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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.

What we’re talking about here is a basic level of respect for the text but what seems to be more and more common these days is just guessing at the meaning of metronome markings and foreign words. The result is an increasing number of would-be performers feeling more and more entitled to change what has been left by the original creator and to feel as though their flimsy, novel approaches are legitimate simply because they are novel.

The idea that a composer doesn’t have de facto the best and most illuminating approach to the work is fundamentally ridiculous. But that doesn’t seem to stop these musicians from thinking that it might be Brahms’ way but they have the right to disregard him and substitute their own view! This is to propose that their way is as good as ,well…Brahms.

I find this more and more distressing because without at least first trying to understand and recreate the text means that our knowledge of a composer’s use of the notational language is diluted and made fuzzy. We have a big enough problem with numerous corrupt editions and while efforts to find more accurate editions continue, the movement to disregard composer’s intentions makes these efforts more and more difficult, or worse, seemingly not important or necessary.

There are problems, to be sure, to interpret a composer’s notes and indications. The effort to do this is large and time consuming and, at times, frustrating but very edifying as the beginning of illumination is to understand a great composer’s journey into his style.

Let me say that again: efforts to do accomplish this task are time consuming and frustrating but very edifying. So it is not enough to translate PF in Brahms as correctly meaning “little forte,” but understanding why Brahms turned to invent this new term for his music to begin with is more informational and revealing. But if the rising generations of performers continue on a path of disregard, we will get performances that, in and of themselves, may be brilliant and beautiful but they are strangely devoid of understanding and not nearly as satisfying.

After all, wasn’t it Beethoven who said “You played very beautifully and interestingly, but you did not play MY piece!”

A candid photo during the show. Photo: Louise Frank

On January 8th, I posted a quick note letting everyone know about my guest host appearance at Chicago’s WFMT. I’m very happy to report that they have been kind enough to let me post the entire audio from the three hour segment here at my blog! I had an absolutely wonderful time with host Kerry Frumkin. The entire program has been divided into three sections and you can listen to each one with the audio players below.

The above audio files are from a live WFMT “Guest Host” program which took place on Friday, January 8th. Kerry Frumkin was the host; the producer, Louise Frank.  98.7 WFMT broadcasts over the Internet at www.wfmt.com, and free streaming is also available via their free iPhone app. You can also follow WFMT on Twitter: live music updates are @WFMTMusic, WFMT various staff members co-contribute to @WFMTClassical. WFMT also has a Facebook fan page.

Orlando Cole and me during a masterclass at Curtis in the mid-80s. My sincere thanks to Curtis Institute of Music for providing this photo.

Today, my great mentor, teacher, and colleague, Orlando Cole died peacefully after saying to his nurse, “Well, I’m ready.” “God will come for you in His time,” said his nurse to whom Landy softly replied, “Well, tell Him to hurry.”

Lucid to the end with family by his side they listened to Schubert’s Cello Quintet. He was, even in the end, an inspiration to us all; as human beings, as musicians, and as vibrant spirits.

In my own life, I never met anyone so understanding, generous, and vitally connected to his love of music, family, friends, and his students. I am deeply indebted to his quality as an artist as well as his awe of the great works that we are privileged to play and hear. He was one of a kind and over the course of his wonderfully long and full life; he witnessed so much change since starting out as a young cellist in the late 1920’s.

Orlando Cole

He had opinions of the changes that have taken place, but he had a flexibility of musical perspective that was very rare for any generation, but especially so for the particular generation that grew up with Casals , Feuermann, Piatigorsky, and later, Rose, Du Pre, and Yo Yo Ma. His mission with his students was more aimed to ignite the passion and reverence that he felt so keenly about the great composers. When the discussion would gravitate around the short lifespan of a Mozart or Schubert, Landy would simply point out that Schubert, one of seven children only two of which survived infancy, was lucky to have survived at all. This put us all into a realm of true astonishment of the gift that a man like Schubert had given us.

A man who never once tired of the great works and their challenge to us, esthetically, emotionally, and technically, and who would always find a positive and inspiring way to reach out to his students.

I do, and will, miss him greatly.

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.