YAE 2007 - PART 1

August 5, 2007 at 4:10 PM

July 31st:
The Young Artist Experience 2007 is proving to challenge me and push my boundaries and abilities as a musician and person. Shostakovich keeps me on my toes while sending me to dark places I never thought I'd explore while Brahms pushes my patience with the precision of rhythm and consistent technique that is needed at all times. These aren't introductory pieces anymore. Each day I play and rehearse I am getting deeper into the musical mind of these two composers, especially Shostakovich. The coaching sessions have been intense and rewarding and at times frustrating. Spending as much as 30 or 40 minutes on only a line or two is maddening but necessary and worth it in the end in order to do the job right.

The Brahms Quintet has been the most "playable" of my two assigned ensembles this year. It's rhythm is fairly basic with only a few tricky passages. The real challenge in the Brahms is matching each others sound and locking into one another when it comes to articulation and musical gesture. It's relentless but satisfying when it comes together. The coaches I've had in just the first few days have been excellent in helping us achieve and match the other members in our group. The piece is unsettled at times with it's off beat theme and has moments of triumph when all the players join together in unison but the unsettled gloom of what's in the fog ahead always returns.

Shostakovich is one of the most distressing, unnerving things I've ever played and not because it's hard. It is definitely hard. At each rehearsal I realize that it's even harder than I previously thought. It doesn't just push the boundaries of being a musician technically, it pushes the boundaries that were in place at the time the work was written and it pushes the musician who performs it to dig down deep into some of the darkest and most horrifying places one can go. Coachings on this particular trio have been the most intense. It's struggle to play and it's hard to allow yourself to get lost in the gloom, loneliness and darkness of it all for fear of messing up the notes and even more in fear of not being able to escape the darkness when you're done playing it for the day. We've spent literally hours both in group and independently working on small passages trying to capture the mood and master the technique. I loved how Rena Sharon described the violin part in one section as being in a field where there was once a massive amount of death and the eerie, lonely, sad quality that it has on a human being standing there knowing the events that occured. Another description was that of corpses dancing, finally freed from their living hell. The whole piece is so dark, filled with musical irony and Shostakovich's voice, sharing his emotions in the only way he could at the time and had he been discovered he would have been killed or exiled. Why would someone take a chance at being caught? Rena tried to get us into the mind of Shostakovich, giving us three options to pick from and all of us had the same response. I have no idea what I'd do. It's so hard to travel to a time and place and mindset when you've never been given such an ultimatum before and thankfully for most of those alive in North America today, we will never have to chose like that but for a musician performing a work by someone who has, who's music is drenched in it, we have to try and put ourselves in that position, no matter what, in order to really feel the piece. In jest I've suggested that by the end of YAE my trio and I will need counseling by the end of it and you know what, I'm starting to think that that isn't such an unlikely possibility anymore.

From Megan Chapelas
Posted on August 5, 2007 at 4:50 PM

But don't you find there are redemptive moments in the Shostakovich, Kelsey? In the last movement, where the first theme comes back high in the violin and cello, with the rushing 32nd notes in the piano, for instance. I always felt like I had broken free and was flying when I played that passage.

From Kelsey Z.
Posted on August 5, 2007 at 5:22 PM

Hey Megan, I actually feel like it's even more repressed there because Shostakovich has marked if fortissimo (ff) and with a mute on, it's like he's trying to break free but he can't because theres been a clamp put on. The whole piece is amazing to me and I love it, it's so incredibly difficult to do it justice though, for sure.

From Emily Liz
Posted on August 5, 2007 at 6:05 PM

"Another description was that of corpses dancing, finally freed from their living hell."

Really powerful description, and so apt.

From Yixi Zhang
Posted on August 5, 2007 at 7:00 PM

“The whole piece is so dark, filled with musical irony and Shostakovich's voice, sharing his emotions in the only way he could at the time and had he been discovered he would have been killed or exiled. Why would someone take a chance at being caught?”

The human need to expression is both universal and powerful. To some of us, without which life is not worth living. Coming from the Chinese Communist regime myself, I have, especially during the Cultural Revolution, intimate experience of the darkness of the dictatorship that is very similar to that of Stalin and Khrushchev Soviet Union. When it is oppressive and dangerous outside, the only freedom we had was the interior world (i.e., our mind and heart), and consequent to such internal expansion and enormous of rich material we accumulated, we just had to express by whatever means we hoped to get away with. Music was in fact one of the safest means of expression because the interpretation of precise meaning is very difficult. Writing or acting would be a lot harder but were still frequently done only with a lot of veils.

I don’t have any advice for you, but only hope that you don’t let yourself trapped too much into the darkness if the music, Kelsey.

From Pauline Lerner
Posted on August 6, 2007 at 1:13 AM

Yixi, I believe that western classical music was outlawed during the Cultural Revolution. It must have been a severe hardship to live without it. When it was allowed back in, the Chinese people gobbled it up as if they had been starved, which, in a way, they were.

Kelsey, first, thanks for taking the time during your busy experience at YAE to tell us about what you're doing. I hope that writing and receiving comments about the Shostakovich piece provided some exorcism for you.

From Yixi Zhang
Posted on August 6, 2007 at 2:17 AM

Paulin, you are quite right about the outlaw of western music during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), especially before Nixon’s China visit in 1972. Soon after that, especially after Philadelphia Orchestra visited China in 73, a lot of western classical music started to be radio-broadcasted in big cities such as Shanghai and Beijing. Still, even before then, many people were studying western music underground quietly, especially the ones from well connected or professional musician families. A lot of sheet music was hand-copied passing from one student to the other. They were remarkably accurate now come to think of it. Looking back, it was not all dark those days.

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YAE 2007 - PART 1

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