The Clevelanders
Warning: mktime() [function.mktime]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Chicago' for 'CDT/-5.0/DST' instead in /home/soovinco/public_html/components/com_jd-wp/wp-includes/functions.php on line 24
Warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Chicago' for 'CDT/-5.0/DST' instead in /home/soovinco/public_html/components/com_jd-wp/wp-includes/functions.php on line 30
Warning: date() [function.date]: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'America/Chicago' for 'CDT/-5.0/DST' instead in /home/soovinco/public_html/components/com_jd-wp/wp-includes/functions.php on line 32
Friday May 25th, 2007
I haven’t been completely neglecting the capturing of a few of my thoughts during the past weeks. I just haven’t had time to complete any of those thoughts in a coherent way to present to you. So in the next few days I’ll try to complete those entries posthumously.
I am about to depart for Cleveland to visit my musical mama Mitsuko Uchida, to hear her play the Berg Chamber Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra and another one of my heroes, concertmaster Bill Preucil. As it probably has been for generations of musicians, the Cleveland Orchestra was an incredible inspiration for me. A revelation. The first time I heard them I was visiting Oberlin for a competition while I was still the relative country bumpkin compared to my peers from all of the prestigious prep programs around the country. Boulez conducting Petrouchka. I had the fortune at that age (14) to have played the piece the previous summer at Interlochen - so I had an even greater appreciation for what was happening on stage that night. Cleveland was the first major orchestra I heard live. Just imagine my shock at hearing what many consider the greatest orchestra in the world. They were like the perfect well-oiled machine, the race car gliding effortlessly with ultimate control. No growl in the engine here! The result in Stravinsky on that evening was absurd clarity of colors, textures, rhythm and harmony, bringing out at least as much as the composer could have imagined, perhaps even a bit more. That such a musical experience could exist on this earth was a revelation to me. When I returned to my parents’ home in Plattsburgh I promptly declared that I was leaving for a life in music and I decided to attend the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Fast-forward to September: opening night of the orchestra’s 1995-96 season with Isaac Stern playing Brahms concerto. I was sitting directly underneath him in the second row. He and the orchestra and the music touched me at a depth of my soul that had never been reached before. I was wobbly-kneed; I couldn’t walk after the concert. I sat in my chair for twenty minutes after the end of the concert before I could get up for the short walk home. On that walk I realized what I wanted to do with my life in music. That evening Mr. Stern gave me a reason to live. I dreamt of that performance for a month and obviously here I am still dreaming of it. He inspired me to try to inspire others in the same way. I thought that if I could reach one person in that way then my time on earth will have been worthwhile. After all of the hours of working on tone, phrasing, intonation, rhythm, ensemble, whatever - that performance always reminds me of the ultimate gift that we as performers can and should share with the people for whom we are playing.
I had years more of memorable experiences in their Severance Hall. I’m so looking forward to hearing the orchestra on Saturday.
