My father, bass-baritone Mack Harrell

I’m in Moscow right now as a judge for the XIV International Tchaikovsky Competition but I wanted to post a note letting everyone know that today at 4:00pm Central Time, 98.7 WFMT is going to broadcast Song My Father Taught Me, which I’ve been recording with them for the past year. The program looks back on my own career and on that of my father, bass-baritone Mack Harrell. My special thanks to Louise Frank from WFMT for producing the program and putting so much of her own heart and soul into this as well as my friend and collaborator Victor Santiago Asuncion. Even if you don’t live in the Chicago area, you can still listen to the program at wfmt.com.

I’ll be writing more about the competition very soon as today is our first day off since arriving so stay tuned!

click to watch the videos

I have four new videos available of myself and pianist Yuja Wang performing Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata in G Minor, Op. 19 at the 2008 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.  Audio and Video Produced and Engineered by Matthew Snyder of Matthew Snyder Recordings. Festival artistic director Marc Neikrug, executive director Steven Ovitsky, and everyone at the festival do a wonderful job and it is always a pleasure to perform here.

With Gilbert Levine conducting, the Philharmonia of London was brought to Rome especially for this event. Levine spent years working in Poland where he met John Paul II and started talking with him about a possible event that would be meaningful for both Christians and Jews with the theme of a memorial for the Jews who died in the war. At that time, the Pope-to-be confessed having had school friends who were taken away and never seen of again, making the time very alive and real in this holy man’s psyche.

For me, this connects the idea that terrible events in history are balanced with great creative bursts of mankind, even when the personal loss may be nearly unbearable. The concert came and went for many, I suppose. But for me, I was changed, altered forever. Here I was, asked to play one of the most Jewish works, meant for the most important day in the Jewish year, in the world center of the Christian faith.

So many connections were made for me at that time, all due to the Holocaust’s impact on history. Lev Aronson and I would have never met in Dallas, Texas if it hadn’t been for this tragedy.

Lev survived the camps to end up in the U.S. instead of a full life as a cellist working in Germany. So, he had to make an entirely new life in a foreign country with no family and only very few friends from Europe whom he had known before the war. So, settling in Dallas, he turned to teaching to supplement his income. This turned out to be his true calling in life.

What courage and imagination it must have taken to make this leap of faith! In a new country with none of the secure bonds of mid-European culture supporting him, he started fresh, with no assurances, just like the Yom Kippur’s Kol Nidre asks us to do.
How could I ever forget this in my own history? I cannot, and am honored to have had such influences as a cellist and as a human being.

Postscript: as a special offering, I’ve posted a video of the full performance below, you can watch this along with my interview for the documentary at my video page. I hope you’ll take the time to watch it today and remember.

So when the opportunity comes around to take part in a section, I’m always happy to take advantage. It doesn’t happen as often and under the right circumstances as much as I would like but one recent occasion came around to participate in the LA Opera’s production of the Ring Cycle. I happened to be free and this would offer the chance to play alongside my wife and so many other wonderful colleagues.

What greater joy than to partake in recreating this monumental masterpiece that I have not been able to do in my life! For sure, I played some of the orchestral excerpts with Szell in the Cleveland orchestra in the early 70′s. It is only the second Immolation scene that I have played. That was a few summers ago with Donald Runnicles and Christine Brewer at the Grand Teton Music festival and it was an absolutely unforgettable experience. And I will even say that sometimes as a soloist I am frustrated that I can only do the solo part!

But, I suppose there are people who cannot imagine that someone in my position would not want to be in the spotlight all the time. Well, the answer to that is a resounding “no.” I would prefer, really, if the listener is confronted with the MUSIC! It has enriched my life immeasurably and that I have gotten such credit along the way is only peripherally meaningful. I am free to play only this one of the four.

I told Placido Domingo the Musical Director of the company, that I was so sorry not to play the Walkure! I said, “I’d make that storm at the beginning have basketball-sized rain drops!!” Hopefully, that opportunity will come around sooner than later.

WFMT, Guest Host
Friday, 1/8/2010

That's WFMT announcer Kerry Frumkin on the left. He did an outstanding job and was a wonderful host.

You've already read about the on-air segment in my previous blog post. Hopefully, I'll be able to post some audio clips.

Merit School of Music
Saturday, 1/9/2010

Saturday morning included a visit to the Merit School of Music and a chance to sit down with students from the string orchestra program.

Merit is a wonderful institution and I'm happy to have had the time to stop in and work with such a great group of students.

WFMT Recording Project
Monday, 1/11/2010

I don’t know if this is something I can officially talk about or not yet but it is something that is very dear to me and I’m excited to see come about. I’ll write something more as the project develops.

Here I am with pianist Victor Asuncion warming up before the beginning of the recording session.

Even in recording sessions you take a moment every now and then to check messages.

That's Louise Frank on the pan flute. She is doing a bang up job as producer for this project and was a real sport to play the flute!

That's composer and pianist Marc Neikrug in the middle and Victor on the right. Marc and I recorded something aside from the other project and it was great fun.

Caught in mid performance.

A great shot right at the end of the piece.

It's always a treat meeting listeners after a concert, here you can see someone brought an LP cover for an autograph.

Me with Tania Castroverde Moskalenko, GPAC Executive Director

Special thanks to thanks to Barry Markowitz for letting me use his photos from the event.