Speaking of superlatives

The Orchestra and Osmo received a tremendous shout-out in the New Yorker. Read to the very end for the rather incredible payoff.

Encouraging Dissent

Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette has an interesting post up on her blog this week about an odd sort of groupthink that frequently seems to permeate the classical music world:

"Why do we all have to like the same composers? I’m sure that we could find movies or books that we disagree about without it seeming quite so heretical. (Actually, my husband doesn’t care for Bruckner, and I love Bruckner, and we manage to continue a happy marriage regardless.) Anyway, I think we need to embrace these disagreements, because they help get classical music off its film-star pedestal and into an arena where we can interact with it, have opinions about it, dare not to like it."

I like the comparison to other art forms, because whereas critics who write about movies, books, and theater spar continuously over the quality (or lack of quality) of what they're reviewing, many classical music critics seem to feel constrained only to review the performance of a piece of music, and rarely discuss the merits of the work itself. And given how passionately many classical fans feel about their favorite composers, I'd probably do the same in their shoes. It's really not worth the trouble you're going to stir up by saying in print that, just for instance, Bruckner's symphonies are overrated, long-winded, and boring.

Midgette has another theory about why critics should be more open about their likes and dislikes, though:

We talk a lot about how to reach new younger audiences: well, they’re not fooled by didactic lectures and hollow praise. I have a host of anecdotes about times I felt I reached someone who was new to classical music by giving them permission not to like it.

Now, this rings very true to me, and I've got an anecdote of my own. A few years back, we were playing the world premiere of a newly commissioned work, and from the opening moments of the first rehearsal, we knew that we were in for a very tough slog through some incredibly dense, modernist stuff that our audiences were just going to hate. It's never fun trying to get through music like that, because we can see the audience visibly hating it, willing it to be over, and nobody wins in that situation. You can always hope that the audience will be so incensed that they'll do something dramatic like refuse to applaud, or even boo the composer, but most American audiences are far too polite to ever consider such acting out.

Now sometimes, when we're playing a new piece, we'll invite the composer to say a few words about it before we play it, which can sometimes have the effect of making the audience more open to what they're about to hear. But in this case, the composer of what I'll call the Noise Concerto wasn't actually going to be at the concerts, so Osmo decided to speak to the audience instead. I couldn't imagine what he was planning to say about a piece that basically everyone agreed was unlistenable. Here's what he said (to the best of my memory - this was several years ago, and I don't have it on tape):

"When I first received the score for this piece by [Composer X], I thought to myself, 'Oh, no.'"

At this, there was a slight gasp and some nervous laughter from the audience. Osmo went on, "It seemed so dark, and so difficult, and with so much happening all over the orchestra, and I didn't know whether anyone would be able to listen to it. But now, as we've been rehearsing and playing it all week, and we have begun to understand some of the composer's ideas, now I think... well, now I think still "Oh, no" in many places."

The audience erupted in laughter. Osmo wasn't done: "But," he said quickly," what does Vänskä know? I am hearing the piece for the first time just as you are, just as we all are, and when we play it, you will have your own conclusions, and those are what matter."

It was a masterful way to introduce the piece. There was no question, once we'd finished the premiere, that the vast majority of those in attendance fell into the "Oh, no" camp, but the amazing thing was that it was clear from the looks on people's faces as we played that, by giving them permission to hate the piece, we had made them more open to giving it a chance. At some of the work's loudest, most headache-inducing moments, I even saw a few people smirking or chuckling, as if to say, "Wow. This must be one of the 'Oh, no' places."

The lesson, I think, is that people who know they're allowed to have their own opinions on what we're doing on stage are far more likely to engage, and to view concerts as something they participate in, rather than as something static that is set in front of them. Midgette sums it up nicely:

"We don’t need boosterism: we need to regain a sense that this field matters, and that there are reasons for everyone to care about it, beyond a dutiful sense of “it is great and we should.” That's the basis of a love of music, an amateurism, that sustains, rather than distant appreciation of isolated, glamorous performances."

Osmo In His Own Words, & ItC In The Strib

If you follow the Minnesota Orchestra at all closely, you're probably no stranger to our music director's biography. In his six seasons with us, he's been a media magnet, and countless articles in newspapers at home and abroad have laid out his reputation as a builder of orchestral underdogs, a tireless detail man, and a dynamic presence on the podium.

But what you probably haven't had much exposure to is Osmo himself - he rarely speaks from the podium, and journalists tend to "clean up" his quotes if he words something oddly, which takes much of the considerable personality out of the way he speaks. So I thought I'd post a link to an extended conversation an interviewer at Deutsche Welle (the English-language German broadcaster) had with Osmo recently. The interviewer has something of an odd speaking style, but he asks excellent questions, and Osmo gets to answer in as extended a fashion as he cares to.

If the link above (which should pop up an audio player) isn't working for you, click here to go to Deutsche Welle's site, and scroll down for the audio link...

---------------------------

On another media-related note, if you haven't made it out to one of our Inside the Classics concerts before, Graydon Royce over at the Star Tribune has a very nice piece in tomorrow's paper detailing just what it is we do with our little corner of the orchestra's season. Click here to read it online...

Good to be home

We've done an extraordinary amount of traveling in the past two weeks, a pretty endless succession of flights:


(In the foreground; bassist Matt Frischman and percussionist Kevin Watkins)
A couple were chartered, orchestra-only flights, which generally meant both an easier check-in and the chaos of open seating:


(in the foreground; principal viola Tom Turner and associate principal oboe John Snow)
Countless airport bus transfers (expertly organized - I don't think we ever lost anyone):


A bunch of long bus rides as well, mostly conducive to catching up on a little sleep, but a perfect opportunity to get some studying in; as luck would have it, we had a whole slew of conductors on my bus (one of 4) from Frankfurt to Luxembourg:


(Bassist Bill Schrickel, also music director of the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra)


(Violist Ken Freed, also music director of the Mankato Symphony, delighting in Mahler 5)


(Brownie points for whoever can figure out what Osmo is studying - hint: it's a last movement)

For the record, my score-for-study during this 3 hour bus trip was the Greenberg Symphony we're performing at the upcoming Inside the Classics concerts. I ended up lugging around about 8 scores for upcoming performances - there's always works to do and concerts to prepare for, no matter how hectic the travel!

Encore, Encore

We’ve just finished the first concert of the Tour, to a small sigh of relief by all. Firsts are always hard, even more so in a major venue (the Barbican) in a big center of the arts (London). The audiences were certainly appreciative (as was our first review), and after several curtain calls, both our soloist Joshua Bell (on the first half) and the Orchestra itself (in the second) presented encores.

Josh pulled out a novelty by Vieuxtemps; Souvenir d’Amerique, a set of variations on “Yankee Doodle” (he described it to the British audience as a “tune from the Revolutionary War – sorry about that, by the way…”, to much laughter). It’s a fun piece of fluff, impressively played, carrying some of the virtuosic feel over from the last movement of the Barber Concerto (albeit in a very different musical idiom). The audience had already been stirred up by the Concerto, and it made sense to keep up that level of energy.

Osmo was brought back onstage several times after the “Eroica” in the second half, and after his third trip to the podium he turned back to the Orchestra and quickly launched into one of two encores brought on tour, Sibelius’s “Valse Triste”. Those of you who have heard Osmo and the Orchestra perform Beethoven (or have heard it on the highly-regarded recording) know that there is an angularity and forcefulness to it that is very particular to this combination of conductor and orchestra – there is nothing sentimental about it. It’s not to say that it’s not passionate music-making; there is just a directness in the vitality that infuses the performance that keeps it from becoming overemotional.

The Sibelius encore, however, is a very sentimental piece; there’s a heart-breaking quality about it, with its reflections of ghostly memories. It’s one of those heart-on-sleeve pieces (or as much as a Finn would wear his heart on his sleeve!) where the emotional content is immediately evident. It also calls for a smaller orchestra and has a smaller-scale quality about it that also stood in stark contrast to the Beethoven. The effect was to take the audience on a rapid mood swing that led to a completely different place at the end of the concert.

I rather liked the effect of ending something so structured and of an easily-identified musical idiom and finishing the evening with this deeply moving wisp of Sibelius with it’s 3 quiet "chimes" (played by four solo violins) at the end. If nothing else, it gave a glimpse of a completely different side of both the Orchestra and Osmo.

I’m writing this post during a short plane ride from London to Berlin, where we’ll land, head to the hotel, grab a bite and then head to the Philharmonie for an 8 pm performance. Tomorrow: Cologne.

Ears wide open

We're in the midst of preparations for our European Tour - five rehearsals this week instead of the usual 4, and our customary concert schedule has shifted to allow for our travel itinerary this weekend, meaning that we have concerts Wednesday and Thursday rather than over the weekend.

My job as cover conductor on the tour entails being prepared for the extremely unlikely possibility Osmo is unable to conduct, but another function I will also provide is being the pair of ears in the halls as we do our pre-concert soundcheck in each venue. One of the things I'm most looking forward to on our European jaunt is hearing the Minnesota Orchestra in some fabulous halls, including the Philharmonie in Berlin and the Musikverein in Vienna. While I've heard the the Berlin Philharmonic and Vienna Philharmonic play their own halls, I've never heard my "home" orchestra in them, and I imagine each will be distinctly different from our home, Orchestra Hall.

Each hall is an utterly different animal; musicians feel it the minute they get onstage. Orchestra Hall has its own acoustical anomalies; you can hear someone unwrapping a cough drop in row 29 from onstage, but you often can't hear people across the stage. Certain sonorities carry better that others, and everything changes completely when there is a sizable audience sucking up some of the reverberations.

I have a pretty unique perspective on our hall, because I'm one of the few people who spends a great deal of time both onstage and in the audience; I certainly get the "stage perspective" during the 30+ concerts I conduct every year, but when I'm covering for Osmo, I'm out in the hall hearing the acoustic from the audience's perspective. Musicians rarely have the chance to listen to the Orchestra from out in the hall - and when they do, they invariably express surprise in "how it all sounds out here".

I try to bring my insights from both perspectives to both parts of my job; when I'm on the podium, I need to remember that, for instance, while the horns may sound rather subdued from my perch, they'll actually carry very well out in the hall, and when I'm out in the hall listening for balances while Osmo conducts, I try to listen for the details that can be heard in the hall that you can't hear on the podium because such a huge wall of sound is rushing towards you!

People often marvel, "As a conductor you must have the best seat in the house"; well, yes and no. Yes, the immense rush of sound with everything coming at you from all directions is pretty thrilling. But, no, because the sound is "unmixed", unblended - halls are built so the optimal sound reaches the audience, not the podium. It takes quite a bit of experience to discern the relationship between what you hear and what it actually sounds like (if that makes any sense).

The challenge for the halls on tour is that I'll have no stage perspective (and presumably Osmo will have no time to amble into the hall and have a listen), so any suggestions I may have for him about balances will have to be taken on faith. It's all part of the experience, and one I'll be taking in with ears wide open.

Osmo Blagojevich?

12/19/08: I have been ordered by members of our management team to remove this post. I don't agree with the decision, but it's not my call. Sorry...

First Among Equals

I'm playing a piece of chamber music with Osmo this weekend, as part of our Sommerfest chamber series at Orchestra Hall, which is always an interesting departure from the normal orchestral routine. Like most musicians, I love playing chamber music in general, and this will be the second time I've had the chance to perform alongside the boss. (We played the Brahms clarinet quintet together last summer.)

Osmo plays clarinet more or less the same way he conducts. He has strong ideas, knows exactly how he plans to play a phrase before he begins it, values precision and rhythmic accuracy, and he makes a point of exploiting the widest dynamic range he can achieve. These are all the same things he asks us to do when he leads the orchestra, so if you're used to playing under his baton, you'll have no problem connecting with him as a performer.

What's somewhat surprising about having him sitting across from me as an equal partner rather than on a podium barking orders is how easily he seems to make the transition. Most instrumentalists who take up conducting do so, at least in part, because they want to be in charge. (Many of them were already pianists anyway, which is more or less the instrumental definition of being in charge of most situations.) They're frustrated by the limited role of a single player in a large group, and want a chance to define and shape the artistic sweep of the orchestral repertoire.

Once a musician becomes a conductor capable of sustaining him/herself in that role, few ever look back. Some might still play the occasional bit of chamber music (as Christoph Eschenbach has been known to do in Philadelphia,) or even take on a concerto (as our own Andrew Litton does regularly,) but the conductor persona is ever-present. There's never any doubt about who's in charge.

And that's what can sometimes make it difficult to play chamber music with a conductor. Chamber music is supposed to be a completely democratic effort, where every player has an equal voice, and the group decides together where the music will go and how it will get there. (This, of course, is why so many orchestral musicians, who spend our days basically obeying orders and shaping phrases in someone else's voice, consider chamber music to be an essential and rejuvenating activity.) Conductors are frequently unable to really embrace such an approach when they are used to being the only voice that really matters, and consequently wind up imposing their will on the rest of the quartet, or quintet, or whatever.

So it's more than a little bit surprising that Osmo seems to have no trouble putting aside his in-chargeness and submitting to the uncertainty of the group dynamic in a chamber music setting. On the podium, he's known to be exceedingly confident, even stubborn, and I can't think of a time when anyone in our orchestra has ever convinced him to change anything about his interpretation of any piece. Ever. This is a guy who has made some of the best orchestras in the world play along with the metronome he keeps on his conductor's stand! He does not lack for conviction, or the will to enforce his vision. And yet, both last summer and this summer, he has cheerfully allowed everyone in our chamber groups an equal voice to his own, and regularly agreed to go in a direction that he himself might not have chosen.

That's not to say that he doesn't have opinions. In particular, he has some very strong ideas about the Brahms quintet (widely considered to be one of the greatest works of chamber music ever composed, and beloved by all clarinetists,) and is willing to fight for them. But in the course of debating such ideas in rehearsal, he never plays the trump card, or even implies that he's holding one. In a collaborative situation, that restraint makes a big difference and, I think, allows the group a chance to achieve a truly unified performance.

More leisure suits

As Sam mentions in his previous post, we hosted/emceed the Orchestra's annual fundraiser, the Symphony Ball, which was a memorable night, not least for its ABBA-licious 70's-ness.

Osmo was in full regalia as well, here's a candid shot captured right after the show (he's such a good sport - please note the green-glitter platform shoes):

Elements

Having been raised in Hawaii, I have a certain affinity for the ocean (specifically) and water (generally). My husband, Philly-born and raised, spent childhood vacations in the Poconos and thus has a thing for mountains - he was in absolute heaven the three summers we spent together at the Verbier festival high in the Swiss Alps. Now, I like a good snowy peak, hiking on alpine fields and all that other great mountain stuff, but it's really a body of water (particularly the Pacific Ocean) that makes me happy. And it's more than mere enjoyment; I really feel like I'm in my element.

I'm on a short trip back to Minnesota after almost two weeks away, and I made it back to town in time to catch the Orchestra concert tonight. I've watched Osmo conduct countless concerts in my two years here, but it struck me that because of the vagaries of my schedule and the amount of time I spend on the road, I hadn't had the opportunity to see him do a Sibelius symphony. Luckily, I had that chance tonight.

When he is conducting Sibelius, Osmo is clearly in his element. And I don't say that glibly, simply because he is known as a fine Sibelius interpreter, or because both he and Sibelius are Finnish (although it probably does account for at least some of his affinity for that composer). The first half of the concert was excellent - a well-crafted and moving piece by Missy Mazzoli, a brief Bach transcription and a thrillingly played MacMillan percussion concerto, and Osmo was conducting with his usual keen focus and kinetic energy. But in the second half, with the Sibelius 6th Symphony, there was an almost imperceptible shift in his body language, a palpable relaxing of his posture, a more fluid vocabulary of movement that indicated an absolute comfort with the music.

It's not just about being intimately acquainted with a work; there needs to be a deep personal connection there. This sort of individual resonance with a work can come from continuous study and multiple performances over the years, but sometimes a conductor's profound affinity for a certain work or composer just is.

We conductors often find ourselves performing repertoire that, though great music (empirically speaking), holds no particular attraction to us. We might intellectually enjoy it and find it beautiful and worthwhile, but it holds no personal resonance, and we try to avoid performing it as much as possible; music is harder when you're not emotionally vested. I have my own list of works/composers in a "great music, but not for me" category (Bruckner comes to mind).

But with repertoire that has profound personal resonance, one finds a deep satisfaction in performance that's really hard to describe; there's just a rightness about it. It's easy to conduct when you're in your element. And it was lovely to see Osmo in his.

Playing telephone

Yesterday the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, a local community orchestra led by Minnesota Orchestra acting associate principal bassist Bill Schrickel premiered a piece by Minnesota Orchestra music director Osmo Vanska entitlted "The Bridge".

A nice story, and one discussed in this MPR online article. Simple enough, right?

Remember that childhood game, "Telephone"? Where you pass a message, person to person, until you (usually) end up with a garbled message that bears some semblance to the original but has morphed over the course of the passing?

So, here's what the Associated Press gleaned from the original information, which was then picked up by news sources nationwide.

Wait, the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra??? A colleague at the Orchestra later told me that the original header for the MPR article itself was incorrect ( which could still be seen this afternoon when I Googled "Minnesota Symphony Orchestra):

MPR: Osmo Vanska composes a musical 'bridge'
The Minnesota Symphony Orchestra is premiering a new work by Minnesota Orchestra conductor Osmo Vanska, called "The Bridge." It's inspired in part by the ...
feeds.publicradio.org/~r/MPR_NewsFeatures/~3/291905521/ - 48k - Cached - Similar pages

Well, mistakes happen. Although it's a little embarrassing that our local news media got it wrong to begin with. But here's the kicker, a brief mention of the premiere in Alex Ross's influential and widely-read blog, "The Rest is Noise". Please note paragraph number 2, in which he describes the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra (correctly identified!) as "the Twin Cities' other orchestra".

I'm wondering how the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra feels about this...

Osmo's Finnish Finale

As most Minnesota Orchestra fans know, our music director, Osmo Vänskä, is a very big deal in Finland. When we perform there, we're frequently met at the border by TV cameras and print reporters, and they're not there to capture the tour escapades of our viola section. (Although, come to think of it, that would be one hell of an entertaining thing to record.) Osmo's work in his home country - first as principal clarinet of the Helsinki Philharmonic, and then as the conductor who transformed the little-known Sinfonia Lahti into an internationally acclaimed recording and touring orchestra - is well-documented, and an apt comparison could be made between Osmo's 20-year tenure in Lahti and what Sir Simon Rattle accomplished with England's City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

This past week was Osmo's last hurrah with his Lahti band. He's served as their chief conductor since 1988, and unlike many conductors, who dump their smaller orchestras the moment they land a bigger gig, he's stuck with Lahti even while taking on music directorships with the BBC Scottish Symphony, and of course, us. He and his wife, Pirkko, still have a home in a small town between Lahti and Helsinki, and despite spending the majority of their year in Minneapolis (US immigration laws restrict the amount of time landed immigrants can spend abroad and still work in America,) they make a point of getting back to Finland whenever possible.

Osmo's last concert as Sinfonia Lahti's music director was pretty hefty stuff, and definitely aimed at Finland's musical connoisseurs. The first half featured the world premiere of a new concerto for percussion ensemble by Icelandic composer Áskell Másson, with the deeply impressive Kroumata as soloists. (Kroumata will be with us in Minneapolis in a few weeks as part of our season-ending Percussion Festival...) Following intermission was Bruckner's monumental 9th Symphony, which is always an event.



The concert actually took place two days ago, so it's too late for a last-minute whirlwind trip to Lahti, but through the efforts of ClassicLive, a great fledgling company based in that same city, you can actually watch a high-quality audio and video stream of the concert anytime between now and May 29. It's not a free service - you have to set up an account and pay for the time you spend watching their streams - but I'm telling you, it's worth it. They have an impressive amount of content available from multiple European orchestras (behind-the-scenes stuff and a few bits of silliness like Osmo whistling in addition to full-length concerts,) the quality of the sound and picture is absolutely top-of-the-line, and their rates are pretty reasonable (as little as €5 - I think that's around $7.75 at the moment,) especially if you plan to watch more than a single concert. (Full disclosure: a friend of mine works for the company.)

Osmo's departure from Lahti means that we are now officially his only orchestra, which ought to lead to some interesting speculation over the coming years. Lots of conductors maintain multiple music directorships in America and overseas, and while Osmo already spends an almost unheard-of number of weeks each year conducting us (I believe it's 19 weeks next year, as compared with an average of 12-15 for most American MDs,) I'd be surprised if his name didn't surface on the wish lists of any number of European and/or Asian bands looking for new leadership. With his reputation for significantly elevating the national and international profiles of the orchestras he leads, we may be sharing him again sooner rather than later...

More Random Sports Nonsense (Now With 100% More Osmo!)

Sorry for the sparse posting this week. I've been kept extra busy by my side job as the assistant news editor over at ArtsJournal.com while the site's managing editor is away in Europe, and on top of that, we're playing a pretty big concert this week, which we'll be taking to New York for a Sunday matinee performance at Lincoln Center this weekend.

But I have to confess, another thing keeping me from the keyboard this week is that I'm a huge hockey fan, and as any red-blooded Minnesotan knows, it's playoff time. I'm one of those obsessive fans who actually buys the NHL Center Ice TV package, knows the names of the play-by-play guys on Hockey Night in Canada, and reads John Buccigross's column every week. There are more than a few of us puckheads in the orchestra, and this time of year, we're all more or less giddy with excitement, stopping each other in the halls to lament Martin Skoula's latest horrific defensive lapse or argue about whether Jacques Lemaire (the Osmo Vänskä of hockey coaches) mixes his lines too much.

Osmo's a big hockey fan, too, which is why I'm bothering to bring this up at all. Way back when he first arrived in town, Osmo was asked to be one of the local celebrities who the Minnesota Wild use to lead the crowd in chanting "Let's play hockey!" just before the puck drops. He already knew a fair amount about the game, and since the Wild have always had at least one Finn on the team, he has a natural rooting interest. (One of the highlights of Osmo's life as a fan was sitting in one of the "on the glass" seats down by the penalty box, and getting noted antagonist Ed Jovanovski, then with the Wild's arch-rival Vancouver Canucks, to shout at him while serving a penalty.) He's been known to hand out free luxury box seats to Wild games to members of the orchestra and their families, and I must admit that I've spent many a night sitting next to him at the Xcel Energy Center, screaming at the referees and needling Osmo to explain one more time how Niklas Backstrom can be Finnish when he clearly has a Swedish name.

He was at the Wild's first playoff game of the year last night as well, and he'll reportedly be there again next Thursday for Game 5. And as you can see from this picture I took backstage at intermission of our concert this morning, he's definitely playoff-ready...

That's right. Our music director has grown a playoff beard. See, to me, that's dedication. He's never had a beard in his life, but his team - our team - is in the playoffs, racked by injuries, and fighting desperately to prove they deserve to at least occasionally get mentioned on SportsCenter, and Osmo is showing solidarity in true old-school fashion!

(Okay, fine. Technically, Osmo claims that the beard has nothing to do with the playoffs, and that he just got lazy about shaving while on a composing retreat in the Lapland a couple of weeks ago. I told him that my version sounds better, and he seemed okay with it. So we're going with playoff beard. And if the Wild somehow manage to make it to the Cup finals, you'd better believe he'll be looking for a chance to slip the State of Hockey anthem in as an encore to one of our late-season concerts...)

Getting The Last Word

There was a funny moment at this morning's rehearsal. Osmo thanked us for our work in the Thursday performance (as he always does at the first rehearsal after a concert,) then grinned and noted that, "I have read in today's Star Tribune that the critic thought that we were not always with the movie. He said there was a band on the screen, and we were not playing when they played. This is so. Chaplin believed that his audience did not need to hear a band to see that one was playing, and he assumed that the people would imagine the sound of the band, which is why we don't play there. But perhaps Chaplin overestimated the imagination of critics..."

Little Tramp, Big Concert

I've tried to avoid using this space to flog the Minnesota Orchestra's weekly concerts (other than the ones in our Inside the Classics series, of course,) because Sarah and I are very conscious of the potential for an "official" orchestra blog to come across as little more than a crass attempt to sell tickets by pretending to embrace the online world of user-generated content. So in writing about specific concerts that we play, I've generally waited until after they're over to post anything, and I don't think I've ever written anything that sounds like "run out and buy a ticket to this show right now."

That abundance of caution is taking the day off. If you're free tomorrow night, you need to run out and buy a ticket to our concert. (And you need to hurry, because a glance at our online ticketing system tells me that we don't seem to have many seats left.) Because what we're doing this week presents one of those rare chances to see something that you've probably never seen before in your life, and may never get a chance to see again.

Last summer, when I saw on our preliminary 2007-08 schedule that we would be mounting a two-week mini-festival of film music, I must admit that I didn't expect it to be a highlight of the year. Orchestras play movie music all the time these days, and too often, it's just an excuse to slap the "serious music" tag on something that's little more than a glorified pops concert. (I mean, honestly, I liked Pirates of the Caribbean, too, but that score is five minutes of cliched dreck repeated for two hours. And don't get me started on Lord of the Rings.) Seldom do you see an orchestra really make an effort to communicate just what it is about music and cinema that inspires such powerful emotion in us. It's not that we can't do it - it's that it's easier just to play Star Wars again, and the tickets cost the same either way.

But my cynicism proved to be unfounded this time. The centerpiece of our Sounds of Cinema festival (which does, yes, include a pops show hosted by George Takei of Star Trek fame) is a live performance of the complete scores to two classic silent films, as the movies play simultaneously on the big screen behind the orchestra. This week's flick is Charlie Chaplin's classic "Little Tramp" adventure, City Lights, which stands as one of the funniest and most poignant movies of all time, more than 75 years after it was made.

It's a huge undertaking to screen a film with a live orchestra providing the soundtrack, particularly when the score was composed specifically to complement Chaplin's side-splitting physical humor. It's not enough for the right tune to just more or less line up with the right scene - specific notes and phrases have to hit at the exact moment that the Little Tramp jumps in the air, or scratches his head, or tries to cope with a swallowed dog whistle. To that end, the conductor's score for this show (which is a whopping 455 pages, by the way - approximately equivalent to two of Mahler's longest symphonies) is filled not only with the usual staves of music, but with constant verbal cues as to what ought to be going on onscreen during any given measure. While leading us in what should sound like a normal performance, Osmo has to constantly dart his eyes between the score and the video monitor in front of his podium, making sure that his cues to us line up perfectly with instructions like "eyebrow lift," "taxi cab" and "fourth hiccup." If he misses a single cue, or fails to follow the exact tempo indicated for a given section, we'll be out of sync with the movie. Meanwhile, the hardest part for the orchestra is keeping our eyes on our parts and Osmo rather than twisting around to watch the screen.

We did the first performance of City Lights this morning, and judging from the waves of laughter rolling through the audience throughout, I think we hit our marks. Osmo really seems remarkably at ease with the score (although he did admit in rehearsal yesterday that "I have been practicing at home with a DVD, and I know it is the same movie, but this feels like a different version!"), and the music itself, which Chaplin wrote with the help of an orchestrator, is fantastic stuff, dipping and rolling all over the place and changing tempos ever so slightly to indicate when a character is getting tired, or drunk, or whatever.

The movie lasts just under 90 minutes, and with the exception of a 70-second stretch during which recorded sound effects take over for a particular Chaplin gag, the orchestra plays continuously for the entire length of the film. It's exhausting, but man, it's fun, and having watched City Lights several times before, I can honestly say that the live music is vastly superior to the tinny (and, frankly, not very well played) recorded version of Chaplin's score that accompanies the copy of the movie that you can watch at home.

If you really can't make it out to the Friday performance, or if big epic dramas are more your speed, come see us next Saturday, when we'll be rolling five or six Shostakovich symphonies into a massive live soundtrack to Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. I promise you won't regret it.

2007 Highlight Reel, Part Three

Wrapping up my favorite concerts of the year, two in particular stood out this past fall...

9. Shostakovich Violin Concerto w/Lisa Batiashvili - October 6, Orchestra Hall
Orchestra musicians and soloists have an interesting relationship. More accurately, we generally have a complete lack of a relationship. We (orchestra players) are always in the same place, the same city, playing on the same stage with the same people. They (soloists) are nomads, wandering the Earth and performing with nearly any orchestra that will have them. We usually see them for only an hour or two of rehearsal before the performance, and unless one of us grew up with the soloist du jour, there isn't a lot of personal contact backstage - they stay in their dressing rooms, we in our musicians' lounge.

So when a soloist's performance causes an orchestra to buzz for days on end, it's an event. And Lisa Batiashvili's debut with the Minnesota Orchestra this fall was one of those times. Her Shostakovich was brilliant, yes, but more than that, her overall musicianship and stunning technique had many members of the orchestra excitedly telling each other, "We ought to get her back to play [ridiculously difficult and exciting concerto x] next time!" From the reaction of the critics and audience members in attendance (and at least one reader of this blog,) it was evident that everyone was in agreement. I suspect we'll be seeing Lisa again as soon as she has an open date in her schedule.

10. Mendelssohn Symphony No. 4 (Italian) - November 21, Orchestra Hall
I really don't know why we bother having concerts the week of Thanksgiving. Very few people come to them, and having to play the night before and night after the holiday merely insures that none of us ever get to travel to spend the holiday with family out of state. Furthermore, there have been years in which the programming seems directly at odds with the festive spirit of Thanksgiving week (the year in which we engaged Oliver Knussen to conduct a concert of his own highly complex and difficult music stands out in particular.)

But this year, Thanksgiving week saw us playing an up-tempo program culminating with one of my favorite symphonies, led by the conductor who always leads the field whenever Minnesota Orchestra musicians are polled on the subject of who we should consider hiring as a principal guest conductor. I've blogged about Gilbert Varga before, and I've honestly never heard a musician say a bad word about him, which is pretty rare for a conductor. The level of respect that we have for him is so high that, early in the week, when he didn't like the way we were playing the first movement of the Mendelssohn, not a single person appeared to take any offense at all when he snapped, "You're too good an orchestra to be playing it like that!" It wasn't an attack, it was a statement of fact wrapped up in a backhanded compliment, and because we know and respect Varga, we all took it as exactly that.

Largely because of Varga's uncompromising insistence on quick tempos and intense drive, the Mendelssohn had an unmistakable intensity and brilliant shine to it, and I had a fantastic time playing it all week. Even in the hands of good orchestras, the first and last movements of the piece are too often sloppy and rhythmically lazy, and a turkey hangover could have made things even worse, but Varga's enthusiasm is decidedly infectious, and prevented any such pitfalls. I don't think we've ever played a better Thanksgiving concert in my time here.

So that's my list, and you're all welcome to chime in with your own favorites (or busts) of '07 in the comments. The orchestra reconvenes next week, when we'll spend five days making the last recording in our cycle of Beethoven symphonies before starting up the concerts again. The coming month will feature a two-week mini-festival of great film music (culminating with a full performance of Shostakovich's score for Battleship Potemkin with the film playing on a giant screen behind us); a pops show hosted by Star Trek star George Takei; a children's concert focusing on Scheherezade; and of course, our next Inside the Classics concert, featuring Peter McGuire on the Tchaikovsky violin concerto on January 30 & 31. Hopefully, we'll see you all there!

2007 Highlight Reel, Part Two

Continuing with the top ten list of my favorite concerts of the year, we've made it to summer...

6. All-Nordic Program, Macy's Day of Music - July 13, Orchestra Hall
If you've never been to the Day of Music, you're missing out. Officially, it was created several years ago as the kickoff to our four-week Sommerfest concert series. Unofficially, the orchestra concert that's at the event's heart has become just a small piece of the greatest single showcase of the local music scene the Cities has going: 24 straight hours of live music, all genres (almost - we're sadly lacking in the hip-hop department), on five or six different stages, inside and out of our downtown concert hall. Best of all, the whole thing is completely free of charge, which has assured us of huge crowds every year, despite the fact that we're nearly always competing directly with either the Basilica Block Party or that corporate monstrosity of a concert the Aquatennial puts on in a parking lot on Washington Ave.

There are years where I've actually stuck around for all 24 hours of the Day of Music, just drinking in the atmosphere, and loving the sight of such a diverse crowd at our hall. Our concert, which comes mid-evening on the main indoor stage, always has a distinctly raucous atmosphere (comparatively speaking,) and the crowd, which waits in line for an hour or more to get a spot in the audience, is far more vocal and upbeat than at any other concert we play. It's basically a huge party, and I hope we never quit doing it.

7. Brahms - Clarinet Quintet - July 20, Orchestra Hall
Chamber music is something musicians love to play, because it challenges us in ways that orchestral and solo work doesn't, and because, musically speaking, it's the ultimate team sport. And over the last few years, the chamber music series we present at Sommerfest has suddenly become wildly popular. I don't know what combination of marketing strategy and musical quality has prompted the huge increase in attendance, but one thing that I know doesn't hurt is when Osmo is performing. Our music director is also a talented clarinetist, who played for several years as principal of the Helsinki Philharmonic before becoming a conductor, and after some prodding, he took up performing regularly with members of the orchestra on these concerts. This concert was my first chance to play with him, and the fact that it was on the Brahms quintet (widely considered by musicians to be the greatest piece of small-ensemble music ever written,) made the experience even more memorable.

As it turns out, Osmo is very easy to work with when he doesn't have a stick in his hand, and the other members of the group (violinists Jorja Fleezanis and Helen Chang, and cellist Jim Jacobson) were some of my favorite colleagues to play with as well. Together we pulled off what I thought was a rich, dark interpretation of the piece, and Osmo's work on the gypsy-tinged cadenzas of the difficult slow movement was deeply impressive.

8. Mendelssohn - Octet for Strings - August 26, Greenwood Music Camp; Cummington, Massachusetts
Okay, this is a slight cheat, because I didn't actually perform on this concert, but I don't care. Greenwood is a small chamber music camp squirreled away in the Berkshire hilltowns of Western Massachusetts, and I've been coming here since I was ten years old. It's the kind of place where kids discover everything they love about life and music, and tear up throughout the year whenever they think of it. The idea at this camp isn't to grow prodigies - it's to show a bunch of incredible kids a great time, with music as a key part of the action. No one spends six hours slaving away in a practice room at Greenwood. No one has to listen to a teacher lecture about what a disappointment they are, and how much harder they need to work to become a Great Musician. Kids there spend as much time playing soccer and dodgeball as they do playing Mozart. The result of the low-pressure environment is not just a well-balanced camp, but a higher level of music-making than you can possibly imagine.

The kids at Greenwood stun me every year with their dedication and their ability to rise to the level of expectation. But this year, I was assigned to coach a group of the camp's top young players on a piece that we normally never even attempt with kids under age of 13 - the rollicking, pounding finale of Mendelssohn's Octet for Strings. It's a perfect piece for teenagers - Mendelssohn was only 15 when he wrote it, and it's chock full of teen angst and wild emotion. It's also wickedly difficult to play, with eight players arrayed across the stage, trying desperately to stay together and in rhythm when they can barely hear each other. As I say, it's not something one generally attempts with young kids, but we had the feeling that this group might be able to pull it off.

The truth is, it was close. We rehearsed twice as much as the average Greenwood group does, and my coaching style (which I normally think of as friendly and collaborative) took a decided turn for the authoritarian as the week went on. I found myself stomping the floor to keep the beat, and begging individual players not to rush when they reached an easy section. One of the violinists, who had been placed in the group even though we feared that the part might be way over his head, was struggling mightily to remember where to begin his crucial solo 2/3 of the way through the piece. For the first time in my two decades at Greenwood, I was actually afraid that one of my groups might not be able to pull off what had been given to them.

The day of the concert, my first violinist came running up to me outside the concert barn, and whined that she was nervous. I told her she'd be great, that she had her part down cold, and hoped that I was telling the truth. When their turn came up on the program, dead last on a 3-hour concert (nothing, but nothing, can follow the Octet, so it's always last,) I slipped out of my seat and walked to the back of the barn, where none of the players would be able to see me. I knew how tense I was likely to be, and didn't want any of my fear transferring to the kids.

I shouldn't have worried. From the first snarling entrance of the cellos, the piece jumped off the page like it always does. The violas and then the violins joined the fray one by one, in perfect time, and the rushing drive to the first big cadence was packed with the kind of frenetic energy only kids ever seem to truly have. From there, it was an 8-minute roller coaster ride to the end, and my first violinist had clearly overcome her nerves, because when she led the final chord, she did it with such vigor that her arm left the string in an arc, yanking her bow into the air in an action pose that could have made the pages of Sports Illustrated. The kids and parents in the audience went berserk as they always do for this piece, as anyone would really have to do for this piece. Standing in the very back of the room, I had to turn away so that no one would see the tears in my eyes. Just as they do every summer, a collection of kids playing barefoot in a barn in the middle of nowhere had reminded me of why I love what I do for a living.

I'll finish out my top ten list on Wednesday, with my favorite two shows of this past fall, one of which may be a surprise. Happy New Year, all...

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.

Ask An Expert: Can you hear me now?

Time for another of our reader-submitted Ask an Expert questions. (Click the link in the menu above to submit one of your own!) This week's question comes from Daisuke Takeuchi, who is not, as far as I know, any relation to the star pitcher for the Boston Red Sox:

Q: I am a new fan of classical music thanks to Osmo Vanska and The Minnesota Orchestra experience. My question is about the sound range of classical music. When I listen to CDs, some parts are too quiet to hear. So, I turn the volume up, but then the loud parts get too loud. I feel like in order to listen to classical music you need a perfectly quiet environment, otherwise you cannot hear the quiet parts. I live in a neighborhood where cars go by, babies are crying, dogs are barking, and I get frustrated when I cannot hear the music. Of course, putting on a headphone would solve the problem, but this bothers me. So, please enlighten me as to why some parts are played so quietly that I cannot hear a thing.

For an answer, I went right to the top, to the master of extreme pianissimo himself, Minnesota Orchestra music director Osmo Vänskä. Osmo has a reputation for demanding extreme dynamics at both ends of the decibel spectrum from his orchestras, and our recent Beethoven recordings do have a startlingly wide dynamic range, due in part to the incredibly senstive digital equipment that the recording team at BIS uses. So Osmo, why so soft, and what's the best way to listen?

Osmo's Answer: First of all, don't try to listen [to classical music] in the car. There's just too much extra noise around. I would say that, even in the concert hall, during the softest passages, you still can hardly hear what we are playing, and you have to allow that that may be what we want you to hear. In [popular] music, everything is recorded so that the sound meter is always in more or less the same position. The sound level never goes too far into the red, and never goes very far the other way either. It is not that way in our music. So I would suggest to Daisuke that he set his volume as loud as his neighbors and his stereo will allow for the loud parts, and then keep it there - don't touch it when we go to the softest passages. It is meant to be so that it is very difficult to hear. That's the whole secret of the music we play - if you [turn up the softest parts,] you are missing the opportunity to go where the music wants to take you.

This way there be dragons...

Bernard Holland had a column in Sunday's New York Times that really grabbed my attention. It was about the role of composers in the concert experience, and it expressed, in words far more organized and eloquent than I could come up with, much of what I believe to be true about late 20th-century music and those who wrote it.

The column starts out by repeating a question every critic has either been asked or asked himself: namely, how one should prepare for a world premiere, when there's no score to study and no recording to consult for perspective. With so much new music layered in complexity, how can even an educated listener hope to be ready to offer an assessment of a completely new work after one hearing?

Holland doesn't like the implications of the question: "Haven’t we got things backward? Shouldn’t composers be preparing for me rather than me for them?" That may seem flip, but it expresses the beginnings of the frustration that those of us in this business hear year after year from members of our audience. I can't count the number of times that some intelligent friend of mine has looked pleadingly at me after a concert featuring a work by a contemporary composer and whimpered, "Did you like that piece?" It's as if they can't allow themselves to believe their own distaste without having it confirmed by a professional.

This just shouldn't be the way things work. Composers (especially those in the business of writing dense, academic scores that sound more like aural representations of calculus equations than music) have spent a lot of time over the past several decades blasting away at symphony orchestras for not playing more new music, while conveniently ignoring the undeniable fact that the programming of new music didn't decline precipitously until virtually the entire music world fell under the spell of a generation of composers seemingly dedicated to the deliberate alienation of the listener. (see also rows, tone) Not only did these composers and their advocates in the press delight in the discomfort and hostility of the average concertgoer, they viciously attacked or studiously ignored any composer impudent enough to continue making use of such supposedly passé concepts as tonality or emotion.

This era is mercifully over, and has been for at least 15 years (although certain modernist bigwigs with friends in high places are still inexplicably held up as shining examples of what composers should be in certain academic and musical circles.) Most of today's best composers are writing music that, while certainly challenging in comparison to much of what you can hear on the radio, is accessible enough to the average listener that it won't trigger an immediate fight-or-flight reflex. More importantly, young composers seem to be granted greater freedom than in decades past to experiment with different styles and find their own voice rather than being pressured to adhere to a rigid ideology that equates impenetrable complexity with intelligent artistry.

To me, the great tragedy of the era in which new music was used as an intellectual cudgel with which audiences could be beaten is that even in 2007, when my orchestra is preparing to premiere a new work that I know for a fact they'll be able to absorb and enjoy on first hearing, I look out into the crowd before the first downbeat, and see hundreds of tense and worried faces attached to intelligent, open-minded people who are steeling themselves for the worst. Listeners have become so used to being confused and taken advantage of by the composers of the past that they can't help but assume that they're going to hate what's coming from a composer of today. And that's a damn shame.

The good news is that it doesn't seem to take much to break down those fears. Bear with me for a story: A few years back, the Minnesota Orchestra was premiering a brand new work by a composer of some international renown, as we do on a somewhat regular basis. We'd been rehearsing it all week with varying degrees of success, and as the concert loomed, we found out that the composer would not be able to attend, due to ill health. This was a shame, because we had been hoping that he would speak to the audience about the work, which was very complex and dark, before we played it, thus perhaps preparing them for what to expect.

Instead, Osmo took the microphone to speak about the piece, and everyone in the room was amazed by what he said. Right off the bat, he confessed that when he first saw the score, he had thought, "Oh, no." The piece was so esoteric and academic that he feared that neither the orchestra nor the listeners would be able to get their minds around it enough to make the experience of listening worth anything. Osmo further confessed that, even after days of rehearsal, he still wasn't sure whether he liked the piece. But, he added with a laugh, "what does Vänskä know? You will have your own opinions, and if we are playing the piece well, you will be able to hear with your own ears." It was an unexpectedly profound moment, even as the audience laughed at the joke. A conductor had just given a roomful of listeners full permission to hate a piece of music that they had paid to hear. All he asked was that they listen with an open mind.

After that concert, I cornered every audience member I could find, and asked what they'd thought of the piece. (I hated it, myself, but didn't let on.) Lots of them thought it was lousy - a few liked it. But the difference between these listeners and the ones I usually hear from after a tough premiere was that all of them were smiling, even the ones who had no use for the piece. Osmo had given them credit for being intelligent adults, capable of drawing their own conclusions about music, and that made them far more willing to engage with the piece than they would have been otherwise. I've often thought that if Osmo's speech could be replayed before every new or unfamiliar work we play, our listeners would wind up liking a far higher percentage of what we play for them.

Holland sums it all up better than I can: "Composers ought to write anything they want. And how nice it is that lovers of Duparc or Ned Rorum can gather in small recital halls and listen to the songs they wrote. Let explorers of microtonal imagery or computer-generated randomness revel in their exclusivity. The Internet seems made for niches of specialized interests; and if Milton Babbitt disciples want to crawl into one and exchange examples of combinatoriality, let us leave them to it. [But] for thinking big, you need to need the people... Giving composers the luxury of being important and disliked debilitates music."