Musical memories

That certainly didn't take as long as I thought it might. My original goal was to play in the classical Untertürkheimer Kantorei orchestra in December 2020. However, thanks in part to the lock-down but much more to my enthusiasm for the new instrument, I've made quite some progress with the violin. The Virtuoso Violinist posts very helpful tips on  Instagram  about implementing the Dounis Method when playing strings. I try to internalize - or at least try out - the ideas and get an idea for what challenges face me in the coming months and years. I was also lucky enough to run across a live living-room concert given by the incredible violinist Augustin Hadelich during the restrictive lock-down. When I watch such concerts online, I rarely stay with the canned performance more than two minutes but this time I was spell-bound. Never having heard of him or this concerti series before (mea culpa!), I began by trying to judge the performance from a critic's point of view. He...

If there is one piece of music that can calm my nerves, it is this symphony by the Polish composer who died in November 2010. I first heard the piece on a drive from Freiburg out to Umkirch to teach an adult education English class. The disc jockey of the classical radio station said the symphony had become a hit on the British pop charts recently. This was 1992 and the techno scene was in bad need of chill music. When the new recording of this work landed in the studios of the BBC and the DJ played the shortest of the three movements (26 - 9 - 17 minutes), the phones started ringing. By the end of 1993, the record had sold 600,000 copies. When I first heard this second movement, I thought it was very nice, but the story was for me even more interesting. A classical piece becoming popular? Bring it on! Three slow movements make up this Symphony. The first one starts off so softly that you always want to check to see if the disc is spinning, or you turn it up, only to feel the double-ba...