scales / the art of breathing

There are some pieces that are the musical equivalent of comfort food. We play them because they are so familiar they never leave our memory. They are simple enough that we first approach them when we are young, but interesting enough to warrant revisiting throughout our lives. They reinforce a sense of wonder in music and a sense of accomplishment in our own abilities, however meager they may seem at the time. We play them as an act of love for music and love for ourselves.

And I will get proper recording equipment sometime this summer — something better than my phone. (I have no idea what I’m doing. Suggestions welcome…)

working your way back

When I around 12 years old, my then teacher performed all six Bach cello suites in a day. This seems to be a rite of passage among certain self-flagellating musicians, but I can’t argue with the intent.

The funny thing is that, when playing the third suite in C major, his memory momentarily lapsed and he ended up somewhere back in the G major suite. This is easy enough as the keys are closely related. Upon realizing his error, he circuitously improvised his way back to C major and went on his merry way. Nobody even noticed.

I’d always used this as a fun anecdote, but it happened to me the other day. I was busking and playing along somewhere in the D minor suite. One wrong triple stop and all of a sudden I found myself in G major (again, closely related keys). I realized this immediately, but couldn’t figure out a way to get back to where I intended, and just ended up finishing the newly adopted movement, which was oddly happier than Bach intended.

Enough self pity. Back to working on finger exercises of Aldo Pais.

Also, that burn mark over the palmar branch of my left hand bothered me for the last six months, but I think now it’s starting to grow on me.

my most unfocused playing in recent memory

If I’m honest with myself, things aren’t going very well right now. I’m an anxious wreck most of the time and it shows.

Yesterday I was short of breath and particularly nervous. I needed to calm down, so I played outside the Court House metro station for an hour. It was my most unfocused playing in recent memory. I could hardly get through a movement of anything without forgetting my place or what came next. Worse, my fingers fought back and refused to move. They felt useless, lifeless, devoid of grace. The only thing I seemed to play reasonably well was Piazzolla, as that’s what I’ve been working on hardest lately. I played it twice.

It was discouraging. I wonder if athletes, like performers, suffer the same effects of neurosis. I imagine they can and do.

It feels like it’s time to stop and change direction. The inertia and clumsiness of my hands suggests a focus on finger exercises for a while. My nerves suggest breathing exercises. I wish I had the energy to make the abrupt shift this requires.

at first his decline, though alarming, was non-specific

“Nothing to Be Frightened Of” by Julian Barnes

page 122

“Ravel died gradually—it took five years—and it was the worst. At first his decline from Pick’s disease (a form of cerebral atrophy), though alarming, was non-specific. Words evaded him; motor skills went awry. He would grasp a fork by the wrong end; he became unable to sign his name; he forgot how to swim. When he went out to dinner, the housekeeper used to pin his address inside his coat as a precaution. But then the disease turned malignly particular and targeted Ravel the composer. He went to a recording of his string quartet, sat in the control room, offered various corrections and suggestions. After each movement had been recorded, he was asked if he wanted to listen through again, but declined. So the session went quickly, and the studio was pleased to have it all wrapped up in the afternoon. At the end, Ravel turned to the producer (and our guessing what he is going to say cannot lessen its impact): ‘That was really very good. Remind me of the composer’s name.’”

I happened upon this recording of Fournier and Poulenc playing Debussy’s sonata for cello and piano. It’s wonderful. I had never heard a recording of Poulenc performing before.

Starting new repertoire is so exciting. I can’t even remember the last time I did.

It occurred to me that KW and I have never actually played in public before together. It will be interesting to see how this goes. Thankfully, Sunday is more of a test run than anything else. Still, I’m looking forward to it.

Three days.

Sheet music for Rautavaara’s cello and piano sonata arrived in the mail the other day. I ordered it a few months ago, but it’s an obscure, unrecorded work from a random European publishing house.

You can’t see it very well in the photo, but the score is hand-notated. Of course this only serves to increase my sense of excitement. Part of me hopes that the contemporary music publishing industry stays the way it is, an odd bystander to the upheaval in all other forms of printed media.

the mechanics of music

I was thinking back to a time many months ago when I played a CD of Bach for J. It was a good recording and I was hopeful she would appreciate it, but instead she was distracted by minute, ancillary sounds of the performer. All she could hear was breathing.

It’s interesting to think about. Anyone who hasn’t studied or spent time appreciating musical performance will likely find key aspects of its practice unfamiliar. A breath I see as preparatory to phrasing or a communication signal becomes extraneous and distracting noise.

I am very much in love with the mechanical aspects of music. I love the sound of steel hitting ebony, and the dulled sensation in the fingers of my left hand from years of inflicting minor nerve damage. I love the click of fingers against piano keys and the resulting strike of a padded hammer. I love the rough, sharp, torn feel of a string player’s fingers against my skin (something J and others I have asked can’t stand). I love the moments of shared inhalation practiced by a good chamber group. These are sounds and experiences I don’t want filtered out of recordings because they bring them closer to life and closer to me.

library of congress / concerto köln

Friday KW and I met for the Concerto Köln concert at the Library of Congress. I’ve been reading a bit of Noël Coward lately, so we drank martinis beforehand. This was very important — dinner simply had to wait a few hours. We mused tipsily about what life is, what it becomes, what it should rather become while our bartender ferociously ignored us. We naturally avoided mention of how life gets where it ought, as that would be entirely uncouth.

Early music ensembles seem to be all the rage now. Sometimes they’re annoying but on occasion they’re lovely. Happily, this was one of the latter. But then, seeing a good Baroque orchestra is a pretty exciting thing.

I hadn’t realized the concertmaster wasn’t present due to visa issues. The violinist who filled in for that role, whatever her name is (she is on the far right here), had just the right sort of presence: commanding without being authoritarian, assistive, clear in communication. We were both happy to watch her lead the group.

Afterward we sat in the semidarkness on a bench at the Tidal Basin and, finally, picnicked. It was a good night in Washington.

Sometimes I feel bad for my neighbors.

One of the more interesting aspects of chamber playing is figuring out how to blend the sounds of different instruments. Strings and winds are known as sustaining instruments since they can (more or less) continually produce sound for any length of time. This is very different from the action of a piano, which is formed by striking a soft hammer against sets of strings. Once struck, the sound of these strings immediately begins to die away. In that sense, a piano is actually considered percussive.

At times this becomes a question of articulation. In the Piazzolla there is a recurring section of descending eighth note pairs with the latter staccato, each pair preceded by grace notes. KW and I always had trouble with this — we could play it together perfectly well, but it never sounded right. We practiced it slowly, repetitively, with me doing my best to articulate my left hand to match hers. I couldn’t ever get it right.

JK suggested we do the opposite, with KW imitating a descending cellistic articulation on the piano. In this, I use the finger I’m taking off the string to pluck as I remove it, giving a more abrupt feel. KW matches this by an almost Bartok-ian technique, throwing two fingers down onto the keyboard at once instead of playing a proper grace note.

It sounds amazing.

We tried matching in one direction, but seem to have forgotten to try the reverse. Oops.

There are some days all I want to do is kidnap my best friend and drive her across the Great Plains for hundreds of miles, sagebrush underfoot, a vast nothingness on the horizon, Velvet Underground on the radio, all our troubles left far behind us to drown in the ocean of the East.

Some days you can’t wash the bloodshot out.

My new favorite sound is KW on a Steinway.

Tonight we had a lesson with JK, a musical luminary in the Washington area and someone whose opinions we both hold in high regard. As the evening progressed, she helped us form a coherent interpretation. Playing became more fun.

When I think of musicians I love, a number of them come in pairs. Inseparable partnerships nurtured over time, the results of years spent developing mutual understanding. It’s counterintuitive that such a thing can be forged through adversity, yet I am suddenly struck with the realization that I have found the musical partnership I’ve sought all my life. We trust each other implicitly now and play almost entirely in sync, and that’s only going to improve over time.

We perform next week. After that we embark upon the lengthy task of building a repertoire. Each week I count off the days to our next rehearsal.

Thanks for everything, KW. We started difficult. It’s only going to get easier from here.