Dave Catches Up

As some of you may have noticed, there's been a long silence since my last blog entry.  Is Dave any less committed to his global initiative?  Was he seized by a cabal of anti-music jihadists?  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact, Dave has gone more global than he could have ever imagined.  The writing stopped because I became too busy going to concerts, making friends, and hanging out with musicians  (i.e. having fun) to keep up the blogging.

I did make some notes after concerts and write down a few things but I had no time to clean things up and put together blog entries in either Switzerland or London.  I also took plenty of pictures.  So this entry is going to contain a grab bag of catch-up information about Verbier.  I'll then write another blog entry about London and the rest will be various concert reviews.  If the reviews  are no longer interesting because they are stale,  you can ask for your money back.  Most of them were written within a half a day of the concert and  I just didn't have time to polish and post them.  As it was, I barely found time to eat and sleep.

Adventures in the Green Room

The key to the wonderful week I had was the Green Room.  I was taught to always visit the Green Room after a concert as gesture of gratitude to the musicians who have just spent two hours or so and who knows how many thousands of hours of preparation to entertain the audience.  You don't have to know anybody and you really don't have to say anything.  Your presence acts as a sort of physical applause.  If I feel it's appropriate, I'll say a few words of thanks and move on.  I have no interest in autographs – I've never collected them and I don't see the point.  I may discretely snap a few pictures (without flash), but I almost never ask a performer to pose with me or anyone else.  Other times if it's fairly full I'll just mill around and then leave.  If approaching the performer would be invasive in any way – for example if they seem to be engaged in an intense personal conversation or they're clearly not in the mood to deal with it – I quietly remove myself.

So, I made a point to go to the Green Room after every concert.  My first concert at Verbier was “Martha Argerich and Friends.”  She's one of my favorite pianists and she always has huge crowds in her Green Room, but I figured “why not”?  There was a crowd to get into the area, but it wasn't oppressive.  There was a guard at the door but I quickly figured out they really weren't screening anybody anywhere.  I took a few pictures of Argerich, of Evgeny Kissin congratulating her,  many other well-wishing musicians, and several other of the night's performers.  There was a crowd of people lined up to speak to Argerich, but everyone else was relaxed, unhurried, and milling around and talking freely.  I got involved in some casual conversations with some people I recognized and some people I didn't know at all.

The next morning I went to a concert at the Church (Varleriy Sokolov and Nelson Goerner) and during intermission and in the Green Room subsequently I met some of the people I spoke with the prior evening.  That  night after Evgeny Kissin's recital I went to the Green Room again and once again met many of the same people.  So at this point many of us developed a casual friendship.  We'd look to greet each other.  Verbier so small that everybody runs into everybody.  I'd meet someone on the street and we'd have lunch or drink.  So, an instant society developed.

Once I became a “Green Room regular” and was clearly known by some, many of the musicians assumed I was either a musician or a music-industry person, so they started greeting me and/or waiving on the street.  Steven Kovacevich  (one of my favorite pianists) walked up to me and said “Aren't you that guy from London who performed...” and I said jokingly, “No, I'm not that guy, I'm that other guy” and a nice conversation started from there.  We started talking about music, but we then veered off into the world financial crisis, and a host of other things.

At one point, he looked over my shoulder and said to an older man sitting on a chair behind me, “Hi, Ivry”  It was Ivry Gitlis, 89-year-old violin legend.  I don't mean to list every musician I talked to and drop names, but I wanted to give a flavor of how casual things were, how interesting meetings led to more interesting meetings, and where my week went.

So I was in Classical Music Fantasy Camp.  I heard one wonderful concert after another.  I would find myself at 3am  out at a bar surrounded by some of the most talented Russian musicians in the world carrying on in Russian and English, debating the relative importance of talent vs. perseverance.  They couldn't understand how anybody who loved music enough couldn't translate that passion into becoming a great musician.  I countered that I was living proof that it isn't quite that simple.   It was a very interesting conversation with each side thinking he other didn't “get it.”  It was also interesting to learn how infrequently some  of them listen to recordings and how little they often know about the past masters of instruments other than their own.  I spoke to two world-class Russian violinists who had never heard of Shura Cherkassky (one couldn't believe a true Russian would ever name their child “Shura.”)  I explained he was the start pupil of Josef Hofmann and they didn't know who he was either.
Amazing.

Musicians Everywhere

Verbier's a small place and if you're out and about you'll run into everybody.  For a few days, practically everywhere I went I would see Khatia Buniatshivili  with her mother and sister.  I started to joke that she was stalking me.

It's wild to buy a sandwich from a street vendor only to see Evgeny Kissin breeze by while checking his iPhone.   It's even wilder to see him wave hello.  I'm sure he doesn't have the slightest idea who I was, but he's seen me in Green Rooms ever night.  He knows he knows me but he doesn't know exactly from where, or he's another one who thinks I'm “that guy.”  Or maybe he's just basically a nice guy.

I think the single best thing about Verbier was the relaxed atmosphere.   The performers clearly enjoyed it as much as the audience.  It perceptibly changed the nature and quality of the performances, and it compelled the listener to become more engaged.  It was a great experience to feel totally immersed in music for a week.

Interesting Characters

Any large gathering attracts a few eccentrics and oddballs  (present company excluded, of course).  Verbier had its share.  First, there was Swiss Briefcase Guy – a young man who usually walked around in a light blue suit and sparkled blue tie, always sporting a rather stylish and compact computer bag.  He was ubiquitous.  I saw him on the street, in restaurants, and in the Green Rooms.  He looks like he had an official function but I have no idea what it was.  Perhaps his briefcase held the Verbier launch codes.  I didn't snap a picture of him in full “briefcase mode,” but this should suffice.

Then there was Annoying Intermission Guy.   This is a very strange looking man who looks very French and surly and is not terribly well-dressed.  I've seen him at four separate concerts.  He prowled the front rows during intermission for an open seat in a crass attempt to upgrade.  He never seems to get one but he always seems to get himself in trouble.  He was sort of a French seat-poaching Wyle E. Coyote.

The Verbier Festival was a fantastic experience that I'd highly recommend to anyone who loves classical music.  It exceed my expectations by several orders of magnitude.