Music to My Ears

Pinch me, I must be dreaming. No, wait. Don’t pinch me because I don’t want to wake up! Yesterday's excellent adventure took me to the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music at Tel Aviv University where I spent three spellbinding hours listening to Pinchas Zukerman conduct a violin master class IN HEBREW. I don’t know why but somehow I imagined that after the initial “shalom” he would switch to English. But no, he worked with three out of the four students in Hebrew, switching to English only for the fourth, a Russian girl. I am happy to report that my ulpan classes are starting to pay off because I definitely understood much more than I might have a few months ago. With my background as a violist, and his demonstrations and gestures, I really did ok, although I was concentrating pretty hard. He is a wonderful teacher, very funny and not at all intimidating. He had one of the students play while standing on a chair at one point. He also asked her to play her piece “like Bach” and when she looked upwards in concentration, he looked to the ceiling with hands raised and asked, “where is Bach, is he up there with God?” When he finished with the students he “fiddled around,” demonstrating the practice routine he uses for overcoming jetlag. Progressing from slow to increasingly faster scales, and then to dazzling bowing techniques, he finished off with a collage of riffs from his repertoire. The fantastic acoustics and the arrangement of the seats at the same level as the performance space in the small auditorium, gave a very intimate feel to the experience. Afterwards I was able to speak with him for a few minutes, complimenting him on the performance of “Harold in Italy” (Berlioz) I heard him play last spring in Chicago with the Chicago Symphony. I asked him to sign my program so now I guess you can call me an official groupie.