bruno weil and beethoven's fourth

Sometimes you meet someone, and it requires no introduction. There is a certain energy, aura, feeling, and there is this unexplainable connection. Well, this has happened a few times in my  travels, and musical career, and tonight –I’m talking about Bruno Weil. To me, Bruno Weil is one of the most subtle, soft-spoken, amazing conductors in the world. I am so lucky to be able to say I have been working with him for more then eight years now, in the capacities of both Tafelmusik, as well as the Carmel Bach Fesival. One of the highlights of our friendship so far is definitely when he invited the entire tafelmusik orchestra to his home in Germany for dinner and drinks. It was incredible. I will never forget the moment he invited me upstairs to share in his study space, where a huge pool table stood in the middle of a room absolutely FULL of scores and books and notes, and more scores, and more scores… It was an incredible evening. I mentioned requiring no introduction in the beginning because eight years ago when we met, we didn’t really make any personal introduction or anything, I was simply part of the violin section at the Carmel Bach Festival, and he was the conductor, and had been for more then ten years. I was very lucky to be invited to be apart of this festival by my dear friend and colleague Elizabeth Wallfisch. Anyways, the musical adventures that I was able to take part in with Bruno’s guiding hand, and the amazing stories he would tell every once in a while stick with me to this day. Every time we work together there are such incredible Gems.  Today, as we discussed dynamics in our dress rehearsal, for an opening night concert/live recording tonight at Koerner Hall in Toronto he mentioned that Beethoven wrote in a letter, I don’t know why I bother, knowone seems to be following any of my dynamics, forte’s, piano’s. It’s all shit. Well… for those people that know of Beethoven they know how incredibly meticulous he was about his dynamics, and how much he cared about the tiniest detail. Tonight as we perform the symphony I’m sure everyone will have that quote in their minds as to how important every single dynamic is to the overall story. Another thing I love about Bruno, is there is always a story line… of course we all tell our own stories when we are playing, but Bruno definitely brings them all together every so often and there is nothing like it!

This morning started off early with a quick visit to the University of Toronto where Orchestra Canada's Katherine Carleton gave me permission to come to a very interesting lecture with both Alan Brown (www.wolfbrown.com)  and Howard Herring and Craig Hall from the New World Symphony (www.nws.edu) where there was a discussion of very interesting new ways to engage young audiences, build audiences, increase the use of multimedia, and so many fun exciting things! Another fun event  of the day was talking to Mike from www.clevelandclassical.com, so fun to talk about music, and our stories, and find out that we are both Obies!! (went to Oberlin college)  and have so many mutual friends, like Mark Fewer! I will be in Cleveland next week, if any of you are… please let me know!

Sincerely,

Edwin 

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