Eugene Drucker Blog #1 Aspen, Mozart, Tanglewood and More

A few days after coming home from Denmark, where I had been playing concerts with my trio, I traveled to Aspen for the first performance of a weeklong tour.

Inspired by breathtaking mountain views, and glad to escape the oppressive humidity of New York, I rejoined my Emerson Quartet colleagues for a program of Dvorak and Shostakovich on July 1st in Aspen’s beautiful tent. In all the years we’ve been coming to Aspen, this was the first time we opened the festival. At our dress rehearsal there was a sudden thunderstorm, with rain pounding on the canvas roof. It was almost pointless to rehearse, because we couldn’t hear each other without playing fortissimo. I predicted — accurately, as it turned out — that the storm would pass by the time the concert was supposed to start. The next morning we flew to Chicago for an appearance at the Ravinia Festival.

We played an all-Mozart program, featuring five fugues transcribed from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, the “Dissonant” Quartet and the Clarinet Quintet, with our dear friend and colleague David Shifrin, with whom we had recorded the Mozart and Brahms Quintets in the mid-90s. David is the artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon, where we repeated the program the following night. I’ve always enjoyed my visits to Portland, with its spectacular River Walk, exuberant street life and the beautiful acoustics of Kaul Auditorium at Reed College. On Monday evening we played the opening concert for the new “Music and Beyond” Festival in Ottawa. Joining us in a program of Czech music was our longtime mentor and collaborator, Menahem Pressler of Beaux Arts Trio fame.

Though the Trio recently disbanded after more than half a century, Menahem is still going strong at the age of 86. His schedule is filled with recitals, concertos and guest appearances with ensembles like ours. He also teaches many piano students at Indiana University in Bloomington and sits on the juries of international competitions. We played the Dvorak Quintet with Menahem, whose sound and phrasing are just as beautiful as ever. We had recorded the Dvorak Quintet and Piano Quartet with Menahem back in 1993, and that CD (which was nominated for a Chamber Music Grammy) is still available, along with a similar CD of music by Schumann. After the concert we went out for dinner with Menahem and the British writer Norman Lebrecht, who was at the festival for a series of three lectures. The author of “Who Killed Classical Music?”, he has also penned two novels, one of which is about to be made into a film with Dustin Hoffman and Anthony Hopkins, and has just published a biography of Mahler. The dinner conversation was quite stimulating, with Menahem and Norman exchanging anecdotes about Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer and other fabled musicians of the mid-20th century.

We also concluded our early summer tour at Tanglewood, where decades ago I had been a student. Every time I return to this festival, nestled in the Berkshire hills with a stunning view of the Stockbridge Bowl (Lake Mahkeenac), I am reminded of the inspiration this place held for me as a young musician. I was eager to rehearse between 6 and 9 hours every day — orchestral, chamber and contemporary music — and to hear the Boston Symphony Orchestra rehearse and perform three concerts every weekend. I learned something new each day. The constant exposure to great music, stellar musicians and the charms of the natural surroundings proved to be a heady experience for a city boy from Washington Heights. While playing the all-Mozart program at Tanglewood with David Shifrin, I fell prey to an illusion. A group of teenagers was in the second balcony, cheering us on as we finished the “Dissonant” Quartet.

From that distance, I could have sworn that one of the boys was my 16-year- old son, Julian, who is in the Service Corps program at Camp Becket, 40 minutes away in the eastern Berkshires. (I had written him an e- mail the day before, mentioning that I’d be performing nearby and asking him to think of me on Tuesday evening.)

It was just wishful thinking, as I found out later at the CD signing table: the loudly demonstrative boys turned out to be participants in Boston University’s summer program at Tanglewood. It’s always encouraging for us when we see young people at our concerts, whether or not they play instruments themselves, because it is a positive sign for the continuation of our art form. But to see young people whooping it up like that is a special thrill, one that reinforces our hope for the future of chamber music.