Show Notes
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For this episode, Akiko and I just had a one-word outline: Mahler! And it turns out we had plenty to say about his symphonies. What's it like to learn them, refine them, rehearse them, take them on tour? What do committees look for when you play Mahler?
Hear about the time Akiko was mortified to play Mahler 9 with David Hyde Pierce (Frasier's Niles Crane) in the front row! Or the time Nathan got a death stare from Daniel Barenboim during... well, also during Mahler 9!
And as to Nathan's comment that Gustav Mahler was perhaps the New York Philharmonic's first music director? He was actually its ninth! Nathan was under the misapprehension that the NY Phil began around the same time as so many other American orchestras, in the early part of the 20th century... in fact, New York got its start in 1848, whereas Mahler wasn't born until 1860! Mahler spent the last two years of his life, 1909-1911, at the helm of the Philharmonic.
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