Just back from southern California, where I’d never been before. Was wonderful to have three very different Ullmann offerings to make and have each be a confirmation that this music and its story will connect to any group of people in any number of circumstances. The house concert for the Jewish Music Commission – I [ Read More ]
The ‘even’ sonatas are all coming together. Find myself consumed with No. 4 – so Bartokian, a quirky first movement, a slow movement that is one long slow-burn toward red-hot intensity, releasing into a three-subject fugue that weaves its themes in and around each other in impressively masterful and intriguing ways. Very, very cool. Have [ Read More ]
Went to hear a performance of Boston Lyric Opera doing Ullmann’s Emperor of Atlantis with Steve Lipsitt conducting. All I knew of the opera prior to it was the menuett that Ullmann originally wrote for piano as part of the Fifth Sonata but that he later turned into the Dance of Death. Fabulous production, musically [ Read More ]
What a few weeks these have turned out to be — First, the recording – my team of Chris Oldfather producing and Joel Gordon recording was its usual magic. Chris, who has known my playing for decades, understands when to push, when to question, when to let the playing happen on its own. It’s a [ Read More ]
Last month, Matt sent me a youtube link to a short feature about a pianist who was at Terezin. Alice Herz-Sommer. When I saw the name, I ran to the piano and realized that Ullmann’s Fourth Sonata was dedicated to her! And here she is, with an amazing spirit and clarity of recall! I must [ Read More ]
High Holiday season. Went with my artist friend Matt Freedman to see “A film unfinished.” It’s a documentary about the reality of what took place in the Warsaw Ghetto, pealing away the staged propaganda film that the Nazis had made with footage that the director, Yael Hersonski, discovered in hidden bunkers. So powerful, so connected [ Read More ]
Spent the day on Fire Island with some friends who have a place out there. Early morning drive, then the ferry. Meandered along the mostly unpopulated oceanfront on a quiet gray weekday and through the sunken forest. Being there is like walking into another time, or even having time suspended as the rhythm of the [ Read More ]
Book orders arrived. On Steve’s recommendation, got a copy of Josa Karas’ “Music in Terezin.” So well and humanely written, it’s a passage into the world that Ullmann and in fact, all the musicians there lived in. Wild to think that Ullmann almost immediately considered this camp some sort of artist colony that gave him [ Read More ]
Increasingly, seems as if Viktor Ullmann has moved into my apartment. Now juggling the learning/practicing of all four ‘odd’ sonatas, I hear these melodies in my sleeping and waking hours, find myself humming them as I walk (not run) errands, move the car from side to side in the time-honored alternate side parking culture that [ Read More ]
True to form, now that I have a plan with self-induced deadlines, am pushing myself to get ahead of it. So I’m already ready to fold in another sonata as the others keep progressing in the various states they’re in. Hits me that if No. 5 is next, I’ll have all the odd-numbered and also [ Read More ]