The Castleton Diaries: Week 3- How DC Went, and the Day the Maestro Shocked Us All

It has been quite an exciting week to say the least. Saturday and Monday were spent in rehearsal for Don Giovanni and Madama Butterfly with the two assistant conductors. If I wasn’t sitting in front of the orchestra making sure the rehearslas ended on time, I was making copies and scans. It turns out that the administration put the orchestra management staff in charge of getting scores out to the Conducting Fellows, the lucky conductors chosen to work with and learn from Maestro Maazel during the summer. So I spent the entire Sunday making copies of parts and scores. Luckily I have great friends who like to check in on me.

Tuesday, I was given the day off. I decided to make a venture out to Washington DC. I brought my bicycle with me and rode all around the National Mall. It was the first time I had been there since 2007. The day started pretty lousy, rain and dreary skies. But as the day progressed, the skies cleared and the sun was scorching. This was great because I had never realized how cyclist-friendly the DC area was. There were bike lanes in the center of the roads and everything was accessible by walking or biking. After riding past the Capital building, I went to the Botanical Gardens. I was amazed at how beautiful they were. All of the exotic plants were in one place. I think I must have snapped a good 20 pictures before I even got past the first half of the building.

US Botanical Gardens

Next stop for me was the National Mall. I rode past the Washington Monument, the reflecting pool, the Lincoln Memorial, WW2, Korea, and Vietnam memorials, the Jefferson Memorial, the FDR Memorial, and the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, which had been erected a few years prior. I always wanted to go back and really get a feel for everything. When I was in eighth grade, we were on a tight schedue and we didn’t get to enjoy everything the city had to offer. So I’m glad I got a chance to see everything again.

 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN (Madama Butterfly Reference)

After looking at the White House, or as much as you can see from the fence, I stopped for a while to rest at Barnes and Noble before continuing on. I decided to attend an event Castleton was holding in the city, a young professionals meet and greet with music at the 201 Bar. Suffice it to say, after cycling around the city for a good four to five hours, I didn’t have a suit. So I felt a bit awkward. Luckily, my associates from the festival didn’t mind, as long as I was polite and said good things to the people that came in. Of course I wouldn’t say anything less. So after some refreshment and song, I headed back to Castleton. When I got there, it turned out my boss had emailed me asking to be back at the office by 10pm to take care of copying the score to Madama Butterfly, cuting the sheets down, and then holepunching them into a binder. That was taken care of in almost no time at all, thank goodness.

The next was the day, the most gloriously awaited day, a day to which all other days would bow down in praise and …too much? Anyway, Wednesday was an important day because that was the first day Maestro Lorin Maazel made his first appearance. The orchestra staff had to be in by 8am to set everything up before he got there at 9am. At which time, he came down to the rehearsal hall to get an idea of what was going to happen today. Then he scrapped that ntirely and said that we would do two sitzprobe for the operas in one day. Madama Butterfly was to start at 10am. So you can imagine the absolute frenzy that ensued getting the hall set up for the orchestra, chorus, principals, covers, stage managers, conducting fellows, and a special space in the back of the hall just for Maestro to watch the conducting fellows. What followed was the first professional rehearsal I had ever experienced. The orchestra was spectacular, the chorus and principals sounded incredible, and all the conductors were outstanding. At the finale of each act, I had chills. Whenever Maestro asked for a change, it had an immediate impact of the tone of the music. I remember one point where he asked for the two female leads to hold out a decrescendo after the pause in the flower-picking scene, and it just went from musical to magical in an instant.

 

The Reflecting Pool as seen from the Lincoln Memorial

(When Maestro walked in that morning, I had some idea of what to expect. He had been in ill health for a while, a fact that recently led to his decision to step down as Music Director of the Munich Philharmonic. But when he came in, despite his slow movement, he still had that air about him that stated with pride, “I’m here to do what I’ve always done”. In his blue straw hat and tan jacket, he sat in the back of the rehearsal hall, still actively listening and stopping the conductors to give instructions to them and the singers. This was the day I stopped idolizing him as a powerhouse conductor, and started respecting him as an artist. This man, who I had been admiring since my days in middle school, was proudly working despite the odds and taking the music to a higher level.)

The afternoon was spent on Don Giovanni, which continued into the next day. So of course when my housemates and I watched Sherlock Holmes that Wednesday night, we all just lost it when Sherlock mentions to Watson that Don Giovanni is playing at the opera house. By the way, excellent movie, and we are planning to watch the sequel soon.

After the sitzprobe were done, the orchestra started rehearsing the concert repertoire. I missed most of this because I was in the prodution office attempting to make copies of parts for the concert at the Hylton Center, which includes arrangements of Broadway standards. I was so frustrated with trying to connect to the office printer and then print out multiple parts, I told to my boss that I was willing to stay late to get more work done. I just proclaimed that “I was willing to give up a night of sleep to get s**t done!” Then someone said, “Now that’s the Castleton spirit,”. So I did, even though my boss had preferred I didn’t because he thought it was cruel of me to do so. But I managed to work late into the night printing out scores for the conducting fellows to use that following day. I got through all the arias that were to be rehearsed, plus a few other things that I was constantly being asked for. I had luckily streamlined the process of finding out what music the conducting fellows already had via Google Docs, so I didn’t have to make 16 copies of every score. I made 16 copies of some scores, and 14 for most. I was of course worried that at some point the machine would run out of toner. And it did, at 3:30 am, a few pages into the third copy of Peter and the Wolf. I knew that I should have at least printed out the scores for The Giving Tree instead of The Empty Pot, since that one was to be rehearsed. But life is life, you roll with it. So after having kept myself awake with music and conversations with foreign friends via the internet, I quietly made my way back to the house, where I slept on the couch to avoid waking anyone up. I slept from 4 to 6:30, and still had the same high energy level from that night. So I made my way out for breakfast, told my boss what I did, and that we were not getting toner until Monday. He was both appreciative of the gesture and shocked that I actually went through with it. Actually everyone I told was pretty much in shock. Honestly, I just sat next to the printer and organized msuic as it came out. But the conducting fellows were very happy to get their scores, eventhough they wont see any others until Monday night.

 

The Jefferson Memorial

But even after making all those copies, some condutors didn’t even bother taking their scores after the day’s rehearsal, which was also phenomenal. The orchestra went through the arias that highlighted the concert series, as well as The Giving Tree, written by Maestro Maazel and narrated by his wife Dietelinde. I had never experienced Maazel the composer until that time. True I had heard faint snippets from his opera 1984, but I didn’t realize he had written anything else besides that. The Giving Tree, based on the book by Shel Silverstein, was very colorfully orchestrated. I loved hearing the violincello obbligato, you could feel all the emotion of the tree as she dealt with the aging of the boy. Mrs. Maazel is also a great narrator, although it will be Margaret Warner that will be narrating the works for that concert.

Afterwards, the orchestra was given the rest of the day off. So I got to go back to the house and take a nap before I started writing this. Much needed by the way. So what have I learned from all this? First, you have to realize that you can’t set impossible standards for last minute requests that involve staying til lord knows when. Second, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. What is important is how you deal with it. Third, office work is just inevitable at this job. Lastly, some men are willing to make great sacrifices to keep doing what they love.

So that’s all I can impart for now. Until next week, this has been The Castleton Diaries.

P.S., Best of luck to my younger brother Evan and his highschool baseball team as they fight for the NY state championship in Binghamton this weekend.