vailian

Last night was the last day of a dreadfully stressy week. I don't know how I survived it. I don't even know if I have survived it.

It should have been an easy week, the last few opera performances before our season ends tomorrow. The plan was, a week off here to recuperate and do some long-outstanding home repair assignments, then off to an idyllic Bergpension in the Austrian Alps, just underneath the Grossglockner Glacier. 

Alas, greed and curiosity have changed that.

Got a call from an orchestra near here, asking if I would be free to do some rehearsals and performances. No, I said, I am on vacation. The manager said, Wait, we are doing an opera by Bernd Alois Zimmermann, a fairly obscure German composer. (He didn't know it, but I happen to be a big fan of Zimmermann's works). Which one, I asked. Die Soldaten, he said.

Now I have always been curious about this piece, which was composed around 1964 and labelled unplayable, unproduceable, unsingable, and hell to listen to. But it was written about a mile from my apartment, and I have had a moderate success playing other pieces by him.

I couldn't imagine, though, the smallish orchestra in B playing this piece-- first, they never play opera, only concerts, and second, it requires a truly monstrous number of players and singers, more than a dozen percussionists, piano, harpsichord, 2 harps, 2 organs, jazz band. And the piece is physically, technically, musically, mentally quite impossible. The manager admitted that it had taken the orchestra about a year to learn it. (Remember that a normal symphony concert is generally rehearsed and performed in a week). 

They gave me 2 days to look at it.

But I am doing it, because I suspect it is a masterpiece, and:

We are doing it for 2 weeks in New York City!!

So far it is ruining my health and my love life. I have been running back and forth on the train to B for rehearsals every day (it is about 70 miles away) and having to race back here for evening performances. My dream of having mountain expeditions will have to be put off for another year (because I have to go directly from New York to my teaching in Croatia).

The next lot of rehearsals will be in New York, and I have 5 days to try to sort things out before I fly.

But I couldn't say no. We have a nice hotel in Manhattan and a whole lot of time off while we are there. 

Life is full of surprises.

# posted by vailian : 7:56 PM