The Chamber Musician

The Chamber MusicianPublished by Chamber Musicians of Northern California | Volume 23, No 2 | April 2013 | www.cmnc.org

From the Editor

It was easy to see during the Juilliard StringQuartet’s visit to our workshop in February thatmemories of their concerts glow warmly in manyhearts. Throughout the weekend I saw peopleapproach one player or the other and try to expresswhat the quartet has meant to them over the years.The graciousness of their response suggested that

they understand howimportant such interac-tions are in their pro-found relationship withus, their audience. Atone point I heard SteveAlter telling Joel Kros -nick about a recital hehad attended at UCLAin the 70s, when Stevefelt he had understood

the fugue in Beethoven’s last cello sonata for thefirst time. As the two stood talking I could swearthat Mr. Krosnick was genuinely trying to remem-ber the occasion. There was a sweet feeling to theencounter, no hint of a celebrity responding fromon high, just of one dedicated cellist to another.

Our Path to the Juilliard

The path to that moment and to the whole amaz-ing weekend was, as you may have heard, anythingbut smooth. In fact, one week before the work-shop there was doubt that it would happen at all.I am going to recount the events here, partly toput it into CMNC’s memory store but mostly tothank those who helped us pull it off in the end.It’s just a few paragraphs, and we’ll get back tomore wonderful moments soon.

When Richard Festinger, the Artistic Directorof the Morrison Artist Series, said that the Juilliardwould be playing in the series in February and sug-gested that CMNC invite them to give master

THE NEXT CMNC WORKSHOP

College of Marin, June 1–2, 2013

by Alan Kingsley, Workshop Director

Continues on page 2.

When Richard

Festinger suggested

that CMNC invite

the Juilliard String

Quartet to take part

in our workshop, we

were both excited

and worried.

Lobby to refurbished Performing Arts Center

We look forward to welcoming you to our next workshop,to be held at College of Marin in Kentfield, June 1–2, 2013.We are delighted to be returning to beautiful College ofMarin and its refurbished Performing Arts Center. We werelast there in June 2010 and are looking forward to goingback. The workshop director will be Alan Kingsley and theassistant director will be Carolyn Lowenthal. The applicationdeadline is April 21, so be sure to apply soon at our website,cmnc.org.

At this workshop we will have coaching for all partici-pants on Saturday, followed by performance samplers atwhich each group will play a brief selection of the piece theyhave been working on during the day. On Sunday there willbe coaching for preformed groups only. For non-preformedgroups there will be two separate reading sessions, morningand afternoon, where we can make the acquaintance of newmusic and meet new friends.

Please note there is an unusual feature at this workshop:you may come in preformed groups both days if you wish.There are no restrictions on this; you can be in the same pre-formed group both days, or in two different preformedgroups, and work on the same music or different music. Weare trying this format as an experiment, for this workshoponly, and will evaluate it carefully afterwards, so be sure to letus know your thoughts in your evaluations. b

www.cmnc.org

THE CHAMBER MUSICIAN APRIL 2013

2

From the Editor, continued from page 1.

classes at our workshop, we were both excited and wor-ried. We weren’t worried by the eminence of the quartet;that was purely exhilarating, and anyway we are used tohaving amazing coaches at CMNC. Our worries wereorganizational and, actually, philosophical. After so manyyears of putting on workshops we rely on a set of well-oiled procedures, and we’d never before tried to hold mas-ter classes with just four coaches. More fundamentally, wewere concerned that we not divide the workshop into“Juilliard” and “Non-Juilliard” tracks. That is just notwhat CMNC is about, and we only wanted to do it ifeveryone could take part in a Juilliard master class. Buthow could it be done? We recalled a workshop at SanFrancisco State in which, due to a shortage of rooms, we’dhad to shoehorn an entire workshop into twenty groupsand five master classes. It was tight but it worked. Thistime, if we expanded the master class time to two hours,we could have twenty-four groups, six groups in eachmaster class, with each group coached for about twentyminutes. That seemed possible, so we went ahead.

Then the applications started to come in. We foundthat over 200 people had applied, compared to our usual150–160. Fitting all the Saturday applicants into 24groups was out of the question. So we sent a message tothe Juilliard and obtained their agreement (so we thought)to expand the time they would spend with us to threehours, and to coach up to eight groups each. We managedin the end to create 28 workable groups, seven for eachmaster class, and were feeling reasonably settled when welearned, a week before the workshop, that the Juilliard hadonly just been told what they were in for. The three hourswas fine, but they had apparently been picturing a moreleisurely sort of event, one where a few select string quar-tets would play entire movements and receive the benefitof extensive coaching. We had of course accepted far toomany people for this to be remotely possible, nor couldwe bear to tear the fabric of our community by selectinga favored few.

It was a tense few days, resolved by the kindly help ofthe wonderful Alexander Quartet and their visitingfriend, violist Toby Appel. Toby, whose aunt CarrieSchoenbach happened to be attending the workshop,contacted the Juilliard and somehow got them to realizethat spending three hours coaching untold numbers ofamateurs was the opportunity they’d been waiting for alltheir lives. Thank you Toby!

But we were still not quite there. The most the

Juilliard felt they could do justice to in three hours was sixgroups each. We couldn’t imagine how we could cut fourgroups out of our number until Susan Kates, the leader ofthe winds on our Board, said that rather than having

everyone miss this opportunity,we should take the five all-wood-wind groups out of the Juilliardclasses and give them their ownseparate master class. It was anextremely generous act and it didmake it possible for us to goahead. All gratitude goes toSusan, to the wind groups fortheir gracious acceptance of thisarrangement, and to our threeexcellent wind coaches, ScottHartman, Yael Ronen and

Margaret Thornhill, who gave by all accounts a wonderfulmaster class to the wind groups.

At last, and yes it was just two days before the work-shop, we finally knew that our Juilliard weekend was goingto happen. We had nothing to worry about beyond lastminute cancellations, a flood in the Creative Arts building,and other such minor catastrophes. On Friday I went overto San Francisco State to watch the quartet give masterclasses to young groups from the university, and heardcoaching by Joel Krosnick and Samuel Rhodes. I relaxedeven more as I saw they were not only superlative musi-cians but also thoughtful, engaged teachers.

Joel Krosnick’s Master Class

Then it was Saturday, and now it’s time for the good part.We had our own excellent coaches with us all day, helpingand inspiring us as they always do. I had a wonderful (iffreezing) time studying Brahms’ piano quartet opus 25 withLisa Lai, Milton Wong and Eugene Lee and our coachDawn Harms. Then at 3:45 I got to meet Joel Krosnick inthe lobby and escort him to our master class room.

The next three hours erased any last traces of stressand left a beautiful new pearl on my memory string. Mr.Krosnick, who like most of us is not a spring chicken,coached tirelessly for the whole three hours, with only ashort break for coffee. As each group finished its selectionhe said “bravo,” and he signaled the end of each coachingsession with another bravo. Even better, his warmth madeeach one seem sincere. When I thanked him for his kind-


As each group fin-

ished its selection,

Joel Krosnick said

"bravo," and he

signaled the end of

each session with

another bravo. Even

better, his warmth

made each one

seem sincere.

All that may seem confusing when expressed in words,and this brings me to my second point, process. How did hecommunicate this concept? He didn’t start out by sayingwhat he was going to do. Instead, as the group started toplay for the second time, he held up his first finger at the sec-ond measure and said ‘one.’ He then counted them throughthe remaining 16 beat/bars, sort of singing as he was doingthis, emphasizing the meta-rhythm of the four beat/barphrases. The overall phrasing went something like this:

12/8 measure 1: Bars 2-5, strong (comma)12/8 measure 2: Bars 6-9, weak (comma or maybe a semi-colon)12/8 measure 3: Bars10-13, getting stronger (comma)12/8 measure 4: Bars14-17, strongest (period).

Essentially, he ‘played’ with the group by singingalong, and this seemed to help them understand what hewanted them to do. Their playing certainly reflected thisnew understanding. He encouraged them to use this sameapproach while playing the remaining variations in themovement, so that the sense of 16-bar phrases in four sub-sections would come across in each variation as well.”

Later in his coaching he drew our attention what hecalled extra or extension measures to the general 16-barsetup. I made a mental note to study the score and try tolocate them, and found a seven-bar passage, measures 18-24, between the first major and minor sections. I think,subject to possible recantation later, that these seven barsor possibly just the final three are the extra measures he wastalking about. They return after the second major section(bars 84-86) and again after the third (bars 135-137), andthe three-bar idea is used mostbeautifully at the conclusion ofthe movement. The pointthough was not that they exist,but that their existence hasmeaning. We should play them,he said, with a kind of exhaus-tion, as if more were being askedof us than we have strength for,but which we must find withinourselves to give. The achingsadness of the movement, which we feel from the unearth-ly minor key, the lowered notes, the wrenching intervalsand the sighs and laments in the melody, is inherent evenin the structure itself. This is a beautiful point where the

APRIL 2013

3

ness at the break he said that he was enjoying himself.Then, perhaps noticing my expression, he added that hisfather was an avid amateur violinist, and that he grew upwith, understands and deeply appreciates the amateurmusic scene. How wonderful, and how perfectly designedto put us all at ease.

Here is what I remember from his coaching, withthanks to Lisa for writing out her memories as well. Thefirst piece was Beethoven’s string quartet opus 74, theHarp. The group chose to play the opening of the slowmovement, and it was the perfect way to start the class. Iwas struck first by Mr. Kros nick’s love for the music and

then for his recognition of howdifficult it is to play—for every-one, he emphasized. He talkedabout the beautiful sonority of Aflat major on string instrumentsand of the strangeness whenBeethoven takes us to A flatminor. “Who practices A flatminor scales?” he asked theroom, and when we all laughed

he said he has practiced G sharp minor, the relative minorof B major, but A flat minor never. A great deal of whathe said throughout the afternoon was about the feelingsexpressed in different keys, and the way the performershould use the harmony to tell the story of the piece. Laterin this session he asked the group to play the first A flatminor section in the most otherworldly way they couldimagine. They did, and it was magical.

Substance and Process

From Lisa: “Two intertwined things stick in my mind asbeing truly remarkable about his work with the Harpgroup, one having to do with substance, the other withprocess. He wanted the group to be able to play the move-ment in longer phrases. Instead of thinking of individualmeasures in the time signature of 3/8, counting 1-2-3, 1-2-3, which can become heavy and waltz-like, he wanted eachmeasure to represent one beat in a 16-bar phrase, with fourfour-measure sub-phrases. You can think of the movementas being in 12/8, with each measure being composed offour of the original 3/8 measures. The first measure is apickup, and the first four-bar phrase is composed of meas-ures two, three, four and five. You could then start over atone, but to carry the energy through the entire phrase, hesaid that counting 16 beats/bars would work best.

Essentially, he

'played' with the

group by singing

along, and this

seemed to help

them understand

what he wanted

them to do.


THE CHAMBER MUSICIAN

Mr. Krosnick asked

the group to play

the A flat minor sec-

tion in the most

otherworldly way

possible. They did,

and it was magical.


coaching was detailed and specific: be sure to connect thefragments of the theme, to change the feeling at the tran-quillo section, to think about how you want to play theanimato. From Lisa: “The most interesting thing to mewas his noodling around with the tune at letter M. Headmitted he wasn’t sure what that tune was all about orwhat role it played in the movement as a whole, based onhis prior experience playing it. He had Milton and me playit several times, suggesting this and that (longer phrase,smoother, more/less energy, etc.) until finally he was satis-fied. How did this happen? He sang and I imitated hisphrasing. Or, more precisely, I matched my internal songto his song and then executed it on the instrument. I sus-pect that’s how he plays—matching his playing to the songrunning in his head.”

My own favorite moment came near the end, when hedecided to coach me on the cello passage at measures 249-252. “The E flat is so exotic,” he noted. “We need to finda special color for it.” My expression must have changed,because he quickly added, “Yes, that face!” Wow. I got tohave special coaching from Joel Krosnick and bask in alaugh from the whole room–and I didn’t have to play anote! How perfect is that!

The master class ended soon after, and he took him-self off, he said, “to work.” Andy Luchansky later told meit was true; he would probably practice for hours thatevening. The Juilliard’s concert was still to come, withwhat turned out to be more great teaching from Mr.

APRIL 2013

insight of the performer and the genius ofBeethoven come together in profoundmusical understanding.

After the Harp we heard piano quintetsby Elgar and Shostakovich and the sextet forwinds and piano by Francis Poulenc. I did-n’t know these pieces well enough toremember the coaching in detail, but it wasabsolutely the case that each session wasinteresting and rewarding. Mr. Krosnickwas fully engaged, answered questions andgave practical suggestions, and got everygroup to play with more feeling and expres-sion. His coaching of the Poulenc group,the only wind players in our master class,was especially engaging. He said that as ayoung cellist he had wanted to play onlyforward-looking American composers like

Elliot Carter and Ralph Shapey,but then he had fallen in lovewith the Poulenc cello sonata.From this starting point he led usinto Poulenc’s special soundworld, pointing out its gaietyand melancholy, its charm andwit, its quintessential French -ness. He then asked the group toshow us these qualities by play-ing with more subtlety and deli-

cacy, and, inspired, they did. It was quite wonderful. Ihave always liked Poulenc but at the end of the session Iloved him, another gift from a superb teacher.

Last Words

Finally it was time for our Brahms Opus 25. It was aftersix, the room and all in it were very cold, yet Mr. Krosnicksomehow managed to be as warm as he had been at thebeginning. I must say his energy is really impressive.Thinking back, it felt like we were gathered around a firefed by his love of music, and that all of us were strength-ened and warmed and lit by it. Since it was my group’sturn to stand nearest the fire I even took off my downjacket, for the first time all day. We played part of the firstmovement, and his opening remark was, “This is music tofall in love to.” (I’m sure he said “to,” not “with”—a star-tlingly personal remark. I was fully prepared to beg him totell us more, had the opportunity presented itself.) His

4



We felt we were

gathered around a

fire fed by Mr.

Krosnick's love of

music, and all of us

were strengthened

and warmed and lit

by it.

Lisa Lai, Eugene Lee, page turner Beverly Rollins, Milton Wong and ElizabethMorrison, coached by Joel Krosnick of the Juilliard String Quartet


AUGUST 2010

Krosnick: his five-minute introduction to the 5th ElliotCarter quartet actually made me enjoy it. And the othertwo pieces, Mozart’s K 575 and Beethoven’s Opus 131,were beyond praise. It was so thrilling to have our wholecommunity there, at a free (!) concert by the JuilliardString Quartet, every seat in McKenna filled, our veryown Super Bowl, and to know that CMNC was part of it.How lucky we all are. I just marvel.

I have one more thing to add. This will be my last Fromthe Editor column for a while—my excuse for writing somuch this time. I am going to be taking a year off fromCMNC activities. Ray Van Diest has very kindly agreed toedit The Chamber Musician for three issues, Marion Taylorwill take over hiring the coaches, and Bill Horne is the newBoard President. I’ll be a happy CMNC workshop attenderfor a year. See you at College of Marin! b

—Elizabeth Morrison

5


CMNC Board of DirectorsPresidentWilliam [email protected]

Vice PresidentCarolyn [email protected]

TreasurerSheri [email protected]

Corporate Secretary/COM Workshop DirectorAlan [email protected]

Database ManagerHarry [email protected]

Evaluations CoordinatorMiriam [email protected]

Membership CoordinatorBob [email protected]

Music LibrarianMarion [email protected]

Webmaster/MailmergeSue [email protected]

Volunteer CoordinatorKaren [email protected]

Wind CoordinatorSusan [email protected]

Piano Coordinator Maria [email protected]

Members at LargeRobert [email protected]

Glenn [email protected]

Elizabeth Morrison (on leave)

CHANGES TO THE CMNC BOARD

Welcome to New Board Member GlennFisher and New President Bill Horne

The CMNC Board of Directors has elected Bill Horne,Board Member extraordinaire, as CMNC president forthe next three years. He replaces Elizabeth Morrison, whoremains on the board but will be on leave for the next year.The other officers have been reelected for three year terms.They are Carolyn Lowenthal, vice-president, SheriSchultz, treasurer, and Alan Kingsley, secretary.

We are also very happy to announce that Glenn Fisherhas joined the Board of Directors. Glenn began playingthe cello in the 5th grade, and started playing chambermusic soon after with his family. His father was a violinistand violist in the local symphony; his mother, a concertpianist; and his brother (coach Randy Fisher) a violinist.He played in orchestra through college, then spent severalsummers playing at Music from Bear Valley. He was prin-cipal cellist of the Peninsula Symphony for 20 years.Glenn plays chamber music regularly with friends. He hasplayed with a variety of groups in local chamber musicconcerts, most recently performing the Debussy CelloSonata with Miriam Blatt on several Bay Area programs.His teachers include Gabor Rejto, Margaret Rowell, andcurrently Stephen Harrison.

Glenn enjoys trekking and gardening with his wifeand has two grown sons. He has been employed as an ele-mentary teacher, a marketing manager, a developer pro-gram manager, and a Chief Operating Officer. He’s cur-rently retired. b

Glenn Fisher

APRIL 2013

Performance Anxiety

by Miriam Blatt

Every workshop we ask participants how the master classor performance sampler went, expecting to read abouttheir experience listening to other groups or being coachedin the master class. Instead, many comment on their ownperformance, and how nervous they were and unhappyabout mistakes made. Here are sample comments fromworkshops over the last few years:.

Our rehearsal was so much better than our performance,those nerves, ugh. —Cellist

Unexpected stage fright, and unwarranted because theaudience was so supportive and appreciative. —Flautist

I did not play anywhere near as well as when playing byourselves with our coach, and was disappointed, since Ireally liked the piece, and would have liked to share thisenjoyment with the audience. —Clarinettist

Our performance was much worse than any other time weplayed the piece, but that often happens. I got over feelingsick inside by the time dinner was finished. —Cellist

Our group’s performance was less than stellar and I wasespecially upset at my own performance, to the point ofbeing depressed about it afterward. It was extremelyembarrassing as I was performing before my friends andpeers. It has taken a long time to get over that horrendousexperience. —Violinist

None of us enjoys making mistakes, and playing forothers heightens awareness of them. It helps to know thateverybody feels this way, and playing a performance aswell as your best rehearsal happens exceedingly rarely.Adjusting expectations of yourself to be reasonable, takinginto account that one should expect to make mistakeswhen performing, can reduce the self-flagellation which isnever helpful.

When I first started attending CMNC many yearsago, I found performing terrifying. I was shaking. For -tunately the routine of doing this several times a year grad-ually reduced the terror level. CMNC is one of the bestplaces to practice performing, with an audience of playersstruggling with similar problems who are sympathetic andsupportive.

Still, even recently I was terribly nervous whenattempting a piece that stretched technique more than Iwas confident I could do. This happened a couple of years

5



back with the Dvorak Dumky Trio first movement. Theviolin part contains massive streams of double stops(multinote chords), all of which sounded depressingly outof tune. I found it hard to pay attention to anything otherthan intonation. Our wonderful coach Randy Fisher com-pletely ignored my worries and focused instead on phras-ing, tempo changes and dynamics to bring the music tolife. Many folks said nice thingsat the performance, forcing meto acknowledge that perfectintonation wasn’t as importantas injecting life into the music.In retrospect, I feel like Ijumped a hurdle, and have lessfear of double stops now,though mine are never as goodas I would like them to be.

The unimportance of occa-sional wrong notes was reinforced recently when hearingthe Juilliard Quartet perform at the San Francisco StateMorrison Concert Series, the same weekend as theCMNC February 2013 workshop. They played MozartK575, Beethoven Op 131, and an Elliot Carter quartet.The audience rose in unison for a full hall standing ova-tion at the end. Some audience comments:

The Juilliard’s concert was a high point of the weekend. Iloved all three pieces—they are such masters. The Mozartwas my favorite—an island of pleasure, wit, style, andbeauty. —Cellist

I did wonder about the intonation problems, but the over-all performance was magical enough that it didn’t matter.—-Pianist

Here was a concert where I could hear clear technicalissues with intonation, and weakness of sound in the vio-list who was about to retire. But none of that mattered inthe context of a vibrant musical performance. Remem -bering how little the mistakes mattered in this concert is agood lesson for reducing the emotional size of reactions toour own mistakes when performing.

The previous day, the Juilliard Quartet members gavefour separate master classes at our workshop. Some folkswere very nervous playing for them. One participant inthe class coached by Juilliard second violinist RonaldCopes wrote:

He was speaking to a group who’d played rather timidly,clearly because they were nervous. He said that each of us

None of us enjoys

making mistakes,

and playing for oth-

ers heightens

awareness of them.

It helps to know

that everybody feels

this way.

APRIL 2013

is only as good a musician as we are, and we can’t willourselves to be any better than we are. “That’s as true ofus as it is of any of you,” he said. So he advised us to acceptthat we are only as good as we are and instead to focus onbeing generous—to the music, to the audience, to eachother. The composer has been generous in producing thismusic; we need to carry that generosity forward. I thoughtthis was a quite lovely and profound way of approachingthe problem of performance anxiety. —Violinist

His kind encouragement was much appreciated. Agroup member wrote:

Ronald Copes was wonderful, giving great feedback on thesecond violin (my part). I particularly liked his commentat the beginning, saying that we should play generously forthe audience. Rather than worrying about playing better,we should instead focus on sharing the music withfriends/family. After he made the comments, our groupplayed much better and I could tell the difference already.For me I played better with confidence. —Violinist

Here’s another story of professionals making mis-takes. Martha Argerich, Mischa Maisky and GidonKremer had wanted to play together for 20 years, a prac-tical impossibility with three extremely busy travel sched-ules. They finally managed to meet in Tokyo for twonights to perform the Shostakovich and Tchaikovskypiano trios. This was released as a CD labeled “live record-ing” including clapping after each piece. So I was sur-prised to read in the liner notes that despite stress, back-aches (Maisky) and tendinitis (Argerich), they stayed updoing retakes for the recording from 9:00 pm to 4:00 am.So even though advertised as live, there were plenty ofthings to improve before they were willing to release the“live” recording.

The mind game of how to focus on the music ratherthan the performance was described in an interview withJoshua Bell. He completely messed up the pyrotechnicopening to Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole at a competition.Having lost all hope of winning, he quit playing inembarrassment and started the performance over. The sec-ond time, with no hope of winning the competition, hewas liberated from performance worries, so able to thinkonly about the music, and played the best performance ofhis life to that date. He won third place that year at age12, and came back the next year to win first place. Thefull story can be found here.

When people look at music I have been working on

6

Performance Anxiety, continued from page 5. for performance, they some-times comment on the largenumber of annotations scribbledin pencil all over the place. A sig-nificant portion of this isrhythm cues for the other instru-ments to help come in at theright time after rests. With lotsof folks watching, my countingskills can fly out the window.Being prepared with rhythmcues makes it possible to recoverand be less dependent on correctcounting at performance time. The pencil annotations alsoinclude fingerings, even thingsthat look easy. I cannot count on

my brain to figure it out on the fly during performance.When fingers become tangled in rehearsal, I take that as ahint to write down the fingering I am doing. The goal isto eliminate musical mechanics as a source of worry, so Ican focus all my mental energy on the music.

Another way I deal with fear of mistakes is to organ-ize multiple performances for each piece I work on. Thisis in the hope of getting somewhere close to my best prac-tice level for every difficult section at least once when per-forming. It would be wonderful if all the difficult bitscame out well at the same concert, but that rarely hap-pens. Or if it does, then I flub some other easy section.

My strong recommendation is to accept that we allfeel this way, and it is completely normal, and none of usare as perfect as we would like to be. Your audience will behappiest when you focus on sharing the music rather thanbeating yourself up for whatever did not go as well as youwould have liked. We are lucky to have such wonderfulmusic to play and listen to—let’s focus on the positive! b


Ronald Copes

advised us to accept

that we are only as

good as we are, and

instead to focus on

being generous–to

the music, to the

audience, to each

other. The composer

has been generous

in producing this

music; we need to

carry that generosi-

ty forward.

The Chamber Music ian is a publication of ChamberMusi cians of Northern California (CMNC). Member shipin CMNC includes a subscription to The ChamberMusician and the annual CMNC Membership Directory.

Elizabeth Morrison, editor; Susan Wilson, designer.Photos by Steve Alter, Peggy George, Robert Powell,Stardust, and Karen Wright. Articles and letters to the editor should be sent to the new editor, Ran Van Diest, at [email protected].

© April 2013, Chamber Musicians of Northern California

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/01/joshua-bell-on-messing-up-his-first-violin-competition.html

WORKSHOP DIRECTOR’S REPORT

Workshop Director’s Report

by Carolyn Lowenthal

We were happy toreturn once again toSan Francisco State andto be invited to becomepart of the JuilliardString Quartet’s resi-dency at SFSU. Wewere privileged toreceive master classesfrom members of theJuilliard Quartet and toattend their concert aspart of the MorrisonArtist Series. This oppor -tunity came to us thanksto our good friends at San Francisco State. We gratefullyacknowledge the warm welcome provided by staff at SanFrancisco State, including Todd Roehrman, AssociateDean for Creative Arts in the College of Arts & Human -ities; Melinda Zar rett and Kirk Schaible, Creative ArtsEvent Management; Sandra Halladey, Director of OLLI,and Richard Festinger, Artistic Director of the MorrisonArtist Series. We give very special thanks to the Alexander

String Quartet, toToby Appel, viola,of the JuilliardSchool of Music,and to the CMNCwind players fortheir generous helpwith this work-shop.

The workshopwas held mainlyin the CreativeArts Building, withseveral rooms inFine Arts used aswell. Meals were

THE CHAMBER MUSICIAN APRIL 2013

8

Workshop Director CarolynLowenthal

Bob Goldsteingets us off to agood start onSaturday morning.

in the Chavez Student center. We had glorious, althoughcold, weather.

Our Own Great Coaches, plus Juilliard MasterClasses and ConcertThe schedule was a little different because of the Juilliard’sparticipation. On Saturday, we replaced the usual two-hour master class and coach concert with a three-hourmaster class with members of the Juilliard String Quartet.On Sunday, participants attended the Juilliard’s concertgiven as part of the Morrison Artist Series.

Saturday, February 9 consisted of a full day coachedsession by our great regular coaches, followed by five spe-cial master classes. We had planned to have all who attend-ed the workshop be able to be coached by the Juilliard.However, due to an apparent lack of communicationbetween the Juilliard Quartet and their agent, we were notable to achieve this aspiration. You can read details in theFrom the Editor column. We extend apologies to work-shop participants who were disappointed. We had fourmaster classes given by the members of the Juilliard StringQuartet from 3:45 to 6:45, with a 20-minute break. TheJuilliard members (Joseph Lin and Ronald Copes, violins;Samuel Rhodes, viola, and Joel Krosnick, cello) eachcoached five or six groups of CMNC participants forabout 25 minutes each. We had an additional master classgiven by our outstanding wind coaches (Scott Hartman,Yael Ronen, and Margaret Thornhill), which was sched-uled so people could have time to observe the Juilliardmaster classes if they wished.

It was a wonderful opportunity for us to have thesegreat musicians in addition to our great CMNC coaches.We received many appreciative comments, including thisone from David Allen:

(The master class) was one of the most memorable musi-cal experiences I’ve ever had. Mr. Krosnick was amazing!I learned things that I didn’t know I didn’t know. I’venever experienced such skilled, involved coaching from the(coach’s) perspective of simply loving the music unimagin-ably much, and wanting to impart that love and under-standing with a phenomenal grasp of teaching. While somedetails of the coaching will no doubt fade over time, therewere things I learned that will always be with me. That’steaching!

Dinner and freelancing followed the master classes.The Sunday schedule was changed so that participants

who wished to do so could attend the free concert by the


APRIL 2013

9

Juilliard Quartet, partof the Morrison Con -cert Series at San Fran -cisco State. On Sunday,the workshop started at8:30 instead of 9:00 andended at 2:45. Ticketswere reserved forCMNC participants,which worked well con-sidering that peoplewere turned away at thedoor because the con-cert was so popular. TheJuilliard Quartet concert was very well attended and fab-ulous. They played Mozart String Quartet K 575, CarterString Quartet No. 5, and Bee thoven St r ingQuar tet op. 131.

This was our fifth time as an OLLI class and thearrangement works well for us. All participants are auto-

matically enrolledas OLLI members,which gives us theopportunity to takeadvantage of themany educationalo p p o r t u n i t i e soffered. In addi-tion, being anOLLI class helps usto get access tomultiple buildingson campus so wecan have 28 groups.

Doing the NumbersThere were 201 applications for the workshop, comparedto 167 last year. After wait listing to fit the music groups,and a bit of recruiting to cover cancellations, a total of180 people participated, compared to 154 people lastyear. We were luckily able to fill the cancellation slotswithout having to rearrange groups. We give many thanksto those who stepped up to fill the cancellations, includ-ing Michael McLane who drove from Fresno to replace aplayer who cancelled his Sunday session during registra-

tion on Saturday morning. On Saturday there were 28 groups in all, of which 15

were preformed. Including the preformed groups, therewere 11 groups of strings alone, five of winds alone, twoof mixed strings and winds, three string-piano quartets,five string-piano quintets, and two wind-piano sextets.Initially, all members of five preformed trios applied. Sincewe wanted to accept more players (both preformed andnon-preformed), we gave members of the trios the optionof attending as a trio on Sunday, or attending on Saturdayand accepting additional people who had already applied.For the most part, members of the expanded trios madethe workshop enjoyable for the additional members to

Continues on page 10

Mark Yanover, Brigitte Apfel, Bob Nesbet, Meredith O’Connor and Randy Paik play Souvenirs de Voyagebefore their voyage home on Sunday.

Tony Miksak considers sharing his morning muffin with JoselynBartlett.


Coach Burke Schuchmann, dressedjust right for the weekend.

Workshop Director’sReport, continued from page 5.

Morrison unstint-ingly employed allthe coaches, andhelped with theworkshop sched-ule, Susan Katesproposed a solu-tion to the reduc-tion in the num-ber of groups thatthe Juilliard wouldcoach, and KarenWright helpedwith the assign-ment of windplayers in thisregard.

Miriam Blattdid an admirable

Nicki Bell, Jim Engelman and Alan Shonkoff, happy campers

APRIL 2013

10

their group. We thank them for their graciousness.On Sunday, there were also 28 groups, of which six

were preformed. Including the preformed groups, therewere eight groups of strings alone, six of winds alone, fourmixed wind string groups, five string-piano trios, twostring-piano quartets, one string-piano quintet, and onewind-piano sextet.

We were fortunate to have fabulous coaches. Theywere Cynthia Darby, piano, Asher Davison, clarinet,Ethan Filner, viola, Randy Fisher, viola, Dawn Harms,violin, Scott Hartman, horn, Andrew Luchansky, cello,Peter Nowlen, horn, Yael Ronen, flute, Burke Schuch -mann, cello, Jim Shallenberger, violin, Thomas Stauffer,cello, Margaret Thornhill, clarinet, Kathryn BatesWilliams, cello, and Eric Zivian, piano.

We are truly sorry that so many rooms were so unrea-sonably cold that many people were in pain while playing.Of the 121 evaluations, 51 people complained about coldrooms. We hope to resolve this issue in the future.However, since the Creative Arts building has a very oldand not always reliable heating system, we recommendthat in the future everyone dress in warm layers.

Thanks to Board Members and VolunteersI would like to thank members of the board for their helpwith the workshop. Special kudos go to ElizabethMorrison, Susan Kates, and Karen Wright. Elizabeth

Workshop Director’s Report, continued from page 9.

Jim Engelman, Stardust, Maria Reeves, Jeff Greif, Karen Wright and Tom Berkelman in bliss over Butterworth


Continues on page 11

Violas rule. Kristy Venstrom, Katherine Bukstein

APRIL 2013

job as piano coordinator and recruiting upper strings.Thanks to Harry Chomsky and Sue Fowle, the databaseand website software worked well. Among other things,Harry Chomsky helped people who had forgotten theiruser names when logging in and created duplicate data-base records. Sue Fowle always does a careful job of all thenotifications.

Bob Goldstein did the job of facilities coordinator,

which was especially challenging because the CA buildingof SFSU had a flood one week prior to the workshop andsome of the rooms were not fully determined until theThursday before the workshop. Bob Goldstein was alsocatering coordinator. Sheri Schultz was invaluable at keep-ing track of payments, registration, refunds, and budgeting.

There were many helping with assignments. Our col-lective wisdom is so much greater than the sum. Ourassignment gurus, Susan Kates, Alan Kingsley, Bob Gold -stein and Karen Wright for winds, Elizabeth Morrison,Miriam Blatt and Marion Taylor for strings, and MiriamBlatt for pianos helped with assignments and recruiting.In addition, Bob Nesbet, Maria Reeves and Sue Fowlehelped with assignments.

Bill Horne did a fine job putting groups together andsubstituting instruments for people who wanted to free-lance.

Susan Wilson did an outstanding job with the pro-gram and signage.

In addition, Karen Wright coordinated the volunteers

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Workshop Director’s Report, from page 10.

from workshop attendees: Harry Bernstein, CharlotteEpstein, Cherie Gans, Peggy George, Romola Georgia,Jody Keller, Jordan Kirkner, Martha Krones, MeredithO’Connor, Robert Powell, Sheri Schultz, HarrietSpiegel, Stardust, Eugene Turitz, Ray Van Diest, and YinYao. Thanks to all these volunteers. The workshop couldnot happen without you.

We owe so much to the music library of CMNC andour current CMNC librari-an, Marion Taylor, priorCMNC librarian BillHorne, and workshoplibrarian Mike Irvine.

A workshop is truly agroup effort, and as work-shop director I am verygrateful to everyone for allthe hard work. I especiallythank the participants forcoming and playing withus.

We treasure the feel-ing of community we get ateach and every one of ourworkshops. It was trulymemorable. b

See more photos next page.

Carolyn Lowenthal and Elizabeth Morrison Sunday afternoon.Phew, we made it!

Kathie Hammond, Eugene Turitz, Alan Kingsley and Anthony Perry rest on their laurels at aninformal Sunday concert, admired by Bonnie Bogue, coach Margaret Thornhill, and Anne DeCarli

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APRIL 2013THE CHAMBER MUSICIAN

Hans Brightbill and Anthony Perry fortify for the day

The Mikes: cellist McLane, music librarian Irvine

Sara Van Dyke in the Bruch Pieces

Ralph Morrison, nametag by DB

Lesley Bell and Christine Carr

Leni Silberman, Judy Yarbrough, Christina Schuneman, David Fox, coach Yael Ronen andthe spirit of Mozart

Julie Erickson happy with Dvorak

Louise Pescetta likes the CasablancaRoom

Our Treasured Community

The Chamber Musician

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