This blog post was initially about a concert on February 22nd, 2016. I wrote it in the style of a concert review, with personal experience mixed in, and subsequently did not post it because somehow it did not balance authentically. As the 10th anniversary of my oldest brother's passing approached, I realized that the post was really about him, and that very personal experience, with a focus on the music involved. Today is that 10th anniversary, and today it feels right to post, in his memory.
On
February 22nd, 2016, the Juilliard String Quartet
presented their New York retirement concert of Joel Krosnick, who was
their cellist of forty-two years, as well as a beloved Juilliard
faculty-member. Naturally, it was a stirring and emotional concert,
and, as has become the customary when passing the proverbial baton from outgoing to incoming cellist, it ended with the Schubert two-cello quintet, the instrumentation of which gives both cellists a momentary opportunity to play side-by-side. After the concert, Juilliard President Joseph Polisi
presented the Juilliard Presidential Medal to Mr. Krosnick, who
accepted it with a heartfelt and moving farewell speech, in which he
also wished his successor, Astrid Schween, “I hope you have as much
fun as I did!”
The audience was one of the most caring and enthusiastic
I've ever been a part of in New York, with many of Mr. Krosnick's
current and former students present, some having travelled across the
country to be here. I happily ran into many of my former classmates,
colleagues, and teachers, including Earl Carlyss, a former violinist
of the quartet, who shared with me the story of how Mr. Krosnick
joined the quartet: prior to him, there had been another candidate
who was perfect on paper and essentially a shoe-in, but when they all
played together for the audition, the chemistry just wasn't there, which the candidate felt too, getting up and thanking the
others for their time. Then with Joel Krosnick - “there it was!"
Having studied at Juilliard, and having friends in the quartet,
it would never be my place, nor could I offer an unvarnished vantage point, to write
about how anyone played at the concert or how the interpretation was.
In that department, suffice to say that the audience loved it, the
concert was a success, and the playing was honest and expressive; the
feeling that all were giving their best clearly came across.
My
experience during the quintet was also intensely personal, although perhaps there is something about the quintet itself that has this effect. It
is widely regarded as one of the most sublime works in the chamber
music repertoire, and is Schubert's last chamber work, written in 1828 at age
31, just six weeks before he died. In the program notes for tonight's concert, James M. Keller writes of the Adagio movement that
legends such as pianist Arthur Rubinstein, cellist Alfredo Piatti,
and novelist Thomas Mann “were among those who expressed the desire
that when their time arrived to pass to the great beyond, they might
do so while listening to this movement.” Perhaps Schubert too,
while writing it, felt his transition from this life to the next, and
perhaps we sense this possible influence. The Adagio is not
afraid to weep, amid hope and beauty. I hear in it love and
recognition of what's been, while welcoming that which is to come. It
sets the stage for quartet-cellist-transition not just by virtue of
using two cellos, but also through its profound, intimate, expansive, and
songful expression. (In this wonderful video, Joel Krosnick speaks at length about the quintet, describing the piece as "one of the great monuments" in which "Schubert is speaking to God".)
Composers often have the task of writing
new material for new occasions; performers, however, often select
from existing repertoire for concerts and occasions, thus not
expressing our feelings directly, but rather channeling them through
music that someone else has already written. Audience members too bring own experiences to hearing pieces, as I strongly did at this concert.
Though Schubert did not write the quintet for the occasion of Mr. Krosnick's
retirement, the match between the feelings of empathy for what Schubert wrote with the feelings of a retirement
concert commemorating forty-two years, two hundred eighty-eight years later, surely influenced the meaningful
performance that we heard. Doubtless the piece acquires a new strong
personal connection to all quartet-members who have played it, as both
a farewell and a welcome.
As promised, this post is about my
brother, and the quintet is the thread that takes me write about him here,
and about the day he died ten years ago today. The piece is perhaps
more deeply woven into my life-story than it is even for the
Juilliard quartet, and reliving the intensely personal experience
largely eclipsed other emotions at the concert for me. I believe
there is something about music that is especially powerful this way –
the way a song at a wedding is special always, as are songs we
learn in childhood.
My brother Matthias was fourteen when I
was born, and all my life I looked up to him as a deep-feeling,
smart, funny, loving, important, beloved person-in-my-life. Emotions came first
with him, sometimes defying logic and reason, a streak I too have, and
felt comfortable sharing with him. (Perhaps it's this streak that most drew me into music.) He worked nights and was there for
me for late-night phone-calls when I went through romantic heartbreak
in my early twenties. We didn't necessarily talk about the events
that happened, but could share the emotion we felt at a given time in
whatever it was we were talking about. For both of us, it was ok to
be in whatever emotional state we were at the time, talking about
whatever else was going on.
When his wife of seventeen years left
him in February 2006, he had less support and ability to handle his major heartbreak than I had for my minor one, and at fourteen years his junior I could be there as much
as I could, but could only imagine what it must feel like. He spun
out of control, a tailspin into depression, hopelessness, substance
abuse, and finally, stress-induced schizophrenia. He showed up at my
parents' doorstep one day and checked himself in; they worked out a
system with his other parents (his father and step-mother, whom our
mother and my father had not had contact with in a long time), to
split caring for him daytime at one home, and nighttime at the other
home.
This continued for a few months with medical help and also
that of friends looking in on him when possible, with an interim time in the hospital. He remained
unstable and distressed both emotionally and physically. I flew to
our hometown after finishing a school-year in a Doctorate of Musical Arts program in New
York and sorting out my working visa renewal (the latter a headache all foreign
musicians know too well about). I was shocked to see the change in
him: he was afraid of daylight, of his own cats, the weather, and
believed cameras were hidden under tables and chairs and in corners.
Having lost his instinct, there was nothing and no-one he could
trust, his medications maybe helped or maybe harmed, but he did not
see a way forward.
A few days after I arrived, on the morning of
July 7, and we'll never know how aware or not Matt was at the
time, I awoke to a terrible scene: he had hung himself on his fancy
exercise machine in the basement, my dad had found him and taken him
down, the EMS had arrived and were moving him from the carpet, next to a
few drops of blood, onto a stretcher, he was still breathing but
unconscious and our mother was watching, helpless. After having
breakfast, he had just gone to the basement, pulled the door shut and -- .
In such a moment, there is a flood of emotion and I nearly
passed out, but the importance of doing what needs to be done takes
over. I put an arm around our mother and said he was still breathing, both of us hoping there might be hope. We followed the EMS to the hospital by car, and
his other parents joined us there. We waited for news in a small
waiting room, our mother pacing the hallway. No-one knew what to say and the clocks ticked
loudly.
And the piece I had last
played poured through my brain: the Schubert 2-cello quintet. I
cannot stop the music in my head, and I didn't know if I wanted to,
but I knew the piece would never be the same for me again. It comes back as I write now.
Eventually news came: Matthias had no brain activity, but had
been put on life-support in case a little might return. Hope existed, perhaps, but barely; even if he were to live he would be severely disabled for the rest of his life.
Our sister flew
in from Vancouver, and we visited again in the evening. The machine
made him breathe artificially but otherwise he showed no signs of
life. Still, during silence, I heard Schubert in my head.
In the
morning of July 8th, the doctors advised us that hope was
unwarranted – and a sad, bleak hope it would have been – and the
decision, almost a relief then, was made to take him off the life-support. In my head, he
passed away to the quintet.
Could his spirit hear me hear it –
as he lived on in my thoughts and prayers and dreams – could he
hear the music I heard and be consoled? (Could I imagine he
experienced Rubinstein, Piatti, and Mann's dream and found the solace
they thought it brought?) And when he became an organ donor and his
heart saved another man's life, is it conceivable some of the
experience became embodied and passed along? Or is it all but my
dream and experience? As you can see, the music is not consoling to
me now, for it brings back these vivid memories. Yet it hasn't lost
its beauty and import, especially the second movement, and its
requiem-like quality, a memory of deepest love and beauty, through
tears.
Will I be able to play this piece again sometime? I
don't know. As a professional, I'm sure I will do it when there is
the occasion, and I'm sure it will stir these feelings again strongly. I can say that playing the Ciaccona of the Bach D Minor Solo Violin Partia has similar connotations for me, as I first played it in the
fall of 2006. I played the heartbeat movement, the Andante, from Bach's A minor Sonata for Solo Violin at Matt's funeral, and always
remember that too.
I do know that life continues, and that new
performances and new experiences constantly change the narrative and
meaning of what we play and present. Including my experiences, I was
grateful to be at the meaningful and beautiful Juilliard
Quartet/Quintet concert. As a musician, one can never know what
memories one's playing brings back for our audience, but if we can
touch the soul, then it is how it should be.
Matthias was not
much into classical music, and his tape collection included Billy
Joel and non-classical artists I didn't know. Would the quintet have
been meaningful to him? He was always really supportive of me, and I
know it would have meant a lot to him for it to mean a lot to me.
As
much as my worlds come together, or don't, I miss him still, think
about him often, and honour his memory and spirit in music, in words,
and with the others who knew and loved him.
