What if

If the great composers were still alive today, would they still be writing great music? Or, would they be caught up in the minimalist, atonal, and serial movements? I'm talking about Handel, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Bach, Verdi, Brahms, Vivaldi, Haydn, Stravinsky, Sibelius, Bizet, Schubert, Puccini, Prokofiev - those men.

Words and Music

Music is not a thing. It is physical because it is captured by one of our senses, but it is not something you can reach out and touch. Perhaps it is like the wind, it is there and you can feel it but you cannot see it. It is another type of language, but one which everyone can understand. A very special means of communication. Words can never tell you what a piece of music sounds like - never. If I say that a piece is powerful, rhythmic, expressive, energetic, forceful, explosive, inpired, has perfect form and logic, soulful, sexy, emotional, touching, gentle, suave, exquisite, etc., have I made you hear the piece by means of words? Those terms can be applied to thousands of different pieces of music. However, I might be able to use words to tell you that a piece of music fails to communicate anything worth listening to more than once or that it's a great piece of music - to critique it, that is. But I can go no further. We are priviledged to have it at our disposal.

Pamela Frank

Pamela Frank is an American violinist and teacher born on June 20, 1967. She studied early on with Shirley Givens. Her debut came in 1985 at Carnegie Hall with the New York String Orchestra. She was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1999. The only standard concertos she has recorded are the Bruch, the Mozart (all five), and the Dvorak. After suffering some sort of nerve injury to her hand (I know not which one) from an acupuncture treatment in 2001, she has devoted most of her time to teaching and chamber music playing. She is on the faculties of the Peabody Institute, Curtis Institute, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Tasmin Little

Tasmin Little is an English violinist born on May 13, 1965 (Perlman was 19 years old.) She is known for her violin-music project known as “The Naked Violin.” Little studied in London with Pauline Scott at the Yehudi Menuhin School and at the Guildhall School of Music though she studied in Canada as well. Her debut came in 1988 with the Halle Orchestra. She has been concertizing around the world since then but has only recorded a small portion of the standard repertoire. Still missing from her discography are the concertos of Bach, Mozart, Paganini, Beethoven, Wieniawski, Vieuxtemps, Saint Saenz, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky. Little has had the distinction of appearing at the popular BBC Proms (London) concerts fifteen times. She plays a 1757 Guadagnini and the 1708 Regent Stradivarius.

Louis Kaufman

Louis Kaufman was an American violinist born on May 10, 1905 (Heifetz was four years old.) He was probably the most recorded violinist of all time, though Heifetz and Ricci can claim the same thing. He played for the soundtracks on as many as 500 movies and also made 125 recordings on 30 different labels. It has been said that his tone was similar to Heifetz’. Kaufman began to study at Juilliard with Franz Kneisel at age 13. His solo debut took place at Town Hall in 1928 and was very successful. He played viola in the Musical Art Quartet for seven years (1926-1933.) Among his chamber music colleagues were Jascha Heifetz, Pablo Casals, Mischa Elman, Fritz Kreisler, and Efrem Zimbalist. His 1947 recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons brought Vivaldi’s music to the general public’s attention, though violinist Olga Rudge (Ezra Pound’s mistress) is given credit for rediscovering Vivaldi in Italy, just as Mendelssohn is credited with rediscovering Bach’s music. (Alfredo Campoli is credited with the first recording of the Four Seasons - in 1939 from a radio broadcast - and Bernardo Molinari with the second - in 1942.) A YouTube post of Kaufman playing the third concerto of Camille Saint Saens is available here.  If Heifetz had recorded the Saint Saens concerto, it might have sounded something like that.  Kaufman also championed the works of many contemporary composers, Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud among them.  Even while he worked for the movie studios, he concertized around the world.  Among the hundreds of movie soundtracks his violin is heard in are Casablanca, The Grapes of Wrath, Cleopatra, and Gone With The Wind. Kaufman was also the first to record Samuel Barber’s violin concerto. His autobiography, published in 2003, is titled A Fiddler’s Tale. Kaufman died on February 9, 1994, at age 88.

Las Cruces Symphony

We play the last subscription concert of the season tonight and repeat it tomorrow afternoon. The orchestra will sound well - it almost always does. The program includes the Pines of Rome, The Moldau, and the Rococo Variations for cello. Our soloist is the new Principal Cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra - Mark Kosower. The concerts are sold out and the only way anyone can get a ticket is if someone who has one turns it in if they aren't using it. Obviously, I can't review the concert objectively since I'm playing in the orchestra. And, you can't witness it via the internet since we don't have a set up like the Berlin Philharmonic has - the popular Digital Concert Hall. Maestro Lonnie Klein will be conducting and take my word, he will do a great job with the orchestra and the players will do very well.

The smallest audience

We played the last concert of the season at the Loretto Chapel (at Loretto Academy) this evening. The acoustics there are gorgeous and the concerts are always well-planned and well-performed. The setting is truly more akin to a European Cathedral than a modern recital hall. Tonight's concert included music by Handel, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Puccini, Mascagni, Grainger, and a few others - yes, it was rather eclectic. Charles Gray, violinist-violist and professor of music at St Olaf College, was our guest artist. The Bruce Nehring Consort sponsors this series of concerts every year and they are a highlight of the concert season here. Unfortunately, they are appreciated by just a few. There must have been about ninety persons in the audience. The Chapel can accomodate quite a few more. Nonetheless, that is not the smallest audience I have ever witnessed. I attended a concert in Mexico City once where only four people showed up, including myself. There were four of us and about fourteen ushers so there were about 1,800 empty seats. Nonetheless, the violinist played the entire program, which included Cesar Franck's violin sonata. To this day, I have never figured out how it was that only four people bought tickets.