Musical Immersion

This week at Chautauqua finds me immersed in music. It’s usually a good feeling, but at around 1:00 today I felt like I was about to drown. After an hour of personal practice time, an hour playing with Deborah, and 2 1-hour coaching sessions I was mentally and physically exhausted.

The best piece of advice today came from this morning’s coach Arie, a soft-spoken Israeli who is a professional cellist and who heads up the music program here. When I explained why I was playing one section of our Brahms sonata tentatively for fear of making a mistake, he said, “It’s a dance, a minuet, so you must smile and just play through the mistake. It will never matter.”

And later Bill talked about the difference between practice mentality and performance mentality. To stay focused and engaged, you must have the same discipline you have in meditation where you focus only on the present note, not the one you just played incorrectly or the one you are worried about in the next measure.

The best news of the day is that practice cabin #59 is now air-conditioned. I signed up to practice there because it had the best piano, recognizing that it was the only cabin that remained un-air-conditioned. You can see the beautiful new windows and the space in the wall reserved for the air-conditioner. As it warms up here, it will be nice to be able to stay cool.

My afternoon’s music consisted of attending a master class given by Rebecca Pennys, a renowned pianist. She tends to be somewhat brutal but entertaining in her comments to the young students, who all come in knowing what to expect. They played unbelievably difficult pieces, all from memory. After each performance she offered her critique, ranging from an admonishment not to bounce on the piano bench, a reminder to use posture that holds your body upright and not slouched over the keyboard, advice on using the pedal or not, and on and on and on.

At one point she was actually sitting on the floor and playing the piece on the second Steinway (and had the student doing the same) to demonstrate how much better he could hear with his head above the keyboard.

It was interesting to note that the class of about 20 students was over half Asian and predominantly female. They seems bonded to each other and receptive but somewhat impervious to the stinging comments. They graciously accepted the occasional words of praise.

The biggest surprise of the trip was the fact that our next-door neighbor here is the son of my high-school principal. He is 70 years old and has a vineyard in Westminster, Maryland. His mother of 98 still looks forward each year to her trip to Chautauqua.

I remembered that his mother had been a very strict piano teacher. In fact my friend Kay used to get dropped off for her lesson and hide in the front shrubbery instead of going in to take her lesson. Of course she was the same person who was sneaking out her bedroom window just a few years later.

Anyway, we have been invited to a Labor Day wine-tasting at this guy’s farm, complete with the music of Bruckner in the background. What a small world.

Tonight’s entertainment is a troupe of Chinese acrobats who will be performing in the amphitheater. Then it’s home to bed so we can begin another day here at Chautauqua.