Self-Aggrandizement: classical excitement

classical excitement
Filed Thursday, March 4 2004.

Just got home from a dress rehearsal for the New York Centre Symphony's concert tomorrow night. On the program is Schumann's beautiful Cello Concerto, and while the soloist is astoundingly good (off a recent Carnegie Hall solo performance), the rest of the orchestra, who received their parts only two rehearsals back, is sounding a bit rough. So, this evening, unwilling to settle for a sub-par performance, the conductor ran the group again and again through each difficult transition and harmonically complex section. Somewhere along the way, however, he apparently lost track of the time.

By 9:50, we had still yet to run cleanly through the entire piece in one go, and so we were giving it one more try. Midway through, the building manager, wildly irate, popped through the balcony door to scream down that we'd only booked the space only until 9:30, and that the entire building was set to close in just ten minutes. The maestro, unwilling to stop without at least one smooth run-through under his belt, looked up briefly, turned back to the group, and kept conducting.

Meanwhile, up in the balcony, the building manager continued to shout, showering down obscenities until spittle literally flew out of his mouth. Seeing the conductor was, none the less, still rolling ahead, the building manager pulled the ace from his sleeve: if we didn't stop immediately, he'd turn out the lights and lock us in. Even then, the conductor seemed unwilling to put down his baton; knowing the building manager would have to come down to our floor to turn off the lights, he simply watched the door and started speeding up the piece.

By the time the building manager emerged downstairs, we were on the last page, flying ahead at a frenzied pace. The poor soloist, likely pushed by the technical demands of the piece at even a normal speed, looked ready to crack, large beads of sweat forming on her forehead as her hands flew over the cello's neck. One eye on my music, another on the building manager, I watched the man lumber around the back of the hall as we blazed through the final restatement of the theme. We hit the last chords just as the lights went out, the sound of Schumann resonating in the dark.

I don't know if the building manager next made good on his threat to lock the group in; I was already standing by the end of the last note, case in hand, and was out the door by the time I took the horn off my lips. Still, I promise I'll never again complain when rehearsals seem dull; it's apparently much better than the alternative.

classical excitement Filed Thursday, March 4 2004.

classical excitement
Filed Thursday, March 4 2004.