Sometimes I look at my calendar and say to myself, “What was I thinking?” What might appear simple and straightforward can turn into something unusual and not quite so understandable.
It has been a very busy first half of 2025 as orchestras kindly continued to mark my eightieth birthday. With projects piling up, I wondered if this end-of-season push might be too taxing.
But fate decreed that I could get through it all.
The spring started with a simple idea that was planted and then acted upon. A dear friend suggested that it might be fun to have the current music director in St. Louis, Stéphane Denève, and I appear in conversation together. He is eloquent and loquacious. I have been known to be at ease with public speaking.
The event was held at Sheldon Auditorium, the same venue where my father made his recital debut at the age of 12. The problem was that we needed to make this something different, not just two conductors prattling on. I innocently suggested that we inject some music into the proceedings.
I seem to have forgotten that I have not played the piano in three years. But my digits remembered that fact. After informing the audience of Victor Borge’s classic line, “My fingers are like lightning; they never strike twice in the same place,” I proceeded to demonstrate my current lack of technique in pieces by Barber and Schubert. Granted, the two outer movements of Ravel’s Mother Goose went well enough, but while I was playing, I realized that I had reached the point at which performance on the instrument was just no longer possible, at least at the standard I set for myself.
Now what do I do with all the piano music I have accumulated for more than seventy years?
One of the recurring themes in my schedule is doing favors for close friends. I try very hard not to let anyone down, but sometimes it comes at the expense of giving myself the space that I might need for other projects, including just taking it easy.
Not that the conducting dates are unsatisfactory. Indeed, they often produce a result that is surprisingly pleasant and meaningful.
The five-week stint of engagements in Europe this spring involved a lot of travel. Getting from St. Louis to almost anywhere requires two planes and sometimes three. It seems as if I spend more time at the airport than I do in the actual aircraft. Jet lag was not always an issue, but now it is. I take at least one full day off upon arrival just to get acclimated.
The first stop was Kristiansand, Norway. The violinist and conductor Julian Rachlin asked me to come to his orchestra and I agreed, knowing virtually nothing about the ensemble or even much about the country, having only been there once.
Kristiansand is a lovely city in the southwest, situated on the water with huge cruise ships dotting the harbor. The temperature was a bit chilly in April, but the rest of the trip would be in warmer climes. This makes packing an issue, although Cindy handles the task with aplomb. Still, the answer to the question, “What do you want to wear today?” completely depends on what my weather app says.
The orchestra rehearses and performs in a relatively new facility. The hall is excellent, as is the group. They learn quickly and are full of good humor, even laughing at my little jokes and asides. The program of Haydn, Debussy, and Elgar made for a fruitful rehearsal process. We worked efficiently and blended well together musically. Julian is fortunate to have such a flexible ensemble to lead.
Time and age change how one thinks about experiences. If this had been, say, forty years ago, I might have imagined Kristiansand as a great place to be for several years with everything a conductor could want—fine orchestra, outstanding hall, and state-of-the-art recording facilities.
The next stop turned out to be quite different than what was scheduled. For the past several years, I have gone to Poland to conduct various orchestras. As a young composer, Cindy studied with Penderecki, and these trips give her an opportunity to visit with friends from years ago.
My concert was planned as part of the annual Beethoven Easter Festival organized by the Penderecki’s widow, Elżbieta. On this occasion, the program was to consist of Cindy’s Adagio, written as a response to 9/11; Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem, reflecting the composer’s thoughts regarding World War II; and Hindemith’s When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, which utilizes Whitman’s poetry from the Civil War—an ideal and clever grouping.
Things went off the rails in the weeks leading up to the first rehearsal. I was supposed to do this with the orchestra and chorus from Wrocław, which I was told were excellent. However, the Polish government reduced the funding for the project, throwing a wrench in the budget. Despite attempts to reorganize with two different orchestras and a modified program, the concert was cancelled about a week before I was scheduled to arrive. What to do with this unexpected free week? Cindy and I left the chilly North and went to Venice.
Why not?
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It was time to head south to a part of Spain that is actually closer to Africa. For the past couple of years, I have been principal guest conductor of a fine group of musicians, the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria in Las Palmas. They play in an extraordinary hall—at the rear of the stage is a giant curved window overlooking the ocean. During rehearsals, I can often see surfers.
With a two-week stint, I had plenty of time to enjoy the beautiful April weather, which was neither too hot nor too cold. Without too many tourists yet, Las Palmas offers many opportunities for discovery. For me, many of them have to do with dining.
I unearthed even more treasures during the rehearsals and concerts. Bruckner is not a composer people usually associate with me. In fact, for most of my career, I avoided this composer assiduously. The music just did not spark any flame. I tried a couple times but mostly found the efforts unsuccessful.
However, the Second and Fourth symphonies have struck a responsive chord. Perhaps it has something to do with what Erich Leinsdorf once told me. He was performing the “Romantic” Symphony, and it was the first time I actually enjoyed listening to one of Bruckner’s works.
When I asked the conductor why that might have been, he wanted me to tell him what the piece was called.
“Romantic,” I replied.
“No. That is not what the composer wrote.”
“Symphony No. 4?” I tried again.
“Exactly! It is just a symphony in all the formal trappings. Do not treat it with any extramusical meaning. If you mess with the architecture, then the building falls down.”
Those words have stayed with me and apply to almost every piece of music. The structure comes first, then the sonic profile. Moving the music along and not dwelling in it every four bars helped me understand more about this composer.
Like many European orchestras, The OFGC does not own its own hall, but the facility that houses the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium also has a rehearsal studio. For our first three days together, we were in this space.
We greeted each other as good friends, and the atmosphere was truly lovely. I was not sure what to expect from them or me when the first tremolo in the strings commenced. But with a most distant sound and the plaintive call of the French horn, it was clear that everyone wanted to do their best. The read-through was so much more than I anticipated. Until recently, Spanish orchestras did not have a particularly good reputation.
But now, even cities other than Madrid or Barcelona house wonderful ensembles, and the OFGC is no exception. When one has as good a first day as we did, it is very easy to remain confident about the remaining time together.
As the rehearsals continued, refinements kept coming, with many in the orchestra wanting to go over particular passages just to really feel the language. The brass were warm and mellow, the woodwinds blended naturally, and the strings, with second violins placed to my right, produced the dynamic extremes needed. Meanwhile, the timpanist was having the time of his life, it seemed.
The concert began with Daniel’s Voyager 130 and continued with another flight: Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending. Ruth Rogers, one of the acting concertmasters, captured the poetic nature of the piece beautifully, and the audience was enchanted. The Bruckner had everything I desired.
This trip includes another week in Las Palmas followed by one in Jerusalem, but those occur next month, and I shall report on them in the next edition.
See you then,
Leonard