Show Notes
Here at Stand Partners for Life, we get a lot of questions about the future: what happens if I'm not playing concerto X by age Y? What will happen if I study with teacher Z, or go to school-- I ran out of letters!
So even though we can't give definitive answers to these questions, they're still great questions! And one listener email in particular sparked a discussion about success at an early age, the importance (or non-importance) of conservatory for winning an orchestra audition, and lots more.
Along the way, we also answer listener questions about sight reading in high positions, as well as "contextual intonation": changing your pitch based on what's going on around you, especially in the orchestra!
And we start out by talking Twelve-Tone: Nathan's upcoming performance of Arnold Schoenberg's fourth String Quartet, and whether or not it's "real music". Daniel Barenboim considered him one of the most important composers in history. Does "most important" equal best?
More from Stand Partners for Life
Shostakovich had never had it worse: his latest opera, Lady Macbeth, had been panned. And not just by an ordinary critic: Joseph Stalin himself had paid a visit to the opera house. The official Soviet opinion of the work? “Muddle instead of music.”
Have you ever “discovered” a major piece, live, in the concert hall? Nathan remembers sitting right next to a big star performing Prokofiev’s second Piano Concerto, with its massive and breathtaking first-movement cadenza. Then he and Akiko talk about sitting right next to another big star this week for the same piece.
This week’s landmark episode marks the return of Akiko, plus a pair of fellow stand partners for life: violists Kate Reddish and Eric Lea! We discuss the slings and arrows of a career in music, what you can and can’t get from music school, what it’s like to be part of a string-playing pair, and much more.
I’m joined in the backyard this week by Violympian and VMC participant Travis Maril, as well as his fellow USC alum and my Director of Operations, Kate Reddish. Our wide-ranging conversation includes no small measure of pedagogical geekery, as well as such diverse topics as Tae Kwon Do bribery and Michael Jordan’s private Space Jam gym.
Nathan, Kerstin and Kate (and Kate’s SPFL Eric) in Pasadena