatement, gave the impression it had been a walk in the park. “We had our sights on Charlie the whole time. It was just a matter of working out a few details.”

Near Panic

While waiting for our connection to Beijing at Tokyo’s Narita Airport, a gut-wrenching rumor spreads like a subterranean temblor. Poison smog in Beijing? No. Dead pigs floating down the river to Shanghai? Much worse. The worst possible news of all. There’s no Gmail in China! OMG!! Panicked, frenzied thumbs desperately rush to get online at the airport for a final cyber fix. Being a techno-Neanderthal, I give up almost immediately, but clarinetist Tom Martin comes to my rescue and helps me get it working. Though in the end the rumor turns out to be patently false, I will forever have a warm spot in my heart for clarinetists.

On JL 869 from Narita to Beijing, my main objective is to stay awake so that when we arrive at the hotel at about 11:00 PM I’ll be able to fall right to sleep. I’ve heard various strategies for overcoming jetlag on long flights: 1) Don’t drink alcohol; 2) Drink plenty of alcohol; 3) Sleep; 4) Don’t sleep. My preferred strategy falls into the mind over matter category. Regardless of the length of the flight, at whatever time of day I disembark at my arrival city, I pretend it’s the “correct” time. I consciously avoid trying to figure out what the time is at home. Sometimes this strategy works. On the Asia tour, however, equilibrium will prove elusive for a good week, but at least I would be alert when I was supposed to be. Keeling over in the Adagietto of Mahler Fifth would not leave a positive impression of America.

I watch movies and stay awake. My strategy is foolproof, except when it doesn’t work. On this occasion it turns out to be a dismal failure.

***

Click on the title if you’d like to purchase Symphonies & Scorpions in its entirety. It’s available in two paperback editions, one with black-and-white photos, the other with color photos, and in Kindle.

NEWS FLASH: MY FIRST POLITICAL THRILLER, THE BEETHOVEN SEQUENCE, IS SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE ON SEPTEMBER 8! A MENTALLY UNBALANCED MUSIC TEACHER BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! PREPOSTEROUS? STAY TUNED.

Symphonies & Scorpions: Latte Reflections

WELCOME! THIS IS THE FOURTEENTH DAILY INSTALLMENT OF SYMPHONIES & SCORPIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL CONCERT TOUR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF CITIZEN DIPLOMACY.               

 I INVITE YOU TO READ THE ENTIRE BOOK, ONE DAILY EPISODE AT A TIME, FOR FREE, OR YOU CAN PURCHASE THE BOOK IN ITS ENTIRETY (with photos not found here) IN PAPERBACK OR KINDLE, HERE.

ENJOY!

(P.S. If you FOLLOW me, you’ll be sent all future episodes automatically!)

Latte Reflections

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Monday, April 28 AND Tuesday, April 29 (1 day!)

The musicians, scattered around the Starbucks near our departure gate at the eerily subdued Logan Airport international terminal, contemplate their lattes, listlessly poking at their smart phones to connect to airport’s wireless network. What a change from the electrically charged scene in 1979, when the orchestra grabbed national headlines, the swill we called coffee cost fifteen cents, and you communicated with loved ones at home via postcards.

Only a handful of the musicians currently in the BSO were on the 1979 tour. Some of our youngest members had not even been born. Yet given the sea change in the orchestra’s personnel, the Boston Symphony is still miraculously at the top of its game, perhaps playing better than ever. I wouldn’t be the first person to make the observation that in general the technical skills of young musicians continue to be more and more impeccable. Some of the older generation argue that in the bargain a degree of individuality and artistry has been lost. I think there’s some justification to that, in part due to a homogenization of taste as a result of technological advances in communication and transportation. Another part is due to the very system we’ve set up for auditions and competitions, which tends to reward mistake-free technical acumen more than slightly flawed artistry. That mixture of technical perfection with uninteresting musicality would certainly be more perceptible in a soloist or chamber musician than in an orchestral player. (I’ve heard more than enough mindless renditions of the Tchaikovsky concerto.) But there’s a golden opportunity for an enlightened music director to mold these exceptionally skilled, if less experienced, young musicians into an ensemble with a lofty, unified musical vision. And when an orchestra like the BSO has the means to attract the cream of the crop, it’s no surprise that the quality of music-making has remained on the highest level.

Nuts and Bolts

The level of hoopla of our ’79 tour was the result of the momentous, historic rapprochement between the US and China. Fast forward thirty-five years. Going to China is now run-of-the mill and getting there has become just another long day. The first leg of our journey, a thirteen-hour nonstop marathon from Logan to Narita Airport outside of Tokyo, is followed by a two-hour layover and four more hours of airborne suspended animation before landing in Beijing. And then an hour-long bus ride to our downtown hotel. Overall, a fun-filled twenty-hour schlep. (Twenty-three, if you start from the taxi ride to Logan.) Unlike ‘79, when we flew on a chartered Pan Am 747—more about that later—this time we’re on a regular commercial flight, so the majority of passengers are not part of the orchestra party. This factor not only restricts our ability to roam, it means no orchestra party.

In concept, a tour is a simple thing. Shepherd the musicians along, make sure they’re on stage when they’re supposed to be, and let someone else worry about selling tickets. But in practice, it’s not that easy. The nuts and bolts of an orchestra tour are endless: everything from transporting musicians, instruments, wardrobe trunks, and music safely, securely, and on time, to making sure the baton is placed at the proper angle on Maestro’s podium.

For starters, imagine being responsible for shipping a million-dollar, three-hundred-year-old Stradivarius violin from the US to China, then to Japan, and back. How do you ensure its safety from theft or damage, when even an innocent jostle against its case could throw it out of whack and require major readjustment? Imagine being the fall guy if someone screws up.

Now, multiply that responsibility by a hundred, and then add to that the musicians who are joined at the hip to those priceless instruments. And the musicians’ significant others. And the two dozen managers and staff and their spouses. And an entourage of thirty patrons. And let’s not forget a truckload of music. And the librarian.

Two dozen managers and staff, you ask? What do you need two dozen for? Here’s the listing from the official tour book: Managing Director, Associate Conductor (in case Maestro falls ill), Artistic Administrator, Assistant to Mr. Dutoit, Orchestra Manager, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Orchestra Personnel Manager, Director of Public Relations, Director of Corporate Partnerships, Director of Concert Operations, Stage Manager, three Stage Personnel, Tour Physician, Security Consultant, Press Agent (China), and Patron Tour Staff.

Additionally, we are accompanied by a support team of assorted representatives of Travtours, Inc. for travel management; Harrison/Parrot, Ltd, for tour management; Agility Logistics as our instrument transport/cargo broker; and The Regency Express Co., Ltd. for instrument transport/China.

Who am I leaving out? Peppino Natale, the BSO’s chauffeur? No, he’s not on this trip.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the whole menagerie in a nutshell. Whew! Put it all together and you have a magical mystery orchestra tour. And of course, orchestras don’t perform in just one city. They may go to three or four. Per week. And to make international tours worthwhile, they’re usually at least two weeks and can stretch to three or four.

Like armies, orchestras travel on their stomachs, and fussy ones at that. So, in addition to delivering the intrepid band to the correct continent you need to find lodging, food, and transportation for upwards of two hundred very picky people in up to a dozen cities. Stages need to be set and struck, and music and instruments need to be unpacked and repacked after every rehearsal and concert onto massive trucks and driven or flown to the next concert hall.

[image error]An orchestra travels on its stomach. The author in 1979 at a Beijing banquet.

Why did I say picky? For the reason that, unlike a leisurely travel vacation, orchestra musicians need to be at certain places—concert halls—at very specific times and in good mental and physical condition. Keeping an audience of two thousand waiting is something an orchestra tries to avoid at all costs. You can’t walk on stage after the downbeat of Beethoven Fifth with a lukewarm cup of coffee in one hand and say, “Maestro, sorry I’m late. There was a lot of traffic.” If the bassoon player isn’t there, you can’t start Rite of Spring. But, you may ask, what if he got sick from day-old sushi and couldn’t play at all? Touring orchestras usually try to reorganize within the ranks, but are known to have deputized local musicians in dire circumstances.

Logistics, Logistics, Logistics

In terms of length, the 2014 Asia tour is relatively modest. Nevertheless, the 18,005 air miles traveled in two weeks makes me tired just thinking about it:

Boston-Tokyo-Beijing: 8,020 miles

Beijing-Shanghai: 700

Shanghai-Guangzhou: 765

Guangzhou-Tokyo: 1,800

Tokyo-Boston: 6,720

And though sports teams may travel far more frequently than an orchestra, musicians tend to look more like Sparky Anderson than Mike Trout, with some well into their 70s or even 80s. And with a twelve-hour time difference between the US and China, when your internal clock is telling you that you should be fast asleep it can be a Herculean task to garner enough energy to put your bowtie on, let alone play a Mahler symphony.

Because of the vagaries of orchestra travel, conditions for specific tours are sometimes part of the collective bargaining negotiations between the musicians and management. Basic things need to be ironed out: If a proposed tour overlaps from one concert season to the next, which year’s salary will the musicians be paid? What will the per diem be? (The IRS calculates average costs of room and board for most cities around the world and determines per diem rates varying from city to city. These are the rates typically but not necessarily agreed upon by the musicians and management when negotiating tour conditions.) What will the quality of the hotels be? Very importantly, how much rest time will the musicians get? How many days will be free of both travel and services? (A service is a rehearsal or concert.) What will the tour route be? I recall one domestic tour that had a reasonable number of concerts, but we zigzagged across the map so much we could have eluded the FBI. Sometimes this can’t be helped because the presenters have their own series scheduling constraints. But that tour was sufficiently onerous that the even the management was dizzy by the end of it and agreed to language in the contract to the effect that they would make its best efforts to schedule tour concerts in as direct a line as possible.

Typically, the BSO lodges its musicians in very fine hotels. It’s hard to complain when you’re sitting on a balcony overlooking Lake Lucerne. However, from time to time there have been some doozies. Before the Berlin Wall came down we once stayed at a grimy hovel overlooking the barren, muddy acreage of No Man’s Land that paralleled the Wall. The name of the hotel was The Bellevue. Someone had a sense of humor. My recollection was that The Bellevue had a single operating elevator that could squeeze in four people, perhaps five if you were from East Germany, and you had to change elevators to get to certain floors. Imagine a hundred musicians checking in and having to get ready for a concert!

***

Click on the title if you’d like to purchase Symphonies & Scorpions in its entirety. It’s available in two paperback editions, one with black-and-white photos, the other with color photos, and in Kindle.

NEWS FLASH: MY FIRST POLITICAL THRILLER, THE BEETHOVEN SEQUENCE, IS SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE ON SEPTEMBER 8! A MENTALLY UNBALANCED MUSIC TEACHER BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! PREPOSTEROUS? STAY TUNED.

Symphonies & Scorpions: Hector Whack-a-mole

WELCOME! THIS IS THE THIRTEENTH DAILY INSTALLMENT OF SYMPHONIES & SCORPIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL CONCERT TOUR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF CITIZEN DIPLOMACY.               

 I INVITE YOU TO READ THE ENTIRE BOOK, ONE DAILY EPISODE AT A TIME, FOR FREE, OR YOU CAN PURCHASE THE BOOK IN ITS ENTIRETY (with photos not found here) IN PAPERBACK OR KINDLE, HERE.

ENJOY!

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Hector Whack-a-mole

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Saturday, April 26

Playing Symphony fantastique is like an hour of musical Whack-a-mole. There are so many little rhythmic and balancing traps that you have to constantly be on your toes to get through it all unscathed. At tonight’s performance, our last in Boston, the spots that had been sloppy on Friday are much cleaner, and the whole thing definitely has more pizzazz, but you never know when the ornery rodent will raise its unpredictable head.

[image error]What I feel like while playing Symphonie fantastique

Sunday, April 27

Shifting Populations

Being in Boston for two weeks has been a striking intermediate demographic step for me between Salt Lake City, which has a substantially different ethnic mix, and cities in the Far East where there is much greater ethnic homogeneity. As of the 2010 census, in Salt Lake City, whites accounted for 66% of the population. Hispanics were the largest minority at 22%, with communities of Asians, African Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans each in the single digits. Boston’s mix had a white population of 47%, African Americans comprised 24%, Hispanics 17%, and Asians 9%. Compare either of these to Tokyo, where the ethnically Japanese population is 99% and the largest minority, Chinese, is 1%. That doesn’t leave much room for anyone else.

When I lived in Boston in the ‘70s and ‘80s, a modest Asian population was centered in Chinatown and clustered around the big university campuses; the Irish, Italian, and Jewish communities still were going strong, and most likely still are, but now seem much less insular. Since then, however, an Asian influx has transformed the cultural landscape. Even Brookline, that bastion of the Jewish community—where the running joke was, “Why is Brookline so beautiful? Because there’s a Rosenbloom on every corner”—is replete with a burgeoning Asian population. Though conflict and strife are the occasional byproducts of diverse peoples living side by side, shifting urban multiculturalism is one of the things that gives American cities a unique vitality, and is one of the great strengths of our society.

The ethnic landscape of American symphony orchestras has similarly undergone a transformation during that period of time. Until the mid-twentieth century, the procedure for hiring orchestra musicians was much different from today. If a music director needed a musician, he would call people he trusted for recommendations. Then there would be a private audition with the maestro and if the musician was up to snuff he was in. (Please note that I’ve been using the masculine pronoun exclusively. That’s intentional. Until the ‘60s, a female orchestra musician was as rare as a polar bear in Florida. Thankfully that situation has changed, except perhaps in the tradition-bound Vienna Philharmonic, but that’s another story). This word-of-mouth process tended to restrict equal access to the profession. On the other hand, because full-time orchestra jobs were so coveted, musicians who made it to the big leagues usually spent years in the minors, honing their craft, moving up the ranks.

When I joined the Boston Symphony straight out of college in 1975 at age twenty-two, just about everyone in the orchestra seemed like an old coot to me. There were still some musicians sawing away who had joined before World War II. One of my friends, violinist Rolland Tapley, was a New England Yankee born in 1901. Though Tap was well past his prime, as concertmaster of the Pops he occasionally played the solo in Leroy Anderson’s lovely arrangement of The Last Rose of Summer that I would pay a million bucks to play as sweetly. When Tap took his final BSO bow after forty-seven years of dedicated service, he was joined at the podium by Peter Gordon, a wise-cracking French horn player who was leaving after only three years to pursue a more adventurous life of freelancing on the West Coast. As the two left the stage, Peter put his arm around Tap’s shoulder and said, “You know, Tap, between the two of us, we’ve been here for a half century!”

These days, when I go to Tanglewood to play with the orchestra, my colleagues appear inordinately underage. At what point, I ask myself, does one become a coot?

When I was a kid, instrument choice was still highly gender based. Boys played string instruments, brass, and percussion. Girls played piano, harp, and flute. Other wind instruments were up for grabs, though a female bassoonist would be walking on thin ice. Now, if you see a boy playing the violin it’s a front-page headline. Hell, you even find women playing trombone these days!

Another major change is ethnic. In 1975, many of the BSO musicians were either first or second-generation American men of European ancestry, having come to the US during or immediately after World War II seeking asylum and/or work. Major orchestras still attract musicians from all around the world, but Asians and Asian-Americans—especially women—have clearly taken the baton from Jewish boys for embedding string playing into the bedrock of cultural and family life. Who knew? And why? It just seems to be one of those things that change over time, but there’s no question it’s a bull market for classical music in Asia, and without doubt it’s one of the reasons the BSO is going there.

Since the ‘60s, American symphony orchestras have developed a fairly standard audition procedure for filling vacancies in which just about anyone who can hold an instrument is eligible to apply. There are many disincentives for an unqualified person to do so, however, including the cost of travel, a couple of months of backbreaking practice, the grueling experience of the audition itself, and the statistically infinitesimal odds of an even highly-qualified candidate to win the job.      

Auditions are administered jointly by the musicians and management. A musician audition advisory committee listens to all the candidates. The first round is often by sent-in recording, after which weaker candidates are discouraged from further participation in a letter from the personnel manager. Music directors, who have the ultimate say in who is hired, typically attend only the final round. And though there’s occasional disagreement between the committee and the music director, the committee’s opinion is generally seriously considered. There are flaws in the system—sometimes wonderful musicians slip through the cracks while others who are great auditioners but mediocre artists get hired—but orchestras bend over backwards to try to be fair. The result of all this is that in recent decades a lot of young, well-trained musicians, still wet behind the ears and right out of the college music programs and conservatories, have landed jobs in major orchestras. I consider myself lucky to have been one of that bunch.

***

Click on the title if you’d like to purchase Symphonies & Scorpions in its entirety. It’s available in two paperback editions, one with black-and-white photos, the other with color photos, and in Kindle.

NEWS FLASH: MY FIRST POLITICAL THRILLER, THE BEETHOVEN SEQUENCE, IS SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE ON SEPTEMBER 8! A MENTALLY UNBALANCED MUSIC TEACHER BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! PREPOSTEROUS? STAY TUNED.

Symphonies & Scorpions: Deportment Department

WELCOME! THIS IS THE TWELFTH DAILY INSTALLMENT OF SYMPHONIES & SCORPIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL CONCERT TOUR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF CITIZEN DIPLOMACY.               

 I INVITE YOU TO READ THE ENTIRE BOOK, ONE DAY AT A TIME, FOR FREE, OR YOU CAN PURCHASE THE BOOK IN ITS ENTIRETY, IN PAPERBACK OR KINDLE, HERE.

ENJOY!

(P.S. If you FOLLOW me, you’ll get all future episodes automatically!)

Deportment Department

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Thursday, April 24

I’m so impressed what an amiable, communicative bunch the BSO musicians have become; especially the violinists, who use the workplace as a lively, ongoing social forum. It used to be a bunch of grumpy old men bitching about how much better things were in the old days. Now, the popular topics of ongoing conversation are about fashion, restaurants, travel, and exciting ideas for upcoming sightseeing.

I should make it clear that I’m not talking about backstage, or before and after the rehearsal. I’m talking about onstage, during the rehearsal. The chatter, however engaging, sometimes makes it a challenge for musicians in the back of the section (i.e. me) to hear what the conductor has to say, especially as Dutoit tends to speak softly, but contrary to Teddy Roosevelt, carries a little stick. He’s a bit hoarse to begin with, and there’s also his pronounced accent to contend with. After Dutoit makes his comments and is set to resume, there’s an inevitable chorus of, “What did he say?” “I can’t hear him!” “Where are we?” by those who had been disturbed from their friendly conferences. I even overhear one, “What are we playing?” At one frustrating moment when I can absolutely not hear a word Dutoit’s saying, I lean toward Caroline and whisper, “Could you please go and get my blowgun?” She laughs. (I told you she was a great stand partner.) Does she share my point of view? I think so, but as a freelancer she needs to be discreet expressing her opinions. That’s my theory, anyway.

I shouldn’t knock absences. After all, along with section vacancies created by musicians retiring or on leave, that’s why Lynn Larsen needs to hire me. But I categorically deny in the strongest terms being in any way responsible for the rash of absenteeism beginning to spread among the violins. Hopefully, the infirm and injured will be in good repair in time for our departure on the 28th.

A little grousing over Dutoit’s systematically demanding rehearsals has started. It’s inevitable and some of it is understandable. It’s the end of a very long, tiring season that started back in September and included thirty-one weeks of subscription concerts, occasional touring, education concerts, and more than enough Pops concerts. So the musicians, already running on a low tank, justifiably would like to not be driven full throttle before a grueling tour, especially as the repertoire Dutoit is rehearsing with us is for the most part standard fare and to most ears would sound just fine without any rehearsal at all. On the other hand, Dutoit wants it to sound a certain way, and he’s the boss. He, like any conductor, has the right to rehearse and the authority to rehearse how he pleases. There’s no debate about that and most of the snipping is lighthearted and a useful pressure release valve. After a mere week with the maestro, one of my orchestra buddies asks rhetorically, half joking, “Is it already time for us to renounce our savior?” Half joking.

[image error]A rare quiet moment on the Symphony Hall stage.

Some conductors work the orchestra to the bone in panicked intensity, thinking things will get better as long as we play the music over and over again. And if things don’t go as planned, well, maybe a little shouting here, a little demeaning there will do the trick. Usually those tactics fail miserably and in those situations musicians’ gripes are more than justified. With Dutoit, though, his requests, calmly and quietly and politely delivered—hell, sometimes he even smiles—almost always make the music sound better, so I don’t see a strong case for protest. In reality, there isn’t much.

Long ago I had an exchange with Tom Morris, the former BSO managing director, when I was chair of the players’ negotiating committee. We were banging heads at the bargaining table and I was trying to make a convincing argument about how, with a hundred concerts a year “and rehearsals therefore,” to coin the Trade Agreement jargon, everyone was exhausted by the end of the season; that fatigue could potentially be detrimental to our artistic capabilities and physical health; and thus, why it was necessary to reduce the workload. Tom’s response was, “Look, that’s the nature of this business. Yes, you work hard and you work nights and you work weekends. You’re going to be tired. It’s part of the job you do.” I have to admit that management does make a valid point from time to time, and that was one of them; but still, so are the challenges presented by fatigue—both mental and physical—which can lead to long term injury. In the end we compromised, finding mutually beneficial ways to streamline the schedule.

After the rehearsal, I meet Franziska Huhn for a fine buffet lunch at an Indian restaurant in Coolidge Corner. Franziska is a terrific harp player, originally from Berlin, who has lived in the Boston area for many years. I mention her because she’s an example of the best in professionalism.

I first met Franziska when Ann Hobson Pilot, her former teacher and former principal harp of the BSO, recommended her to me to be a soloist at the 2006 International Flute Festival in Lima, where I was conducting the Mozart Flute and Harp Concerto with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional of Peru. The concerto had actually been scheduled the year before, but had to be rescheduled because the contracted harpist from Italy never showed up, nor did she bother to notify us that she was not going to arrive at the airport on the flight she had told us she would surely be on. Her nonappearance, however, didn’t prevent her from posting on her website what a great experience it had been to perform in Peru. Talk about chutzpah.

On the day of the concert with Franziska, she found herself bedridden and feverish with food poisoning and unable to stray more than ten feet from a bathroom. She could easily and honorably have cancelled the performance and no one would have been anything but sympathetic. Instead, she toughed it out without a word of complaint and gave a flawless, beautiful performance (even though she had to leave the stage between movements). That put her high up on my list and we’ve been good friends since.

Red Tape Strikes Again

At the concert, we find out that violinist Se-Jing Huang, a BSO violinist for twenty-five years and a naturalized American citizen, was not granted a visa by the Chinese government and will not be permitted to go on the China segment of the tour. Apparently, when native Chinese gain citizenship elsewhere in the world they’re required to surrender their Chinese passports the first time they reenter China. Se-Jing hadn’t seen his Chinese passport for twenty years and had no idea where it was. The BSO pleaded with the Chinese government. Their response was, “too bad,” so Se-jing will only be joining us in Japan. Ironically, Se-jing was a student at the Shanghai Conservatory and attended a master class when the BSO musicians visited there in 1979, and that experience inspired him to come to the US in the first place. The upside of the kerfuffle is that he and his wife, Nicole Monahan, also a violinist in the orchestra, had been in a bind finding baby-sitters for their four kids during the tour. Problem solved. The downside is that Se-Jing’s parents, also living in the US, are part of the tour group and will be going to China without him.

In another twist, BSO violinist Yuncong “Vivian” Zhang, the only native Chinese orchestra member who still does have a Chinese passport, is not going on the tour because she had a baby a few months ago. She’s in the audience today, and gave us a friendly wave.

A Success in More Ways Than One

This evening’s concert, our Russian program, went very, very well. I thought Abduraimov’s performance was a bit less stiff, like a shoe gradually being broken in, but my opinion is in the minority. Not that I plan on writing a dissent, because it might just be wishful thinking on my part. In his effort to stay connected to Abduraimov, whose sense of rhythm can be capricious, Dutoit did make one conducting glitch, slightly mis-beating one of the measures, which he laughed off. It’s an interesting phenomenon. When conductors make mistakes they think it’s funny, but if musicians make a mistake they get the evil eye. Years ago, the great conductor, Kurt Masur, with whom I had many truly memorable performances, actually dropped his hands to his sides and stopped conducting in the middle of a concert because one of the musicians had the effrontery to play a wrong note. While the orchestra kept chugging away on autopilot, Masur glowered at the offending musician until he was satisfied the musician was sufficiently humiliated. That oughta teach’em a lesson! Masur did mellow over time. Toward the end of his career the musicians always looked forward to his visits, partly because of his ability to get a wonderfully warm, blended sound from the orchestra.

The BSO has a heartwarming annual tradition the last week of its winter season. At the conclusion of the concert, the concertmaster escorts each retiring musician to the conductor’s podium where they take a farewell solo bow. Three members of the BSO took their Boston swansongs tonight. Violist Ed Gazouleas is leaving to become a professor at Indiana. Cellist Jonathan Miller is retiring after a laudable forty-three years, and assistant librarian William Shisler after a mind-blowing fifty-seven. Bill had been a pal with Arthur Fiedler long ago and in my early years with the BSO he was a contractor for a lot of Pops gigs outside the auspices of the BSO. Those days are now ancient history. Bill also used to bring boxes of doughnuts for sale to the musicians but after a while some of the musicians “forgot” to pay, so Bill gave up that enterprise, too.

Europe on $2.50 a Day

Friday, April 25

As a lowly sub, I don’t have my own locker in the dressing room, so I’ve been using trusty #11 Upper in the catacombs to serve that purpose. While changing into my tails before the concert, one of my colleagues who was packing his trunk told me a story. The same Boston Symphony musician who had achieved notoriety for loading his wardrobe trunk with jars of peanut butter in order to save his per diem money was once spotted at the front desk upon the orchestra’s arrival at its ritzy Paris hotel, brandishing a twenty-dollar bill and requesting change.  “Ten in francs and ten in dollars, please.” “But monsieur,” said the concierge, “you will be in Paris for four days.” “Ten in francs, and ten in dollars,” he insisted, politely but firmly. You see, he had a plan. That night there was a lavish party for the orchestra. The next day on the bus, he dined on a bushel worth of leftovers stored in his travel bag.

Afternoon Blues

Today’s matinee was pretty ragged. Or is it just me? Afternoon concerts have always been the bane of my orchestral existence. Forty years of concertizing have programed my biorhythms to inject adrenaline into my bloodstream at night, not at 2:00 PM. At matinees the air feels heavier, the blue-haired audiences somnolent. My eyes glaze over, the irresistible, dark current of the River Lethe drawing me into the netherworld. I remember a way-too-slow Adagio of a Haydn symphony that Sarah Caldwell conducted long ago at a Friday matinee that was so stultifying I almost keeled over. It just doesn’t seem right to perform a piece like Symphonie fantastique when the sun is out. Would you want to hear Frank Sinatra in Vegas right after lunch?

Click on the title if you’d like to purchase Symphonies & Scorpions in its entirety. It’s available in two paperback editions, one with black-and-white photos, the other with color photos, and in Kindle.

NEWS FLASH: MY FIRST POLITICAL THRILLER, THE BEETHOVEN SEQUENCE, IS SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE ON SEPTEMBER 8! A MENTALLY UNBALANCED MUSIC TEACHER BECOMES PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! PREPOSTEROUS? STAY TUNED.