Clara Schumann

3 Romanzen, Op. 22 (1853)

Helen Fisher, a Canadian-American anthropologist and human behavior researcher, is a leading expert on the biology of love. She divides the experience of love between men and women into three overlapping stages: lust, attraction and attachment; each involves the increased release of certain chemicals in the brain. I respect her research, but it just sounds too scientific for me. During the holiday of Chinese New Year, I saw a movie, ‘The Flowers of War’; by the end of it, I finished a whole pack of tissue paper. It talks of 12 prostitutes and a boy, sacrificing themselves to save the lives of the convent girls, in Japan’s ‘Rape of Nanjing’ in 1937. It shows the noblest side of the human soul. This makes me think: love, perhaps, is the unselfish concern for the good of the others. In music, I thought of Clara Schumann.
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Happy New Year to all!
What better way to begin the New Year than listening to Bach in a concert you did not expect to be in?
On the evening of the 31 December, having wondered from café to café in Soho for the entire afternoon, we were not only highly caffeinated but also looking for a nice place to see the new year in. Wigmore Hall was running a wonderful programme of Bach cantatas and the 5th Brandenburg Concerto, but tickets had been sold off for weeks. Thanks to three strangers who were kind enough to go find something else to do that evening and returned their tickets, we managed to sneak in at the last and listen to an excellent presentation of the Retrospect Ensemble.
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Las 4 Estaciones Portenas (The 4 Seasons of Buenos Aires)
(arr. L. Desyatnikov for violin and strings)

I have long had a love affair with Astor Piazzolla’s music. Several years ago I heard the wonderful recording of Le Grand Tango for cello and piano performed by Yo Yo Ma. Written in 1982 and dedicated to Russian cellist, Mistislav Rostropovitch it was premiered by him in 1990 in New Orleans.

I was transported by the piece and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the music to play it myself. I fell in love with the driving syncopated rhythms and the beautiful melodies, perfect for the soulful voice of the cello and The tango rhythm is simply an 8/8 common time signature, but it is transformed when it is grouped in three accented groups 3/3/2. It becomes passionate, unrelenting, unrestrained and the ending of Le Grand Tango leaves both the audience and the performers breathless.

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Imagine a world without language — a world where sounds were merely frequencies on a spectrum, and where the rules of writing and speech did not exist. It would be virtually impossible to imagine how human civilization would have developed, how history would have unfolded, or how science and technology would have progressed as we know it today.
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And it has been two wonderful and exciting years for me.
Through Interlude, I have met outstanding musicians, learned the fascinating history of talented composers and discovered inspiring new pieces. My knowledge and appreciation not just for music, but for life as well, have been tremendously enriched.
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Bach : Passacaglia and Fugue in C-Minor

Bach : Die Kunst der Fuge

The Reformation and Counterreformation of the 16th and 17th centuries had a decisive impact not only on the architecture of the time, moving from the harmony and balance of the Renaissance to the painted heavens, extreme ornamentation and disturbance captured in the concave and convex form of the Baroque, but was also replicated in the musical forms of the opera and the art of the castrati singers of the period. In church building, the basilica form was resurrected, not only bringing public and priests into a shared space, but changing the church service to a more participatory experience, in which music, and particularly the organ, played a significant part.
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J.S. Bach

Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben, BWV 8 (1724)

A recent poll of Classical music buyers by the BPI (The British Recorded Music Industry) returned an interesting answer: that the favourite composer of an overwhelming majority was Johann Sebastian Bach. An evergreen composer, his music is continually committed to disc by performers with new interpretations, and performed regularly in concerts, with perhaps the most of the performed works being the two Passions. The public interest in the composer was certainly in evidence on Saturday in a packed St John’s College Chapel.
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Mahler Symphony no. 1 in D major “Titan” (1888)

Non-musicians (civilians we call them) like to get behind the scenes. Sometimes they ask questions that surprise us, such as: “You play for a living — do they pay you for that?” or “What’s your day job?” or one I love especially — when I am home during the day practicing, and I answer a phone call — “Janet did I wake you?”

All of this prompts me to describe a couple of weeks we recently experienced that might shed some light on the rigors of orchestral life. While the time period I’ve chosen was unique, it included a tour to New York City still the musical and physical demands are those that symphony orchestra musicians encounter regularly.

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One of my most memorable new year’s day was in the year 2010. I went to a friend’s place to watch a TV broadcast of the New Year Concert, live from Vienna, with several music lovers and critics. Before the concert, we were so excited about it as if we were children again, waiting to be taken to the ‘Neverland’. As soon as our discussion on music and the arts became heated, the program began. The concert took place in the most beautifully decorated Musikverein, with white Lilies in almost every corner of the Groβer Saal. The members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra were already seated on stage. Then, the 86 year-old George Prêtre slowly walked onto the podium. With a wave of his baton, he led the orchestra to embark on a journey with the delightful waltzes by Strauss. We, in Hong Kong joined in the ride with the audience in the Musikverein and many more listeners around the world. It was magical.
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Ravel : Bolero

Sibelius : Oceanides

We musicians just want to make music. We are willing to self-destruct if need be. But the goal is to re-create great music with ease and expressiveness. It’s vital to keep in mind that our violins, cellos, flutes and trombones are only half the musical product. They can do nothing until they interact with our physical, emotional and very human beings.

It is now widely known that it can hurt to play. Playing too much, too intensely, over weeks, months and years can do cumulative damage. Perhaps right now you can launch into any concerto or difficult orchestral work, any time no problem, and pretty much nail everything. Due to a wear and tear in your muscles that occurs over time, however, you may become less able to do these things and you may be at a higher risk for injury. Overuse is a loose term applied to several conditions in which body tissues have been stressed beyond their biological limits. These disorders of the musculoskeletal system can affect bones, joints and such soft tissues as ligaments, tendons and muscles.

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