I was recently watching a 60 Minutes interview with Lady Gaga, a self-confessed student of fame, who has achieved everything that has eluded classical musicians since, roughly, 1848. It’s pretty uncontroversial that no classical musician could ever achieve that level of fame. Although it’s less obvious why this should be the case, there are certain standard theories, with one of the most popular being that it’s because younger people are the biggest consumers of music, and the young will never like classical music en masse.

Here are some commonly-accepted explanations for why: (1) Classical music is difficult to understand. Young people want easy entertainment. Ergo, young people find classical music unappealing. (2) There’s a “critical period” to learning the appreciation of classical music. If your elementary school didn’t make you play the clarinet and train you to recognize Pachelbel’s Canon, you’re pretty much a write-off.  (3) The young just aren’t aware of the existence of classical music. If they knew it, they’d love it. (Again, those elementary schools better blast that Canon every morning if they want the symphony musicians of tomorrow to have enough to eat.) (4) Classical music has dug its own grave by presenting a “stuffy”, elitist persona. We need more scantily-clad fashionista pianists, humble conductors with bed-head who shun the word “maestro” and give themselves cute nicknames, and, most importantly, we must move away from so much emphasis on “dead white men”.

I don’t think any of these explanations is adequate. Number (3) is simply false: classical music is everywhere in some form or other. You can find it in commercials, in movies (Amadeus won best picture!), on TV, sampled in pop music, playing in jewellery stores or bakeries, and being blasted out the occasional mobile phone – there really is no shortage of a basic exposure. I find (4) to be plain ridiculous: there have been endless (ad nauseum) experiments in both sexing-up and dumbing-down the art. What typically happens is some novelty act of “light” classical music in a pop-style package gets a cult following of a moderate crowd for, tops, a couple of years. It’s then quickly and easily forgotten, without having converted anyone to more mainstream classical music. (Also, conductors with bed-head ultimately survive with the same odds as those who insist on being called “maestro”.)

(2) and (1) are basically related, and, superficially, plausible. But that brings us back to the problem of the ever-replenished supply of mid-middle aged persons in our concert halls. If (2) were true, and there were a critical period for learning appreciation, classical music would have gone extinct as soon as the Mods, the Hippies, or - at the very least - the Hipsters grew up. Since it hasn’t gone extinct, is (1) the explanation? Is classical music just too “difficult” for the young? And does that mean that something happens to some people between 40 and 60, which suddenly makes them go out and buy a lot of Naxos CDs, with which they educate themselves in preparation for taking their places in our concert halls?

A change like this may in fact be happening, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the difficulty of understanding classical music: not all classical music is tone-rows, and it’s not that hard to leave a concert hall humming a Mozart melody. I think that, instead, the issue has something to do with the difficulty of making classical music. Here’s where Lady Gaga helps put things into perspective. In the 60 Minutes interview, she says that she sees herself in her fans. I think the relationship is actually reciprocal: her fans hear her say that, and see themselves in her. The demographic in question is teenagers and younger adults. These are people whose lives are not yet written, they’re not quite sure how those lives will be written, and very many of them still have “big dreams”, often involving celebrity. It’s never beyond the realm of possibility that they too can achieve what Lady Gaga has achieved. (The enormous success of American Idol, for example, turns entirely on their having such hopes.) Now, why can’t this kind of identification occur with classical musicians? Because this is where there is a critical period factor: a 16 year old can start a garage band and make it huge by 18, but no one ever touched a piano for the first time in high school and went on to play with the New York Philharmonic. Teenagers and young adults in the “normal” world cannot identify with classical musicians, because their lives have already followed a different trajectory.

So what’s going on with the mid-middle aged audiences? What changes? Well, most of them are by then established, more confident in their identities, and no longer entertain notions like becoming a rock star. They start to value other qualities in their entertainers – the specialization, the hard work, the refinement – they start to like classical music exactly because it’s difficult to make. They may not relate to the musicians in being able to make the music themselves, but they can relate to them very strongly in the identification of values and practices that are imperative for success in their own fields.

I am, of course, generalizing, as one must always do when discussing demographic trends: I’m sure there are plenty of teenagers with no interest in becoming rock stars and plenty of baby boomers who simply like Beethoven because it’s fun to trip to. There are, however, good indicators that there’s some truth to the generalization. So many of the tearful interviewees among Lady Gaga’s fans, for example, say something along the lines of being able to put themselves in her place, or being able to see her in their places. Conversely, one of the most common comments I get from audiences after concerts (and this is a tally of hundreds of performances over the course of eighteen years) is, “that was a [good, moving, exciting, etc.] performance; you must work so hard and have such dedication”. Very often, they add something like “do you have any advice for how I can get my [grandson, granddaughter] to work harder?”

The reason I find this question interesting is that those of us who make our livings producing and selling classical music are perpetually lamenting the shortage of audiences, but aren’t often doing all that much to figure out exactly what causes the shortage. Furthermore, whenever anyone does attempt something to help the problem, the strategies they use are devised in reference mainly to the above-stated ideas about what the causes of that problem are. For example, school outreach programs are informed by (1), (2), and (3). I’m not denying that these are extremely important and worthwhile programs. But, the way I see it, without a deeper diagnosis, they are fairly palliative treatment. Here’s an analogy: what we have, on our hands, is an immuno-compromised organism, with multiple infections, and what we’re doing is treating the infections one by one. This works, to an extent, in that the focussed antibiotics keep the infections from completely killing the organism. In an ideal scenario, however, wouldn’t it be preferable to cure that which is causing the immune system to be compromised in the first place? Shouldn’t we by trying to cure the most fundamental cause of the problems?

I’m neither an economist nor a sociologist, so I’ve unfortunately nothing to offer by way of a concrete strategy. I do, however, think that the fundamental issue here is one of how people relate to classical music and this is the disease that’s affecting the organism. That’s the lesson the tastes of the young versus the tastes of the mid-middle aged can teach us. What those of us who produce and sell classical music need to learn (something the pop industry learned a very long time ago) is that it’s vital to figure out what’s already important to people, what hopes or fears they have, and, especially, what they want the music they consume to do for them. Once we have done that, we need to explore whether the products we offer can do those things for them. And then, if we in fact can meet their needs, we need to let the consumers know exactly how. It seems that we have a ready-made connection with mid-middle aged persons based on the things they value, and their perception of classical music as exemplifying those things. What we can do to expand our audiences beyond that is think seriously about what other qualities and values and characteristics we have, and about who out there has a need for them. At the end of the day, it seems to be a very basic issue of figuring out where there are potential markets; yet, somehow, it’s a skill that has, until now, eluded us.

Hello Everyone!

I’m officially on vacation now, and, like every year, I’m using the opportunity to catch up on sleep, television shows, and reading. On top of my book list this year was the infamous Tiger Mom’s memoirish parenting guide, not least because it was recommended to me by at least 50 people. I must (rather grudgingly) confess that, whatever one’s opinion of its content, it’s at least a fabulous read: it had me so riveted I finished it in a single sitting.

Since I’m not a parent, I’ll reserve judgment on the merits of the Tiger Mom’s approach as a method of child-rearing (though I should add that I’m extremely happy not to be her child). I would, however, like to comment on her approach as a method of musician-rearing because, in that sense, it absolutely sucks.

If I understand her correctly, the Tiger Mom appears to think that a maniacal work ethic and a competitive attitude will produce a good musician. This isn’t terribly surprising considering that her background is academic: she seems to think about the upbringing of a musician on the model of a 19th century Austrian Gymnasium. What she has completely failed to grasp, however, is that the essence of music is inherently contradictory to that model. Everything that’s important for the making of a good musician is stifled by that model.

Let’s look at the question of competitive attitude first. The Tiger Mom thinks that, by encouraging competitiveness, she can drive progress (some kind of a warped Hegelian dialectic thing perhaps). I think that competitiveness is (1) useless as a driving force for (musical) progress, and (2) downright poisonous to good musicianship. Let me give you an analogy for (1): thinking that pitting your musical child against others (whether through words or by formally entering them in contests) will make good musicians of them is much like thinking you can make a good writer of a verbally gifted child by entering them in a lot of spelling bees. This is because you can only rank that which you can quantify, and you cannot quantify musicianship. In its place, judges instead end up quantifying speed and accuracy of playing, which, while very important aspects of good musicianship, are not equivalent to it. They are merely building blocks for it. Which leads us to (2): making music a competitive affair ensures that these building blocks are understood by the competitors to be all that matter (because that’s what they’ll be judged on anyway) and this shoves the actual point – artistry - to the background. Why come up with a beautifully turned phrase if all you’ll be credited for is spelling your words correctly?

Most of the people who recommended this book to me were concerned primarily with the work ethic issue: surely instilling discipline and a reverence for hard work is vital in the making of a good musician? Not exactly – at least not at all in the way the Tiger Mom thinks. A good musician won’t see practise as gruelling work in the first place. The best training isn’t that which gets you to practise despite not liking it, but the one that gets you to actually like it. The Tiger Mom thinks this will come along with “being good at” the task at hand, which, she believes, happens only after a lot of forced, unpleasant work. But here she has another notion that’s poisonous to good musicianship. The focus should always be on the music and not on the musician – a narcissistic focus on oneself can only detract from good music-making. Enjoyment of an activity can be gotten from many sources other than the egocentric realization that one is “proficient” at that activity. An understanding of context, for example, can go a long way: for me (and for many others I’ve encountered over the years), the connecting of, say, a Beethoven Sonata with Napoleonic Europe or a Shostakovich Symphony with Soviet history can be an extremely powerful way of lending meaning to the work in question. And meaning brings enjoyment. Of course it’s important to work hard, but it’s equally important to work hard for the right reasons. Wanting to “be number one” is not one of those reasons.

You might suggest that, perhaps, the Tiger Mom’s approach is good as a start, for unruly little kids, who can then graduate to a less strict model when they’ve become disciplined enough. But this overlooks a key issue: the psychological requirements of good musicianship. A great deal of music-making is a question of balanced pacing and timing and control. Speeding and/or dragging, for example, are bad things. Now, anyone who’s ever performed anything knows that nervousness and anxiousness mess precisely with your pacing and timing and control - when your heartrate goes up, the adrenaline flows, and you lose the connection between your internal metronome and your hands. This is particularly so in children, who lack the experience to deal with the situation when it arises. So why on Earth would you want to impose a system of training that promotes and feeds on nervousness and anxiousness? We should, on the contrary, do everything we can to help relaxation – and we’re certainly not going to achieve that by forcing practice and by constantly comparing, criticizing, and instigating competitiveness.

I don’t know if the Tiger Mom’s approach is a good way of training theoretical physicists or neurosurgeons (I kind of suspect not), but it is, I think, a reprehensible way of training musicians. And the sad fact is that there are far too many Tiger Moms in the classical music world. For the sake of their offspring, and for the future of musicianship, it would be a great service if those of us in the know might sometimes try to set them straight.

I broke my right hand in July 2006. I’d just finished practicing in a common area of the building in which I lived at the time and was on my way back to my apartment. I was holding multiple things, so I imprudently decided to open a swinging door with my foot. Unfortunately, I miscalculated the weight of the door, gave it far too strong a kick, and it swung back and hit my hand. I then immediately made my first mistake. What I should have done was gone straight to the emergency room. Instead, I took out the violin and tried to play, because my instrumentalist’s paranoia needed reassurance that the hand still worked. It didn’t: my bow fell to the ground.

The doctor who treated me didn’t do much to comfort me. (Her people skills were about as advanced as those of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory.) She walked in and said, “Hi. I’d like to reassure you that many people have recovered from this sort of injury and gone on to lead perfectly normal lives. I had a patient who even went on to play golf again.” And then, thinking she had just given me good news, she stared at my hysterical tears with baffled impatience. She was actually mistaken about the location of the injury: she thought the fracture was on the wrist, when it was in fact a couple of millimetres from it, on the fifth metacarpal. But the psychological damage was done, and, even after discovering the injury was not as severe as originally thought, I spent my entire recovery time fearing I’d never play properly again.

As a result, when I was finally allowed to start practising again (in January 2007), I instantly turned into a rather cartoonish caricature of the tyrannical violin teacher (a sort of hybrid of a Vietnam movie sergeant and Ottokar Sevcik) - with the bizarre twist that I was my own victim. I seem to have thought I could will my hand to get stronger more quickly, which makes about as much sense as yelling at your car to stop being broken. The ironic thing is that I wasn’t ignorant of how muscles work: I knew in theory that they needed rest and patience to recover, but, motivated by fear, I was totally unable to get out of the violin teacher mentality.

The consequences were not good. The first concert I did after the injury was in February 2007 and my hands lasted roughly halfway through the warmup in my dressing room. Since I hadn’t played for so long, both hands were weak, not just the one that was injured. I guess I don’t need to add that it wasn’t the best performance of my life: the fifth digit on my left hand had gone numb, so I spent the entire concert either spontaneously refingering or deciding visually where to put that finger. And that was my good hand.

Awful as it was, I needed that concert to snap me out of my unhealthy approach to recovery. I learned to moderate my practising, working through a clear plan, adding a little more every day. I also learned about the necessity of stretching, massage, being sufficiently hydrated, and (most importantly) getting enough protein for your muscles to repair themselves. (If you’re curious, I like to use Sun Warrior raw vegan protein powder – it doesn’t have any weird additives or sugar, so it works very efficiently.) Nowadays I stick to this regimen every time I rebuild after taking time off, even if it’s just a few violin-free days during summer vacation. The results are unwaveringly positive.

The Elgar CD will be my first recording with my husband, Stefan Solyom, who will both conduct the concerto and play the piano for the shorter violin and piano pieces. Stefan and I have already worked together on occasion and frequently make music at home for fun - opportunities that I cherish for two reasons. First, we very much share that similar internal rhythm and pacing that make for special collaborations (for example, the first time we ever played together - a Mozart sonata for piano and violin - we spontaneously trilled the same number of notes). Second, Stefan is one of the most inherently musical people I’ve ever met. There’s something revitalizing about making music with him: pieces I’ve played hundreds of times appear fresh again, as though his attention has infused them with new life. This is an exceptionally rare quality, one that helps achieve a very high level of music-making, because the tedium of the intense and repetitive work soloists must do to perform well is suddenly forgotten, and the rewards of this work can be enjoyed with the same enthusiasm one might feel during a first read.

I’m especially looking forward to this project with Stefan because, as much as I enjoy playing concerts, recording has always been most rewarding for me. There’s something immensely satisfying about creating a tangible, enduring product, and I can’t think of a better collaborator in the creation of this product in particular.

I've joined the ranks of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. No, I wasn't arrested for DUI, but I did get my mugshot and fingerprints taken on Thursday.

Whenever I work in the United States, the Department of Homeland Security has to approve and issue me what's called a Class P2 visa. (This is the case for all non-US citizens who work in fields like music.) My management applies for one each time I have an engagement in the States. The application goes through the American Federation of Musicians, gets processed in Vermont, and a piece of paper arrives in the mail for you to present to immigration officials before you enter the country.

Through negligence, I failed to realize until about five days before my flight to Boston that the P2 hadn't arrived. The visa had been approved, but the paperwork had gotten lost in Vermont. I had nothing to present at the border. I was told to explain the situation to the regular immigration official, who would then take me to a special room where this problem would be taken care of.

The conversation between myself and the regular immigration official might as well have been in two different languages.

“You can go through.”
“But I'm missing my P2.”
What do you need a P2 for?”
“I'm doing a concert.”
“Are you sure it's a P2 you need?”
“I'm…pretty sure.”

Doubt creeping in…

“I think that's what I always get, but I can call my manager and ask…”
“No cellphones allowed.”
“Can I use your phone then?”
“No.”
“I was told I have to go to a special room.”
“Oh, it's right around the corner.”

I entered the special room and timidly approached the reception desk. The lady behind it looked at me sternly and snapped, “I'll be with you once I'm done with this file, ok? You'll have to wait your turn.” I looked around, but, try as I might, I didn't see anyone I could possibly stand behind. So I just stood there, waiting my turn behind an imaginary someone in an imaginary line.

After ten minutes of this I shifted forward, the lady sighed, looked extremely bothered, and asked me what I wanted. I handed her my passport and ticket and told her my story. She pointed a webcam-type object at me and took a photo that I assume makes my passport one look like a glamour shot. It turns out that mugshots and prints are a standard procedure in these cases. I haven't figured out why.

“I need to take your fingerprints.”
“Yes?”

I was waiting for ink and paper but she gestured some device not unlike the thing that checks your heartrate at the emergency room. I placed my left index finger on the thingy like she told me to. Nothing happened.

“Wipe your finger, it's too sweaty.”
“But my finger is perfectly dry – my hands are almost never sweaty.”
“It's sweaty, it's not working.”
“I assure you, my finger is not sweaty.”
“It's dirty then, or oily – wipe it.”

I wiped and replaced it on the thingy. Nothing happened.

“Let's see the finger.”

The culprit turned out to be my crusty callous – my dry and clean crusty callous.

“Give me the right finger”, she said, disgusted, though I'm not sure whether her disgust had to do with the situation or the crusty callous. The right finger worked.
“Go sit down. You'll have to wait your turn.”

I joined the saddest-looking group of people I've seen since a subway problem in Toronto prevented a whole crowd from making it on time to (what was advertised as) Anne-Sophie Mutter's farewell concert. One lawyer had been waiting three hours. An Eastern European couple just gave up and left. I looked nervously at the clock – only two hours to boarding, and I was starving.

I was eventually called, short of the 90 minute mark.

“Why are you here?”
“My visa got lost in Vermont.”
“So you don't have a visa?”
“No, I do have a visa – it's just not here.”

I felt ridiculous, like I was telling this man my dog ate my homework.

“Do you have any documentation at all?”
“Well, I have this application number on the itinerary my management gave me.”
“Ma'am, this isn't an official document.” (Voice rising.)
“Well, yes, I know that, but you can use that number to get one.”

Utter annoyance and some investigation on the computer.

“Yeah, it seems like you were approved.”
“So I have a visa?”
“No, you don't have a visa, but there's no point in getting one now, because you'll be back before it comes through. It's ok: you were approved.”
“Huh?”

I've been thoroughly confused since about whether the term “visa” refers to permission to enter the country for work or the piece of paper that verifies your having the said permission. I'll work it out someday.

My consolation prize to myself for this whole semantic misadventure was two slices of pizza and a vitamin water. All was promptly forgotten.

I'm en route back to Toronto, having arrived here from Yerevan, Armenia a few hours ago. (I hope you'll forgive that I stopped for some steak and fries before committing these thoughts to screen.) It used to be the case that the time I rotated 180˚ onstage while playing solo Bach was the most noteworthy thing that ever happened to me on a concert trip (I'll tell you about it some other time). That incident has now been trumped by the witnessing of my first political uprising and army crackdown. It's very calm here in Paris, so it's hard to believe that I woke up this morning to find several tanks and a large army outside my hotel, or that I passed dozens of burnt-out cars and broken windows on my way to the airport, or that I was unable to play my concert last night because of a government-issued ban on public gatherings.

I arrived in Yerevan six days ago at around midnight. (Through some coincidence, I always seem to arrive in Yerevan at an ungodly hour.) I went to bed as soon as I got to my hotel room. I skipped breakfast the next morning (bad, I know) and worked on my Elgar (good, I know), before going down to one of the hotel's restaurants for lunch. I was staying at the Yerevan Marriott Hotel (formerly the famous Hotel Armenia in Soviet times), which overlooks Republic Square, home of Armenia's government buildings. That was when I first noticed something was weird: a group of Italian businessmen was huddled by a large window in the restaurant, staring out at a massive collection of people who were brandishing signs expressing support for the government.

Here's what was happening. The Republic of Armenia held presidential elections last month. Although international election-watchers agreed that everything went smoothly, one of the losing candidates decided that he…well, didn't lose. His supporters were holding demonstrations in another part of the city, and the president-elect's supporters were holding counter-demonstrations in this part of the city.

The “other part of the city” turned out to be more relevant to me than I had guessed. All of the APO's concerts are held at the Aram Khatchaturian Concert Hall, which is part of a building known as The Opera (the other part of The Opera is the hall actually used for operas). Most of Yerevan's cultural activity takes place here. The election protestors couldn't use Republic Square (since it was being used by the counter-protestors), so they congregated around The Opera. The situation pretty much remained the same throughout the week: I'd pass the protesters on my way in and out of rehearsals. They were very loud and apparently very fond of sunflower seeds – there were seed remnants strewn everywhere. At one point, the APO actually locked all of the entrances to the hall, because the demonstrators had started wandering in looking for bathrooms! (I don't know whether or not that had anything to do with the sunflower seeds.) At one point I was personally affected: I slipped on some loose pavement on Friday trying to take an alternative route and pulled a neck muscle. But no worries – there's a fantastic massage therapist at the Marriott's spa. Look him up if you're ever in Yerevan. His name is Spartacus. No joke.

The situation did change – rather dramatically - the morning of the concert (yesterday). When we showed up for the dress rehearsal, The Opera was surrounded by riot police, who let us in only after a not unsubstantial amount of explaining and pleading. Maestro Alber did manage to get through his entire Rachmaninoff third symphony once we were finally let in, but we were only about a quarter of the way through the Elgar when the orchestra manager came in and announced that mass gatherings weren't allowed for the rest of the day. So no concert. In response, Eduard Topchjan (the APO's music director), threw on his coat and said, “well, how about dinner?”.

Things got even stranger after that. The dispersed protesters started rioting and soon many of the major streets were lined with soldiers. The concierge at the Marriott slipped notes under our doors cautioning us to draw our curtains and to stay away from the windows – for once I was grateful they'd run out of good rooms overlooking the square and I'd gotten stuck in one facing some random alley. (That view actually reminded me of the kind I've had out of every Manhattan hotel room I've ever stayed in.) Eduard Topchjan's dinner plans hadn't included walking back to the hotel accompanied by sounds of yelling and machine-gun fire, but we got that anyway. It was really surreal, like something out of a textbook I was quizzed on in first-year history. The government has since declared a 20-day state of emergency. Everything was disturbingly quiet this morning when I was driven to the airport.

So…that was my week. I'll sign off now and go prepare for my Beethoven recital in Toronto this week. I don't think that one will be cancelled – unless something crazy happens, like six inches of snow.