When is a lot of American music simply too much? Never!

The entire month of February was spent conducting creations from the States, some old and some new. Over the course of four weeks, I led pieces by 18 different American composers. Performing these wonderful works was nothing short of exhilarating.

It all started in Bern, Switzerland. They had asked for a program of American works, and I included the Barber Violin Concerto among them. This would be the only piece that I repeated during the whole month. Our soloist was Augustin Hadelich, a violinist I certainly knew about but had never worked with. His sweet tone and sense of rubato for this most romantic of concertos was always in good taste.

Well, that didn’t take long.

After a lovely New Year’s Eve concert in St. Louis with music, fun and friends, Cindy and I got home around 10:30. I had written most of last month’s web piece and sent it off to post. It never dawned on me that there might just be something cringeworthy to start off 2019.

I have never been one to do much to celebrate the arrival of the next twelve months. It was sort of exciting the first time my parents let me stay up to watch the ball drop in Times Square, but I was in Los Angeles, so I actually saw it at 9:00 in the evening. In 1968, I did venture down Broadway, but not to get into the crowd gathered to hoot and holler. Instead I went to the theater with the largest screen to view 2001: A Space Odyssey. Some years I led concerts in various parts of the world, but mostly I stayed in, once in a while tuning in to watch the last moments of the proceedings.

Although it was a good year for a lot of things, many of us were pleased to get rid of 2018. The final month started off with as much, maybe even more, turmoil than usual. Following our adventure in Morocco, Cindy and I headed for the final conducting gig of the year, this one in Paris. But our arrival was anything but calm.

A bit later in the week, I wrote a short piece and thought it might be published in a major newspaper. I was told that the subject really wasn’t being covered in enough depth to warrant an editorial comment from me, so I will now share it with all of you.

So much packed into one month: a return to Lyon, a German tour, a birthday celebration and an exotic holiday!

Although the ONL had opened its season several weeks earlier, I had the privilege of taking the orchestra on a six-concert tour of Germany. That followed a set of performances in the Auditorium as preparatory sessions for the trip. It was clear that we would perform the repertoire that would be played over the course of the tour.