2007 Highlight Reel, Part One

Somewhere, deep in the second appendix of the Great Global Rule Book, it is written that everyone must make lists at the end of the calendar year. Best of... lists, worst of... lists, top ten lists, lists of resolutions, lists of last year's resolutions that were broken inside of a week, etc. Journalists and critics especially love such lists, and newspapers this time of year are chock full of year-end wrap-up articles that invariably feature lists.

I'm not much for resolutions, myself, but I do love lists, so I thought I'd throw together my own Top Ten of 2007. The twist is that these will not be the ten best shows/concerts/events I attended, but the ten I had the most fun performing in. I'm disqualifying Inside the Classics concerts, simply because they would obviously make the list, given how much I have invested in the series. Other than that, everything I played in 2007 is fair game. And just to make it simpler, I'm putting these in chronological order The first five are below, and I'll cover the second half of the year on Monday...

1. Mozart - Sinfonia Concertante for Violin & Viola - January 19, Orchestra Hall
This was a special performance in many ways, but the reason it sticks in my mind is that the soloists were the orchestra's Associate Principal Second Violin, William Polk, and his wife, our Assistant Principal Viola, Kerri Ryan. Kerri and William are two of my closest friends (Kerri and I came to Minnesota at the same time in February 2000,) and they are also two of the most dazzling musicians I know. They worked wonders with the Mozart, weaving their lines effortlessly around each other and the orchestra, and I heard several older members of the orchestra declare that it might have been the best performance of that piece that they'd ever heard. Unfortunately, Kerri and William have since left us for jobs in the Philadelphia Orchestra, leaving a serious void in our inner strings. But when I think of them, I'll always think first of that Friday night last January.

2. Beethoven - Symphony No. 4 & Sibelius - Symphony No. 5 - February 13, Carnegie Hall, New York
Playing in another city is always an event, and even for those of us who despise the way New York dominates our entire national culture, you can't deny that Carnegie is one of the great concert halls of the world. This was also our first time playing Sibelius and Beethoven, Osmo's specialties, in New York, and expectations were quite high. As it happens, the fourth is my favorite Beethoven symphony, and Sibelius's fifth is my favorite orchestra work by any composer, so I had been looking forward to this show for months. I wasn't disappointed - we were at our absolute level best that night in New York (our first time playing Carnegie Hall without a big name soloist to sell tickets for us,) and the finale of the Sibelius was fairly rippling with tension, as it should be. For an encore, we played Sibelius's haunting Valse Triste, and I literally got goosebumps as it finished. An incredible night in an incredible concert hall.

3. Beethoven - Symphonies 8 & 3 - April 28, Hibbing High School; Hibbing, Minnesota
Nearly every year, the Minnesota Orchestra spends a week on the road, playing concerts in towns and small cities across the North Star State. I'll be honest - much as I love the chance to play for audiences that normally don't get to hear us, these outstate tours can be a bit of a grind, as we struggle to squeeze onto tiny stages in high school auditoriums with unfamiliar acoustics and chairs seemingly designed to cause back pain.

But Hibbing, a down-on-its-luck town that used to be the center of industry up on Minnesota's Iron Range, is always worth the trip. Its high school, built in the early 20th century, is a palace, and its auditorium is simply stunning. More than that, the residents of Hibbing turn out by the thousands whenever we play there, and you've never met a nicer group of people. Before the concert, I took a drive up to the old pit mine on the edge of town, where two other violists and I seized the opportunity to squeeze off a few shots of an Osmo Vänskä bobble-arm doll dominating the impressive landscape...

4. Sibelius - Symphony No. 2 - May 25, Orchestra Hall
If you've never heard the 2nd live, you must. It's one of those pieces that simply can't come close to conveying all its power and emotion on a recording. I grew up on this piece, and from the warm string murmuring that opens the first movement to the thunderous fanfare of the finale, I love it from top to bottom. I've been waiting for years to play it under Osmo, and this spring, I finally got the chance.

Sibelius and Osmo are inextricably linked in Finland and beyond, and many critics believe our music director to be the preeminent interpreter of his countryman's music. This was a galloping performance - Osmo doesn't truck with the leisurely style imposed on the symphony by many 20th century conductors - and while I wasn't sure I liked the breathless pace when we started rehearsals, I was a convert by the time we performed it.

5. Bartok - String Quartet No. 4 - July 3, Apple Hill Center For Chamber Music; East Sullivan, New Hampshire
When my old friend Elise Kuder called me in February to invite me to spend a couple of weeks playing and teaching at Apple Hill's summer festival in rural New England, I jumped at the chance. I have a long history with that part of the country, and a lot of friends who have raved about the Apple Hill experience for years. (These friends conveniently left out the part about the living conditions, which are, shall we say, spartan in the extreme, but roughing it is unquestionably part of the experience.)

Still, when Elise told me I'd be playing the Bartok, I gulped. The Apple Hill schedule has us show up on a Wednesday, rehearse for six days, and then perform a Tuesday night chamber music concert which is attended not only by the festival participants, but by paying members of the public from across the region. Bartok 4 is not a piece that can reasonably be learned in six days, even by experienced musicians. I asked Elise if she was sure we could handle it - after all, the quartet would be made up of four musicians who had never played together before. She was sure.

That week at Apple Hill turned out to be one of the highlights of my year. The other three members of my quartet were all spectacular musicians, and the cellist turned out to be an old friend whom I hadn't seen in almost 20 years. We were all well aware of the challenge in front of us, and threw ourselves into our preparation, rehearsing seven or eight hours a day, breaking up only to practice our individual parts and coach the student groups we'd been assigned to. I was dealing with a serious family crisis at the time, and rather than feeling like a burden, the music was a welcome release, providing me with challenges I knew I could solve at a time when it felt like there was so much I couldn't.

At the concert, we attacked the quartet with a fierce energy that carried us through even the most difficult passages with ease. I'm sure it wasn't the greatest performance of Bartok's 4th ever heard in New England (six days really isn't enough time for a piece usually put together over a period of weeks or months,) but no one's ever had more fun playing it than we did. Of that I'm certain.