This being 2012, I dumped this thought into the Facebook vortex and went to bed. The next morning, alongside a few other comments, I found this from our MPR broadcast host (and American Public Media’s classical music czar) Brian Newhouse:

“From the booth, the Dances were a little rocky in spots. (They must be harder to play than they sound, right?) The choral pieces were gwah-jous. The Serenade was cool for the visuals and the dark sound until LET THERE BE PICCOLO!”

That right there? That is without a doubt the most concise and complete review of a concert I’ve ever read. Just four sentences, and he tells you everything you might want to know about the performance. (I do suspect that the piccolo thing was probably not an issue for anyone who wasn’t listening with radio-quality headphones clamped on his ears, but I love the image of mild-mannered Brian getting knocked off his perch in the tiny broadcast booth above the stage by a Roma Moment.)

So, anyway, here’s what I’m thinking would be a fun game. You have four sentences (no run-ons) to completely sum up a performance you’ve attended recently. Doesn’t have to be a MN Orch concert, though it certainly could be (and yes, I appreciate the risk I’m taking by introducing this game right after an Inside the Classics weekend.) Doesn’t even have to be a concert, I suppose. But Brian’s set the standard: be specific, be evocative, and if possible, be funny. In the comments. Go.

(Now you’re curious, right? Fine: “There were shepherds imbibing in the fields, drinking scotch over the rocks by night.”)

There are a few pieces, like Messiah, where a single set of lyrics is known far and wide, but it’s far more common for individual interpretations to become legend within a single city or ensemble. One former MN Orch violinist had some truly epic words to go with the first half-page or so of the last movement of the Sibelius concerto, and I once worked at a summer camp with a guy who had scripted more or less the entire Mendelssohn octet with lyrics so filthy that I can’t think of a single sentence I can reprint here.

But I have to say, British comedian Rainer Hersch has pretty much cornered the market on this little game. Who knew the Queen of the Night was on Ecstasy?

Brilliant. And presenting the lyrics in play-by-play fashion definitely ups the comedic value exponentially. Actually, hearing Hersch calling the Queen’s big number as a live event reminded me of one of my very favorite old PDQ Bach bits…

I’ve been laughing at that Peter Schickele voiceover since I was 8 years old. My favorite part is the flustered, incredulous overreaction to the six-second oboe cadenza in the development. And I’ve been waiting my entire career for a horn player to kack that particular note in the exposition – it hasn’t happened yet, but I carry a bright yellow penalty flag with me at all times just in case it ever does. (Any self-respecting horn player would, of course, have me killed for throwing the flag, but it would be worth it.)

And hey, as long as this post has become a generalized music/comedy mishmash, let’s wrap it up with Victor Borge and some Muppets, shall we? Happy Monday, all…

Speaking of Sleigh Ride, that omnipresent Leroy Anderson classic seems to show up on nearly every holiday program we play, regardless of who put the program together or what the ostensible theme of the concert is. Other songs of the season might have their haters, but it seems like pretty much everyone loves Sleigh Ride. And why not? It has a catchy tune, jingle bells, a big brass windup, whinnying horses, and the crack of a whip!

Or, actually, generally not the crack of a whip. The whip cracks that dot the landscape of Sleigh Ride are pretty much always played by a percussionist holding a slap stick, two flat pieces of wood hinged together at one end that create a gunshot/whip crack sound when slapped together. This is partly because a slap stick is way easier to time accurately than a whip, and also because musicians who sit in front of percussion sections stubbornly refuse to allow occasional whip injuries to be added to the list of acceptable workplace risks.

That having been said, our principal percussionist, Brian Mount, loves a challenge, and he’s also probably bored to tears with Sleigh Ride at this stage of his career, so this month, he’s been wandering around Orchestra Hall with a 5-foot bullwhip, and beginning with our Time for Three concert a couple of weeks back, he’s been doing his dead level best to deploy it in performance. I’ll be honest: it wasn’t a high-percentage shot the first couple of times he did it. But the crowds went nuts for the sight of a completely deadpan, bespectacled musician sending a 5-foot whip shrieking across the stage, and in many cases, a flubbed crack that drew laughter would lead directly to a mighty ovation when he hit the next one perfectly.

Brian is also a natural-born ham, and like most orchestra musicians, he tends to view the last concert before a vacation week as an excuse to take a few risks in the service of amusing his colleagues. So this afternoon, as we wrapped up our final Scandinavian Christmas concert with yet another Sleigh Ride, Brian emerged from the back of the percussion section carrying his whip, walked straight up to the podium while we played the introduction, removed his jacket and tie, stretched a few times, and then treated the audience to a full view of his skills…

Okay, he did flub one later on. But by this time, the audience was in his back pocket. He sat down on the edge of the podium as if sulking, drawing more laughter, then finished off the piece with a flourish.

Well played, Mount. (And my thanks to harpist Ann Benjamin for shooting the footage while hiding behind her instrument!) Maybe next year we can combine this with the Santa Lucia procession and snap a few candles off heads…

CONCERNING THE SEXUALITY
OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

…I know. You’d never even considered the possibility, had you? Me, neither. My viola’s never given me even the slightest sign that it possesses a libido, and while I know plenty of musicians who have given their instruments names, I don’t know anyone who’s ever sat down and had the birds and bees talk with them.

Still, I’m an open-minded sort, so I was game to read through the article. Maybe I’d find some hidden truth that could explain why it is that fully 50% of the openly gay population of the Minnesota Orchestra resides in the viola section, (I’d always just assumed it was because we have impeccable taste,) or why violinists are always so pretty on the outside and so ugly on the inside. (Kidding, violinists, kidding. Back to your practice rooms.)

The article, as it turns out, is anything but scholarly. (EmilyLiz tagged it in a Google Books search, so if you want to read the whole thing, click here.) In fact, it’s pretty much a load of vaguely misogynistic garbage wrapped up in profoundly weird phraseology.

“The violin artist… even physically is of a different type from that of the cellist, the first being generally full of masculine vigor and life, while the second is apt to be effeminate, showy, soft and silky.”

To which I can only say: please meet Ms. Jacqueline du Pre.

Yeah, you’re right, there’s nothing vigorous or lifelike
about this performance. What a wallflower.

I mean, come on. It took me exactly two seconds to think of a specific performance I could use to demolish that argument. You’re gonna have to do a lot better than that, Current Opinion of 1921…

“Tschaikovsky’s [sic] music… suggests Oscar Wilde’s literature…

By “suggests,” I’m assuming you just mean that both of these men were at least part-time homosexuals?

“…there being a strong psycho-sexual resemblance between the writer and musician.”

Mm-hm. That was what you meant, then. Go on.

“Tschaikovsky gave the viola and the contrabass preeminence in his music…

Other than a couple of moments in the sixth symphony, this would be news to the violists and bass players of the world, but since your point seems to be that viola is by extrapolation a gay instrument, it fits nicely with my earlier statement about our viola section, so I’m going to allow it.

“…whereas the music of such as Berlioz or Verdi or Mascagnet or Massenet is of the male of the species – tenor and violin.”

uh. So, wait. All tenors are straight? Is that it? Or are you saying that straight composers like the violin more than gay ones?

“[Konrad] Berkovici observes… that the French and Italians are the best wind-instruments players, and that Teuton women have a predilection for the oboe and the nondescript saxophone.”

What the hell is a nondescript saxophone? For that matter, what’s a Konrad Berkovici? And if you’re right about the Teuton women playing any instruments at all, how cheesed off must they have been to spend years slaving away at their practice stands, only to find out that none of the big German orchestras would take them because they had the wrong chromosomes?

“The violin classes are always full of fiery, dark-eyed boys. Seldom, if at all, have blue-eyed violinists reached any artistic height…

Sorry, Josh. Apparently you can't play the violin.

“…while the classes of cello are comparatively swamped with female students. The males studying cello are in a minority and of a totally different type than their brothers of the violin: blue-eyed, soft, shy, retiring effeminates.”

I double dog dare you to come over here and say that to Tony Ross’s face. And while you’re at it, would you care to wrap up your little treatise with a bit of casual racism?

“Primitive races, or races in process of ascendancy, are said to produce more male violinists than highly cultivated ones.”

…wow. You’ve outdone yourself. Care to back that up in any way?

“[T]he French have not given a single great violinist in the last hundred years. Ysaye, Thibaud, Vieuxtemps are Belgians.”

Which is the same fracking thing and you know it. Also, Belgian isn’t a race. It’s a waffle without a government.

So, what have we learned? That scholarship on sexuality wasn’t exactly at an advanced place in 1921? Certainly. That people who want to ascribe particular human characteristics and personality traits to inanimate objects are a little unbalanced? Perhaps. That Google Books is apparently a treasure trove of Yesteryear’s Crazy? Without a doubt. Thanks, EmilyLiz!

But in between those bookends… wow. The Gods of Logistics were not with us this week, and our staff had to scramble right from the beginning. It had already been complicated figuring out how to get us all to New York: normally, we all fly together on a single direct flight, but this time, no single flight had enough seats available at anything approaching a reasonable price, so those of us taking the official flights were divided into two groups, flying on two different airlines, arriving at two different NY-area airports.

Both groups were leaving MSP at approximately the same time, so we greeted each other at the check-in desk, then went our separate ways. I was in Group A, headed for Laguardia, and as far as I was concerned, everything went smoothly. We boarded ahead of schedule, took off on time, and touched down in Queens nearly a half hour early. By 7pm, we were checked into our hotel in Midtown Manhattan and scouting dinner locations.

Group B, meanwhile, which should have arrived at Newark about 15 minutes after us, was still on the ground in Minneapolis. A series of mechanical problems caused their flight to be delayed, delayed again, and eventually canceled altogether. This presented a rather large problem for staffer Kris Arkis, who now had to find a new way to get 37 musicians to New York as quickly as possible, preferably without the orchestra having to pick up the tab for 37 different cab rides to Midtown if everyone arrived on different flights. The airline she was dealing with (which I won’t name, but let’s just say that if it were a landmass, it would be bigger than a country, and it might have a drift to it) kept insisting that they didn’t have any big banks of seats available, right up until they finally admitted that they had a flight getting ready to go that still had exactly 37 empty seats. Kris pounced, and Group B touched down in New Jersey just after 10:30pm Eastern, 21½ hours before our Carnegie Hall concert would begin.

(A few hours delay is actually nothing compared to what we went through on our first European tour with Osmo, back in 2004. If you’re interested in that story, I wrote a full recap of the last stop on that tour for an ArtsJournal blog I was writing at the time…)

The next morning at 7am (6am to us newly arrived Minnesotans,) much of the orchestra (and, presumably, most of the surrounding 10-block area) would be jolted awake by what sounded like a neverending string of 10,000-pound anvils being dropped off the Empire State Building. Looking out our windows, we beheld the sight of multiple hydraulic hammers, pile drivers, and backhoes in the vacant lot next to our hotel. They had clearly been at this job for several days, and had made pretty good progress in digging a couple of stories down into the bedrock below the ground, but they also clearly had no intention of stopping anytime soon.

From inside my room, twelve stories above the street, the noise was loud enough to make further sleep impossible. Down in the lobby, it was so oppressive that hotel staffers were walking around holding their ears and the bar/lounge area near 57th Street, which is normally close to full for 18-22 hours a day, had totally cleared out. A few people made an effort to change rooms, but almost no one succeeded. I retreated to a coffee shop a few blocks away to substitute extra caffeine for adequate rest and work on November’s ItC show.

Fortunately, other than a repeat of the construction noise on Friday morning as we were getting ready to leave, there weren’t any other major snafus on the New York trip. (Okay, I may briefly have left my viola in a bar at 12:30 in the morning, but I’m not counting that, since a) it was still there when I sprinted back in the door five minutes later, and b) if I hadn’t had to run back for it, I would have missed David Freese’s 11th inning World Series heroics.) We all made it back to MSP on time, and turned our attention to the weekend’s movie music.

Which is where the “bad news comes in threes” rule kicked in. Sarah’s gotten very, very good at conducting live film scores while the movie plays above us, and I know she’s been watching Bride of Frankenstein over and over and over for weeks to prep for this show. But as our crew rolled the film at the start of our lone rehearsal, Sarah looked down at the monitor that syncs a pair of clocks with her score, did a double take, and called a halt. Somehow, the synced clock that had been sent along with the film was off from the cues in her score by anywhere from 37 seconds to a full minute. Without the cues, we’d be flying blind, and Sarah would have no way of lining up important musical moments with the action on screen. And a whole different clock was now running on our 2½-hour rehearsal, with no way of stopping it.

Thinking quickly, Sarah decided to rehearse a few spots she knew could be hairy while the crew worked to re-sync the clock, then call a break as soon as house rules allowed it. I caught up with her as the break was ending and asked if they’d been able to fix things. She said the clock would now be “almost” right, and that would have to be close enough.

In performance, you’d never have known anything was awry, of course, as Sarah conducted the score like she’d been doing it for years. She even managed to remember to give several extra cues that various musicians had asked for during the rehearsal, all while dressed up as the Bride. And in the end, problems like this are neither unusual nor anything that constitutes a major crisis for a professional orchestra. But when they pile up like they did this week, it starts to feel like you’re living in permanent damage control mode. Personally, I’ve had enough excitement.

It’s at times like this that I turn to Anna Russell. And you should, too.

I’m amazed by how few of today’s classical music fans seem to be even vaguely aware of Anna Russell. I’ve met an awful lot of people who have at least a passing acquaintance with PDQ Bach and who can practically recite their favorite Victor Borge routines by heart, but who have never had the pleasure of hearing the woman I consider to be the greatest musical comedian of all time.

Wildly creative, musically quite gifted (though she takes pains to not appear so,) and blessed with a sense of comic timing that I would kill for, Russell was the complete package, and the best part of her performances was that you could walk in knowing nothing about classical music and still laugh your head off. (By contrast, an evening with Peter Schickele is really only funny if you already know quite a bit about what he’s satirizing.)

I’ll admit, I’ve shamelessly cribbed from Russell’s style more than once during Inside the Classics concerts. My summation of the plot of Daphnis and Chloe last spring, for instance, was inspired in large part by her “analysis” of Wagner’s Ring cycle.

Click here if you can’t see the audio player.

I even threw in a “Remember Daphnis?!” at some point later in the show just to directly reference her bleat of “Remember Wotan?!” that sent the audience above into such peals of laughter. My version didn’t have exactly the same effect – like I said, I’d kill for that woman’s timing. But having the opportunity to stand on a stage a few times a year and try to get a live audience to laugh about classical music has only deepened my respect for what Anna Russell was able to do with seemingly no effort at all.

There are still a few good musical comedians out there today – Sarah’s a big Igudesman & Joo fan, and I’m partial to the Mnozil Brass. But there may never again be anyone who can make me laugh so hard just by describing the foibles and traditions that haunt my chosen profession…

But before I start packing the car, I thought I’d leave you with the latest hilarious video on how to be a pretentious classical music twit from Juilliard violist Isabel Hagen, who clearly hasn’t changed much since I last saw her at summer camp, aged 13. When last we heard from Isabel, you might recall that she was advising us on how to convince friends and colleagues that you’re really good at chamber music. This time around, her subject is how to properly critique someone else’s performance and avoid the dreaded “I thought it was pretty good.”

(Viewer advisory: there is a bit of mild cursing in this clip, but nothing you couldn’t air on network TV at any hour of the day.)

And with that, I’m outta here. Eastbound and down. See you next week, Minnesota.

(Oh, and could you try to have this whole government shutdown thing sorted by the time I get back? That’d be great.)

The requisite tools were hastily assembled.

The contestants were properly positioned.

The drawing was rigorously overseen by a certified orange tabby.

And we have a winner!

So congratulations to Molly from (judging by her area code) Vermont, who got the call late this evening, and (hopefully) thrilled to the tinny, distorted Verizon-esque version of a symphony orchestra in full cry. And just because a shenanigan isn’t really a shenanigan unless it’s well-documented, here’s some video of the deed actually being done. (You’ll notice me frantically poking at the phone around the 25-second mark, because the first call attempt got dropped. Either Molly or her voicemail definitely picked up on the second try, thankfully.)

Truth be told, however, the end of the concert was only the beginning of one of the longest nights in recent Minnesota Orchestra memory. You see, Excelsior is a pretty small town with only one major road leading in and out, but its July 4 festivities are the stuff of local legend, so every Independence Day, the streets are choked with people, cars, boats, and the two giant buses carrying our orchestra to the concert site. As you might imagine, the top priority for our staff is to get us off the stage, onto the buses, and safely back on the road to downtown Minneapolis the moment our performance is over (around 9:45pm,) lest we get caught up in the truly insane gridlock that will descend once the fireworks are over.

Most years, this goes pretty smoothly. But this year, we knew we were in big trouble within five minutes of getting back on the buses. The first thing that happened is that we headed up the street the buses had been parked on, and were immediately confronted by a line of traffic headed the opposite direction that looked as if it stretched to eternity. With cars parked nose-to-tail on both sides of the narrow street, there was no chance of two-way traffic advancing in either direction, so the local cops told our bus drivers that they would clear the car traffic behind us, and then have the buses back up and turn onto another narrow side street.

I was on the trailing bus, so we were the first to attempt this complicated maneuver, and our driver (who retained a staggering degree of good humor throughout this ordeal) was almost immediately stymied by two giant vans which had been parked illegally close to the corners of the street we needed to turn onto (one of them was also right next to a fire hydrant.) After more than 15 minutes of valiant effort, it was scientifically determined that there was no fracking way the bus could make the turn. At this point, the fireworks display that follows our concert had been underway for a good five minutes.

The next plan proposed by the police was for them to have us back up two full blocks and try an entirely different route, but this was made impossible by the now impenetrable wall of cars that had built up behind us. Meanwhile, the fireworks had kicked into high gear, signalling that the end was near, and those of us in Bus #2 started a betting pool as to what time we might make it back to Orchestra Hall. (For the record, it’s a 19-mile trip.) It was 10:40 at the time, and I bet on midnight. I would not win.

Inevitably, the snap-crackle-pop display came to a glorious conclusion, and our bus was suddenly surrounded by thousands of people streaming to their cars, many of which were parked alongside us. The lead bus had managed to move a few dozen feet and was now almost out of our view, but the flood of new traffic almost immediately solidified the semi-permanence of our situation. Over the next half-hour, we would move five feet, and percussionist Jason Arkis would learn, after much phone-based research, that the local Domino’s would have loved to deliver us a pizza, only their delivery system was based on cars, and they feared they’d never make it the four blocks to our bus.

It was around this time that fellow violists Megan Tam, David Auerbach and I decided that we had had enough of sitting on a stationary bus, and decided to go in search of some liquid refreshment, confident that there was no way the bus would make it even to the next block before we returned. As it turned out, we didn’t have to go far – almost as soon as we crossed the street, a large family gathered on their front lawn to watch the parade of futility saw our white coats and began applauding and thanking us for the concert. We walked over and thanked them for listening, and then awkwardly broached the subject of whether or not they might have any excess beer they’d be willing to sell us to improve our commute.

This being Minnesota, they not only had beer, but they categorically refused to accept a single dollar in exchange for the cold six-pack they brought out for us, and it turned out (I swear I’m not making this up) that one of them had a viola-playing cousin who had gone to college with David. After chatting for 20 minutes or so, we returned to the bus (which had moved an additional 8 feet) triumphant. I tossed a beer Courtney’s way, because the poor guy looked like he might start to cry if we didn’t reach something that looked like a highway soon.

It was 12:30am on the nose when we pulled up to the loading dock at Orchestra Hall. It had officially taken longer for us to travel the 19 miles from a Minneapolis suburb than it took last week to make the 120-mile trek from Winona. But no one seemed angry or upset, at least on our bus. At some point, we’d all just succumbed to the ridiculousness of it all, and taken comfort in the realization that this was all going to make a great story someday.

Still, though. Next year, I’m definitely making the drive to Excelsior on my own.

And then, there are the more private inside jokes, the ones between just a few musicians that the rest of the orchestra may be completely unaware of. Basil Reeve and Adam Kuenzel have had an Abbott-and-Costello-worthy routine going on for their private amusement in rehearsals for years now; several members of the string section have been competing in a secret (and silent) cross-stage game during post-performance bows for over a year; and Richard Marshall rarely fails to crack up whoever’s sitting behind him as he wheels around and twirls an imaginary Snidely Whiplash mustache whenever the music turns suddenly sinister.

But one of my favorite inside jokes is one that fellow violist Megan Tam concocted during one of her first summers in the orchestra. Megan was all of 22 when she joined up, and in those early years, one of her obsessions was the opening music of Sousa’s ubiquitous march, The Stars and Stripes Forever, which she claimed was forever getting stuck in her head. Many of her pre-Minnesota friends were aware of this obsession, so they can’t have been too surprised when Megan began calling them on her cell phone from the middle of the viola section in the moments before we began playing the Sousa at outdoor summer concerts.

I’m going to repeat that, just in case you weren’t paying attention during that last sentence. Megan’s friends in other cities from Toronto to Portland would be minding their own business on a summer evening when their phones would ring and, upon answering, they would be treated to an insanely loud barrage of The Stars and Stripes Forever, live from the middle of the viola section. I’m not sure whether they could also hear Megan cackling maniacally in between the endless offbeats that constitute the viola part.

Megan in 2004, clearly up to no good.

I even got treated to this experience myself one summer, when I had taken the Independence Day weekend off, and was visiting family in upstate New York. I was sitting with my uncle and cousins around an outdoor table at a drive-in outside Schenectady, eating a hot dog. I was about to answer my uncle’s question as to what the rest of my orchestra was doing that night when my phone rang. I saw Megan’s name in the display, guessed correctly what was about to happen, said “They’re doing this,” and put the phone on speaker. Couldn’t have gone better if we’d planned it.

Megan and I just happen to be sitting together for this week’s outdoor concerts, and she hasn’t called anyone during the Sousa yet. Maybe she’s too mature for such shenanigans now that she’s been in the orchestra for 8 years. But I’m not, so here’s the deal: next Monday is July 4th, and we’ll be playing on the shores of Lake Minnetonka in Excelsior, as we do every Independence Day. You should totally come out and join us, but if you can’t, and you know you won’t be doing anything important around, oh, let’s say 9:40pm Central Time, I’d be happy to give you a call and treat you to some massively distorted and unnaturally viola-heavy Sousa.

Our version won’t be this cool.

I’m serious about this. If you want to be the one who gets the call, e-mail your name and phone number to sbergman@mnorch.org (American numbers only, please) and I’ll pick someone to call on Monday night. There won’t be any talking, since I’ll be, you know, playing a concert, but you can listen to as much or as little of Stars and Stripes as you like before hanging up. Festive, no?

• Why didn’t anyone think of starting an online repository for Awkward Classical Music Photos years ago? (It’s really only a matter of time until they discover this one…)
• Whether or not you’re a fan of his music (and if you’re not, I honestly don’t know what to do with you,) Nico Muhly has been providing an extensive behind-the-scenes diary of the days leading up to the world premiere of his new opera, Two Boys, at London’s English National Opera. The composer’s role in these situations is extremely complicated (when is it okay to interrupt the conductor? do you get a say on tempos and stylistic matters?) and Nico is very open about all the chaos. One line from an entry he wrote last Sunday sums it all up: “All of this is to say: making an opera is really hard and I’m really happy to be here and I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.”
• The nice folks across the pond at the UK’s popular Classic FM radio service spent last evening playing Minnesota Orchestra recordings as part of their Great Orchestras of the World project. It was awfully nice of them to include us, and they’ll also be republishing one of my recent posts on their own blog sometime soon.
• Speaking of radio, I’ve been thinking for some time that the quality and variety of the programming over at Classical MPR has been steadily climbing, to the point that KSJN is now a station I listen to very regularly . (This is saying something – I live my whole life around classical music, so it takes a lot to get me to want to listen to more of it in my off hours.) I’m not sure what prompted the change in direction, but if I had to guess, I’d say that the ascendance of Daniel Gilliam and Brian Newhouse to the top of the MPR org chart probably has a lot to do with it. Just how far has MPR been willing to branch out its formerly ultra-conservative playlist? Well, Zoe Keating is the headliner on this afternoon’s Performance Today…
• Hey, remember these guys?

Okay, that’s all I’ve got for you. Everybody out – go enjoy the sunshine, and don’t forget to get your tickets for your first opportunity to hear MN Orch musicians tackle us some Greenstein next month…