A Good Beginning

This is the year I turn 80 and it’s off to a great start! The first eight days brimmed with friends, fitness, lovely music, and fascinating learning opportunities. I feel lucky and very grateful.

January 1 – On New Year’s Day I started A Month of Prayer, a book of 5-minute meditations by Doug Hood and Leo Thorne. Then I initiated my resolution to exercise at our Fitness Center every other day. In the afternoon we entertained good friends Angela, Henry, Peg and Jack with drinks and dinner, while we watched an exciting Rose Bowl game. The University of Michigan beat the University of Alabama in overtime 27 – 20. This year looks like a winner!

January 2 – Tuesday our Quail Ridge Chorus resumed rehearsals. I serve as piano accompanist, roll keeper, and scribe. Led by our director, Emily Carter, we practiced songs from the Fifties–Great Balls of Fire, Love Me Tender, Unforgettable, A Teenager in Love. This year is going to rock!

January 3 – Wednesday is laundry day at our house, which I intersperse with piano practice and planning. While Carol Cruz cleaned the house in the afternoon, I taught my first piano lessons since Christmas break. My two students had played in a recital at my house on December 19, when Nick’s mother, Irina, presented me this delicious “piano” cake. Nick, 13, is fascinated by Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee,” and is beginning to master the fingering necessary to make that bee fly. Bella, 7, plays “Ode to Joy” and “Happy Birthday” for family and friends. Missing her lesson over Christmas, she wrote out and practiced her own assignment–first time a student of mine did that! Teaching them each week brings me much joy.

January 4 – Thursday, Lisa Leonard invited me to a meeting of the Florida Chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters at the Boca Raton Historical Society Museum.  Music, Art, History–three of  my main interests met together that night and introduced me to teachers and students working in those fields. Three young students from Lynn University, where Lisa teaches, entertained us with lovely cello and violin music. I have since joined both societies and look forward  to meeting more people who value and support would-be artists. I’m also eager to learn more about Boca Raton’s history. I discovered that the Army Air Corps moved its technical school for Radar training from Scott Field, Illinois, to Boca Raton in 1942 RADAR (Radio Detection And Ranging) was a new top secret technology at the time.

January 5 – Friday evening, our church, First Presbyterian of Delray Beach, hosted its annual dinner at Benevenuto Restaurant in Boynton Beach. At least 200 people attended. Not only did we hear a delightful address by Reverend Susan Sparks, this year’s distinguished visiting preacher, but also beheld a wonderful program of Ukrainian Dance and Opera Classics. One of the singers was Fernando Gonzalez, who belongs to the Latin Divos who will give the first concert of the new First Delray Concert Series on January 14.

January 6 – Saturday afternoon I went to see Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi, live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera, at a movie theater ten minutes away. It transported me to Jerusalem and Babylon in the 6th century B.C.E. Last summer’s Vacation Bible School had taught us about King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (aka Nabucco) destroying the temple in Jerusalem and taking the Israelites captive. The story is told in the Book of  Jeremiah.

Here are photos of restored Babylonian architecture my family and I saw in Berlin. It was good to be reminded of the stoic faith of Israelites then and now, especially when in Act III, the Hebrew Slalves sang “Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate” (Go, thought, on golden wings). The idea of sending one’s thoughts from a remote place reminded me of the book I’d just read, The Phone Book at the Edge of the World. (See next Monday, January 8.)

On Saturday evening, Steve and I rented Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s new movie about Leonard Bernstein. I’d seen the biopic before Christmas with Jayne and Leslie Dworman, but I was glad to see it with Steve. He added subtitles that identified the titles of the fast-changing score. My lifelong admiration for Bernstein began when my brother Harry gave me West Side Story just after Marjo’s father, Riley, helped me install my first stereo system in 1960. Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts had come out in 1958; below is a one-minute introduction by Bernstein himself. In graduate classes at Catholic University I studied Bernstein’s 1973 Harvard lecture series, The Unanswered Question;  Both series are now available on YouTube. 

Maestro explores the various facets of Bernstein’s genius and his sexuality. Despite his many affairs with men, his wife, Felicia, somehow stayed with him until her untimely death (her cancer was surely related to all the smoking the movie portrays!) For more insight into this movie, tune into this Fresh Air interview that Terry Gross conducted that day with Bradley Cooper, the movie’s director and star, and his coach, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor of the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

January 7 –  Sunday morning brought more musical treats: the superb choir at our church sang Mozart’s Ave Verum and John Carter’s arrangement of Shall We Gather at the River? Mario Arevalo and Alejandro Viera sang Lloyd Larson’s arrangement of my personal favorite, Here I Am, Lord. Reverend Susan Sparks’ sermon, “Am I Gonna Ride This Thing or Not?” was very well-received. Here’s a picture of some of my friends with this sparkling, funny, thoughtful and deeply spiritual messenger..

Sunday afternoon, I met Jayne and Leslie Dworman at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach to hear Wu Han and David Finckel play all five of Beethoven’s Cello Sonatas. Jayne is the Children’s Librarian at the Society and got me a complimentary ticket. So much to learn!

Wu Han, Artistic Advisor for the Four Arts Society, gave an overview of the program with details about each sonata. Beethoven composed his first two cello sonatas (Opus 5) in Berlin in 1796 and dedicated them to King Friedrich Wilhelm II, nephew and successor to Frederick the Great. These were among Beethoven’s earliest works, known for their technical complexities. David Finckel and Wu Han knew how to make the music come alive. Wu Han’s discussion of the characteristics of Beethoven’s early works inspired me, a few days later, to spend an hour playing a piano sonata from that period, Beethoven’s Opus 7, which I had studied 10 years ago in an online course taught by Jonathan Biss..

The third Sonata, Opus 69, was more familiar to Jayne and me. It was a product of Beethoven’s Heroic Period, when he was struggling to accept his increasing deafness. The music is simply gorgeous. Han, who studied with Rudolf Serkin, and Finckel, a professor at Juilliard, played it superbly. Perhaps this recording will bring it to mind:

Wu Han explained that the final two cello sonatas were composed by Beethoven in 1815, when he was completely deaf, but still committed to sharing the adventurous music he heard in his head. I was so glad to bring home the printed program she wrote, so that I could remember her final words at the conclusion of the concert:

Beethoven takes the piano and cello sonata to new realms. Reaching the pinnacle of integration, the two instruments join together to create a dancing fugue full of dissonance even in its cheerful sections. Completely baffling to listeners in Beethoven’s own time, the movement still shocks the ear. The fugue that end Sonata in D major, Op. 102, NO. 2 looks forward to the music of the 20th century, and is a fitting conclusion to Beethoven’s towering literature for piano and cello.

The length of the concert caused me to miss our weekly Sunday Zoom call our family, but Steve reported all are well; I trust my children will see that I have been happily engaged.

January 8 – Monday morning Zooming with Bible Study buddies resumed today! So good to hear about this far-flung group’s holidays and return to study and prayers together. Another Zoom in the afternoon was with my First Presbyterian book group. We had read The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina. Cathie Bridwell, who moved to California last summer, led  the discussion by two readers in Florida and one each in Kansas and Delaware. We talked about how, in this novel, an empty phone booth in northern Japan became a refuge for processing grief after the huge tsunami Japan experienced on March 11, 2011. The book was timely. Just a few days before, an earthquake in Japan had set off warnings about another possible tsunami. I liked the characters and the story and thought it could be useful for anyone overcoming a disaster. My rating was a 7 out of 10; everyone else deemed it a 5.

The evening of January 8, Steve and I had tickets to see An Evening with Yo-Yo Ma in conversation with Jeffrey Brown at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach. Longtime readers of this blog will be aware of my deep affection for Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble and that special night, almost ten years ago, that I got to play with him! Steve and I value Jeffrey Brown’s contributions to the PBS New Hour. To see them both would be a treat, we thought. Ma had his cello on stage, but alas, we heard too much wandering conversation and not enough cello! The tickets were expensive; Steve’s verdict: “I never thought I would say Yo Yo Ma, Jeffrey Brown and “rip-off” in the same sentence!” I still love you, Yo Yo, and think that you are a terrific human being, but this may be the last time I try to hear you in person.

These eight days have been unusually stimulating and invigorating. I agonize about the horrible killing and destruction in Palestine and Ukraine, as well as the polarization in the United States. But I look forward to returning to tutoring twice a week at our local elementary school; singing, playing, and hearing more music; reading more books; learning more about tending my garden with my Garden Club; visiting more museums; celebrating birthdays with friends and family; VOTING, and staying fit in body, mind and spirit. I am filled with gratitude for this life!