Italics are mine

Benjamin Zander's TED talk

For today's post, I thought I'd mention Ben Zander's TED talk on classical music, which has already gathered almost 3 million views at the time of this writing.

Zander is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and co-author, with his wife Rosamund Stone Zander, of The Art of Possibility, one of the first personal-growth books I read when I came to the States (I even remember when I read it: November 2000), and which profoundly affected me via its authenticity and generosity of spirit.

I've been blessed with the opportunity of attending several of Zander's concerts when I lived in Massachusetts and it's always a pleasure to hear someone advocate for classical music so passionately. In just twenty minutes for this 2008 TED talk, Zander manages to convey his genuine belief that everybody can love classical music - but a lot of people don't know it yet.

Personally, I've found that the right works of classical music move and inspire me in ways that modern music cannot. Brahms, Schumann, Beethoven, Brahms: those are the composers who give me faith in humanity. The interpreters inspire me through their talent as well - everyone should go and listen to their favorite piece in a concert hall and not just on their iPod. (Most orchestras have some affordable seats, and since the music counts more than the scenery, partial views from the stage aren't much of an issue.) Listening to live classical music might change your life.

I particularly love watching/hearing young musicians at the beginning of their career - one of the highlights of my stay in Paris in June was the concert given by students from the New England Conservatory and Preparatory School in a church of the Latin Quarter. In addition, my favorite moments of the Aspen Music Festival involved concerts given by the students: the free concert "on top of the mountain" by a brass quintet, and the performance of Copland's Third Symphony on my last day. (I know I may not be able to do this if I have children, so I take advantage of my current lifestyle while I can. If you can't go to a concert hall, at least try to listen to a performance live, either broadcast on the radio or streamed on the Internet. There is a huge difference in energy between something played at that very moment by real musicians and something that has been recorded in a studio before it found its way to your CD player.)

Classical music still has the power to bring the best in people, but they need to know how to start, which is why Zander's steadfast efforts to bring classical music to underprivileged children resonate for me to this day. The moment in the video where he talks about a boy in Northern Ireland who thought about his slain brother - and cried for the first time about the sibling's death - while Zander played Chopin brought tears to my eyes. We need more Benjamin Zander. The world is a better place because of him.

Paris Reviews Interviews

For today’s post, here are some Paris Review interviews I like. They’re available for free on the magazine’s website, which is where I recently read them. For good measure, I then headed out to my local bookstore and bought the summer issue of the magazine – with two great interviews about “the art of the theater” and a spellbinding essay about pirates and New Orleans, among other things – because we all have to do what we can to support such a worthy endeavor, and the cultural world would be poorer if the Paris Review interviews didn’t exist.

My selection of interviews (and I’m sure I forgot many more worthwhile ones):

• Ha Jin (2009)
• Orhan Pamuk (2005)
• Russell Banks (1998)
• David McCullough (1999)
• Arthur Miller Part 1 (1966) Part 2 (1999)
• Lillian Hellman (1965)
• Alice Munro (1994)
• Tennessee Williams (1981)
• Ismail Kadare (1998)
• Czeslaw Milosz (1994)
• Octavio Paz (1991)
• Heinrich Boll (1983)
• Donald Hall (1991)

What are your favorite Paris Review interviews? Any pointer on a great interview that might’ve escaped my attention?

As a side note, the magazine has published several volumes of interviews, the first one of which I own, but the archives of interviews beg for a print-on-demand feature where people could choose which interviews they want to include in the “book” of Paris Review interviews they are about to create, with pricing done accordingly. It is the twenty-first century: embrace it.

Those interviews offer a fascinating glimpse into the writing world and the personalities of yesterday’s and today’s greatest fiction or nonfiction writers – the questions aren’t trite without being obtuse, and the interviewees become real people of flesh and bones who discuss openly their careers, books (or plays) and daily routines. I can’t think of any other magazine that provides readers with such in-depth interviews. A must for writers, but also for anyone who cares about creativity. Simply priceless.

Joe Papp and the Public Theater

When I lived in France, theater was a big love of my life – unfortunately that love was left behind when I moved to the States, for various reasons. The biggest one is that I quickly felt Americans prefer razzle-dazzle musical theater, and also because I didn’t know what the good plays and the good theaters were in Boston (and I had little time, being in graduate school), and also because at the beginning of my time in the States it was hard for me to understand spoken English on stage – I remember vividly attending a Chekhov play at the American Repertory Theater in Brattle Square, and struggling to understand half of it, although Chekhov is one of my favorite playwrights. So my interest fell by the wayside.

But my interest got rekindled as I started attending the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival a few summers ago, and it reached incandescent proportions when I was in Paris in June and got to revisit my old haunts. It became clear that I love this (this being theater), and I want more of it in my life. I’ve made more efforts to see plays, some that met with abject failure (Common Pursuit, Clybourne Park), and others that have left me pleasant or downright wonderful memories (Pride and Prejudice, 33 Variations, Grey Gardens – yes, even if it’s a musical! – and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in addition to the Shakespeare plays I’ve seen at the festival). Interestingly, all the productions I’ve liked so far I’ve been away from New York City. I do think non-musical theater has a hard time succeeding in New York, since you need a “hook” to bring the tourists: usually a famous actor or actress willing to spend a few weeks taking curtain calls, or a Tony award, or both.

After the Clybourne Park birthday debacle, I headed to Barnes and Noble and bought a couple of books on the theater to recognize my renewed passion for it and save what I could from my ill-advised theater-themed birthday celebration. Free for all: Joe Papp, The Public and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told was one of those books. Initially I didn’t know what to make of the book, since it’s written in an “oral history” mode, i.e., Kenneth Turan transcribes what interviewees told him in paragraphs that start with their names. (Joseph Papp, who died in 1991, is listed as a co-author of the book and is quoted at length.)

But Turan changes interviewees very often so it gives a vivid, kaleidoscopic feel to the book, as if you had a lot of people swapping stories in your living-room, which is perfect for something about theater. The book also escapes the pitfall of shallowness, which is a real danger with that mode of story-telling. I loved how sometimes people had different recollections of the same events, and gave their own perspective, and provided really good insights into what it took for Joe Papp to build the New York Shakespeare Festival and bring free theater to Central Park.

One thing I particularly liked about the book (although apparently it is something Papp didn’t like, and a reason he gave up on the project), is that the interviews give a really good sense of Papp as a leader, flaws and all – that makes him seem real, genuine, not a two-dimensional character like some of the Fortune 100 CEOs profiled in business books. As a result, the book offers an excellent perspective on leadership.

Papp’s style might or might not have been the best way to proceed, but he insisted on extreme loyalty and being the sole person in charge – no co-manager for him – and he was very straightforward about what he stood for. He and the other people interviewed in the book gave fascinating accounts of the successes but also the failures they had along the way. The world of theater, where each space hosts several shows a year, offers for the sort of rapid-fire succession of “products” (here, plays) with different “teams” (casts) that the regular business world can only dream of. As a result, there are a lot more instances to analyze and lessons to be drawn – about managing people, scaling up production, and the like.

This is why I feel the book can be valuable for people who don’t particularly intend to work in theater management but are interested in business. More than twenty years after his death, Papp continues to inspire.

Marlboro Music Festival

A few weeks ago I went to Vermont for the Marlboro Music Festival – starting last year or so I decided I wanted to visit the US more, since it’ll be harder to do if/when I settle down, so I might as well enjoy my freedom while I can. Going to classical music festivals gives me a nice incentive for me to pack my stuff and get in my car (or head to the airport, as was the case when I went to Colorado), since it’s a bit hard to find the motivation to go away for a weekend unprompted when I have so much to do.

The drive to Vermont itself was wonderful – I forgot my music at home and I don’t like listening to the radio long distance (because the stations change and even when they don’t they rarely play a lot of things I like), so I drove without any sound at all, except for the GPS lady. I avoided the New York City area and used mostly I-78/84/91, which provided a scenic and peaceful drive, with a pit stop halfway through in Southbury, CT to eat at Panera and fill the gas tank. What I loved most about it is that nature has a way of calming me down, so by the time I reached Brattleboro and the B&B, I had figured out what I want my next novel to be about and felt as refreshed as if I’d just gone on retreat. (By the way, if you’re ever in the Brattleboro area and need a B&B, I recommend Forty Putney Road. Just loved them on all counts.)

I had an hour or two of downtime before I headed to Marlboro, a 20-minute drive away. Apparently it’s a good thing I had the GPS I plug into my car, because someone at the B&B told me phone service is spotty and people who rely on the GPS of their phone to navigate often get lost. The drive along Route 9 was quite awe-inspiring, with stupendously tall pine trees and a very sinuous road that must be quite treacherous in the winter but was very enjoyable that evening. And when I drove back later after dark, the full moon lit the whole landscape up.

I’ll talk about the two concerts I went to in a second, but first I have to say the whole magical scenery in an area that obviously attracts a special kind of self-reliant, adventurous, close-to-nature crowd, made me think about the whole mess the country is in and the financial crisis brought about some money-hungry and/or power-hungry people in New York and Washington, D.C., none of whom seem likely to last more than five minutes in rugged Vermont in the winter (and frankly I wouldn’t either, I drive a Golf, I don’t know how to put snow chains, ice on the road makes me want to scream) and I couldn’t help but wonder: what happened, America? How could a country that produced Vermont and its resourceful residents get bogged down in such a quagmire and feel so powerless because of the greed of some bankers?

Going to Vermont for me meant reconnecting with a certain kind of faith in the human spirit, because Vermont (in the winter) is definitely not for the faint of heart, and just standing close to people who chose that lifestyle helps you to aim higher and push beyond your limits. I kid you not. At least that’s what Vermont did to me.

So, the concerts. They’re played by students from the Marlboro Music School and some of their professors. The first one had quartets by Hindemith, Beethoven and Faure, and curiously enough the Hindemith and Faure pieces (Quartet for Clarinet, Violin, Cello and Piano, 1938, and Piano Quartet in G Minor, Op. 45, 1885-86) enthralled me much more than the – very nicely played – Beethoven String Quartet, Op 18 No 3, all Beethoven enthusiast that I am. (It’s an early Beethoven string quartet, which might explain why it left me lukewarm.)

The second one had some modern pieces and, after the intermission, Beethoven’s Op.130/133 String Quartet, which ran over 45 minutes. For those of you who don’t go to classical music concerts, it’s hard to explain the feeling in the room when I see these musicians play without pause for 45 minutes straight, and produce such amazing sounds that you can’t help but feel moved at a very intuitive level, and that you can’t help either realize you’re witnessing a rare moment of great fleeting beauty.

As soon as I was back home I whipped out my Beethoven String Quartets box set by the Emerson String Quartet (yes… I’m that kind of person) and listened to it three or four times in a row. I’m still not tired of it. It’s that beautiful.

Now, about Rudolf Serkin. The first evening I bought his biography at the Marlboro festival by Stephen Lehmann and Marion Faber – I know about Adolf Busch, about whom I have an enormous two-volume biography I still have to read, but I didn’t realize Serkin had been his student, colleague and son-in-law.

The biography has some flaws (sometimes the authors mention things that they only explain later, for instance they write about Serkin and Busch’s daughter when they’re already married, before returning to the courtship) but it was a great introduction about Serkin, and also about Busch, since I haven’t found the time to tackle Tully Potter’s opus yet.

Another plus is that the book includes a CD of Serkin playing several wonderful pieces at the piano, which makes the price tag of $30 (Oxford University Press…) much more reasonable for a somewhat slim volume.

Serkin, before the Marlboro adventure, was the director of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he helped place a new emphasis on chamber music, expanded the opera program and developed a strong connection with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Both at Curtis and at Marlboro, he placed an unusual importance, for a musician of his caliber, in teaching the next generation of artists.

Personally I feel that the focus on chamber music at Marlboro and the surrounding nature have helped distinguish the festival from many others. Another one of its key features is that the programs are only known a few days in advance, depending on which rehearsals have been most fruitful (the various groups of musicians haven’t played with each other before).

I wish more of an effort was made to get the public to know the students who are performing in the orchestra to create a connection not only with the spirit of Marlboro but with the blood-and-flesh people who create the music and hopefully will find their way to the national spotlight soon enough. Short biographies and pre-concert talks would have been helpful, although I admire the directors’ choice to completely focus on the music. The Marlboro Music Festival is truly a very special place, and I hope I get to come back.