Tag Archives: Paris

Escape from LAX (Notes From Before Christmas)

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My preparation for the Holidays included a couple of piano-stage rehearsals for “Die Fledermaus” by Johann Strauss. I am conducting 9 performances of this production, two of them on December 31, at the Budapest Opera. The New Year’s Eve performance, traditionally is going to be a big party with surprise musical guests appearing in the ball scene in Act 2. (Sorry, but I am not allowed to reveal who they actually are.)
Read about the Budapest “Die Fledermaus” performances here:
http://www.opera.hu

I have had my own Nightmare Before Christmas. I believe it is enough to say that the route of my European flight looked like this: LAX-CDG-BUD. The layout of the Los Angeles Airport reminds me of the 1996 sci-fi action movie “Escape from L.A.” You need serious survival skills to get from one terminal to the other, and you need all the help of the internet to figure out which lounge to use at the the international terminal if you are a Sky Team frequent flier. LAX is still stuck in the last century. They are yet to figure out how useful automatic light rails are let alone simple but clear signs to point you to the direction you are going. At Charles de Gaulle International Airport there is now at least a new automated light rail running between terminals. Make no mistake, there is still plenty of room left there to make for a nice jogging exercise if one wants to catch a connection while one’s suitcase is not being transferred despite a nice, bright yellow “Priority” tag.

Since concluding my Resident Conductor tenure with the Oregon Symphony (2012) I have not had the opportunity to conduct Christmas music or any other Holiday favorites. To be completely honest I get just enough of this type of music by spending a few hours shopping at department stores. I remember a French department store staff going on strike a few years back saying that nobody should be exposed to the same 7 songs for 8-12 hours a day. What can I say, I am totally with those guys! At the same time however, having the Oregon Symphony play some of the Christmas music arrangements I made for them definitely puts me in the right Holiday spirit. Thanks for my friends and former colleagues for sharing this info with me every December! 🙂

I wish You All a successful, low stress few days leading up to Christmas and a Blessed, Wonderful Holiday Season!

Healing with Bruckner and Conversations with Beethoven

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Today at the Huntsville airport a young TSA agent, seeing my big musical scores, asked me about my profession. Upon finding out I was the conductor of the Friday Beethoven-Bruckner concert he said he was really sorry for missing the concert because he was so looking forward to it. I asked him why he did not come. “Because of what happened in Paris. I didn’t want to be in a public place with lots of people around.”, he said. Luckily most of HSO’s loyal audience was there to experience Kirill Gerstein’s amazing piano playing, and the true bonding of musicians and audience with the help of Bruckner’s powerful Symphony #4. Both the Bruckner and Bach’s Sinfonia in E-minor, the encore played by Kirill were dedicated to the dead and the wounded in the Paris attacks.
This afternoon Kirill Gerstein, three principal players of the HSO and myself (with my clarinet in hand) kicked off the Causal Classics series with a show called “Beethoven Conversations”. Kirill and I had a lively conversation about musicians’ every day challenge of interpretation and authenticity. We all got to listen to two Liszt Transcendent Etudes then, after a short demo of Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds we performed Beethoven’s composition of the same title. Everybody who came to Roberts Hall at University of Alabama, Huntsville had a grand time, and I had fun playing some great chamber music as well. Once a great player like Kirill Gerstein comes to town we better take advantage of it and hear him play more than just, an otherwise glorious, piano concerto.
I am on my way to Budapest, Hungary to start rehearsals for the fully staged production of Verdi’s Don Carlo and also to perform new music with Ensemble UMZE at the Budapest Music Center.
Onward to make more beautiful and exciting music.

“ceux qui aiment. ceux qui aiment la vie. à la fin, c’est toujours eux qui gagnent.”
“Those who love. This who love life. In the end, they’re the ones who are rewarded.”
[Quote from a drawing of a Charlie Hebdo cartoonist after Friday’s Paris terror attacks.]

Armel Auditions

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Tomorrow I am off to Paris for a couple of days to listen to 70+ singers auditioning for the International Armel Opera Festival’s 2016 program.
http://armelfestival.org
On April 2 there will be another round of auditions in Budapest at the French Institute. After these rounds I have to pick the young singers who get to compete in these exciting productions among others:
Maria de Buenos Aires by Astor Piazzolla
http://piazzolla.org
Senza sangue by Peter Eotvos
http://eotvospeter.com
Elegy for Young Lovers by Hans Werner Henze
http://wikipedia.org

After the Easter Holidays I am going to do pre-rehearsals for Dr. Faust by Ferruccio Busoni, a semi-staged production that I will be conducting at the Budapest Opera in May.

Paris, Weimar, Budapest

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The international conducting workshop organized by
http://www.eotvosmusicfoundation.org
has begun. 14 students from Paris, Weimar and Budapest are working with three professors:
Ulrich Poehl
http://www.ulrichpoehl.com
Jean-Philippe Wurtz
http://www.ensemble-linea.com
and myself.
Tomorrow afternoon the members of
http://www.thrensemble.com
will be joining us.
On the program:
Philippe Manoury: Passacaille pour Tokyo
Pierre Boulez: Derive 2
Matthias Pintscher: Occultation
Hindemith: Kammermusik no.1

We are all lucky to enjoy the luxurious facilities of the Budapest Music Center.
http://bmc.hu

The conducting workshop is supported by
Institute Francais Budapest
http://www.franciaintezet.hu
Goethe Institut Ungarn
http://www.goethe.de/ins/hu/bud/huindex.htm
Liszt Music Academy
http://zeneakademia.hu

Lady Sarashina Returns

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In 2004 I crossed the bridge of dreams.
Andras Almasi Toth, stage director and myself put on stage the beautiful and captivating dream-piece by Peter Eotvos based on the diary of Lady Sarashina from a thousand years ago. Hungarian actors and international musicians joined forces and produced the Hungarian premiere of this so called “sound theater” ‘As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams’. The piece is rich in poetry and amazing musical ideas like trombones with double bells and a white sousaphone playing the role of the Moon. I’ve had the pleasure of conducting this composition with the famous Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris (this was my debut with them in 2001) then with Klangforum Wien in Vienna, Austria in a completely new production. Then in 2009 Budapest Music Center has produced a very successful recording.
http://www.allmusic.com

In 2007 Peter Eotvos turned this work into a full blown opera with the title ‘Lady Sarashina’. It was premiered in Lyon, France, and ever since it has been performed all over the world. http://www.eotvospeter.com
Tonight Lady Sarashina returns. She is being reborn for two nights with the help of CAFe Budapest Festival and the Liszt Academy.
http://www.cafebudapest.hu
Stage director: Andras Almasi Toth. Conductor: Gregory Vajda. Same team and a composition reincarnated.