Elgar Recording

Qap’lah!…as the Klingons would say. Stefan and I just completed recording our first CD together and are very pleased with how it went. We did Elgar’s “Salut d’Amour” and “Offertoire” (with Stefan on piano) in studio a couple of weeks ago. Then, a few days ago, we recorded his violin concerto live, in concert, with the Staatskapelle Weimar.

This was my first experience with recording this way for CD. I’ve done plenty of live recordings before, but they’ve always been for radio broadcast or purposes other than publication. So, for the first time in many years, I found myself in rather unfamiliar territory, doing something I’ve never done before, and this was both very exciting and a tad anxiety-inducing.

Why did we decide to record in this way? Well, the Elgar concerto is often accused of being “too long” (over 50 minutes) and, consequently, of losing energy and integrity as it goes on. Our view was that the apparent loss of energy stems not from its length (which, when you consider the piano literature, is considerable, but not unheard of), but, rather, from its inherent need for a continual push for momentum. Studio recordings, however, are notoriously problematic in this exact way: the luxury of retakes, overediting, and the absence of an audience’s attention all have a tendency to halt the kind of momentum that’s a given in concert. What we wanted most was to preserve this aspect, so making the recording out of a concert seemed like the most natural solution.

Of course, live recording presents its own unique challenges - it’s essentially a medium in conflict with itself. A concert is heard just once. As a result, a lot more by way of small imperfections is forgiven, because you go to hear concerts for the experience, and not for the note for note perfection. A radio broadcast of a concert is also heard just once (or at least not intentionally more than once, since the listener does not pick what’s played on radio), and this makes it more similar in kind to a concert than a recording. A CD, however, is bought, possessed, and controlled by the consumer, and can therefore be listened to whenever that consumer likes. And it’s this possibility of repeated listening that makes note for note perfection an expectation of CDs - in part because of a learning curve and in part because editing is a fact of our recording culture. Here’s the problem with a live CD: if you “give it your all”, like in a regular concert, the end result may have imperfections, and that makes for a “substandard” recording. If you play it safely, however, it fails as a concert in its lack of energy and momentum, and then what was the point of recording live in the first place?

This challenge was particularly pronounced for us because the Elgar concerto is not a kind piece to any of its participants: it’s an obstacle course as well as a marathon, and it takes tremendous concentration and energy to make it work at all. And so it took a lot of dedication from all of us and I’m very proud of what everyone involved in the recording has achieved.

In order to meet the challenge myself, I approached this project with something of a training regimen, treating the task in part as an athletic undertaking – a bit like gymnastics. I needed to be in the best physical shape possible, so that I could “give it my all”, without tiring or running out of energy or running the risk of my hands giving out. So for six weeks, I never wavered in my stretching regimen, I dutifully drank at least one protein smoothie per day, and I took meticulous care of my arm muscles. I trained my mind to multitask, so that, should any difficulties arise onstage, I’d be prepared to deal with them. I practised with the utmost concentration, and then intentionally without concentration, so that muscle memory could take over if my mind failed. In the end, the only mishap was a broken bow hair that was mildly annoying for about a five-minute stretch, but the preparation ensured that that never distracted me, and I was able to ignore it until the next opportunity to tear it off.

The comfort level preparation afforded me allowed for us, I think, to aim for what we most wanted out of this recording: to give a version of this concerto that does not wane in energy and that maintains a steady momentum. Our audience fed beautifully into this, and their reaction at the end was both gratifying and also indicative of their contribution - their presence and attention added that feeling of vitality unique to concerts, and we think that our CD will have inherited some of that feeling. That’s something I hadn’t achieved so far in my recording career, so, for me, this is a very special moment and a great sensation.

And now our project is out of our hands and has been passed to the Tonmeister, who will soon present us with a master, and to all of the people who will design and package the physical product. We can’t wait to see the final results and to release it to all of you.

Advice for Violinists Recovering From Injury

Playing an instrument is a curious thing: part intellectual, part creative, and part gymnastics. The physical aspect has always been the most uncomfortable for me, given its reliance on something as incredibly fragile as a pair of hands. One of the scariest prospects for an instrumentalist is that of injury, and, when it happens, it’s easy to find yourself reduced to a mess of neurotic worries. The best thing you can do in that instance is to realize that hands are really just intricate machines, and, as with all machines, a good knowledge of how they work is essential for knowing how to fix them quickly. I learned this lesson the hard way.

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.