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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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