Count-down

I forever love the quote from a book I read about the Guarneri String Quartet. They (jokingly) make light of the fact that there is rarely any money in chamber music, and when there is any money, it certainly isn’t much. I am determined to solve this problem. 

The arts don’t sustain themselves financially. In the days when Bach would have been alive, he was essentially writing “pop music,” much in the vein of how a praise band would write a chart for a contemporary worship service. Back in those days, we didn’t have “early musicians,” rock musicians,” “pop musicians,” or “classical musicians.” 

We had musicians.

And we need to go back to that. There is just as much to learn from Jimi Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner” improvisation and Billy Joel’s amazing piano lick in “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” (the one in G Major, right before the “Oh-oh’s,” and before the great re-transition to F Major) as we can from studying the cadenza to … basically any instrumental concerto in the canon.

I have long worked on the precision and cleanliness in my playing, and it has come along way. Any musician who plays classical music needs to then swing the pendulum in the other direction, as to call upon the spirit and presence of the original. As if to say, “Bach is in the room. Let’s groove it.”  

 

 

PHOTO: Lukens Trio and Friends, from “Bach by Candlelight 2014"

Or another way to think of it is to “transcend” the instrument. Beethoven, in speaking to Schuppanzigh, said, 

“Do you think I worry about your lousy fiddle when the spirit speaks to me?” 

(this was after Schuppanzigh complained about the difficulties that he encountered when playing one of the quartets).

My goal in playing the d minor Bach concerto coming up will be to (of course) play accurately … 

but even much more than that ...

to make the listeners feel like we have taken a time machine back to Leipzig, and we are listening to some of the greatest music ever written and enjoying the thrill of the idea that it “could” have been created on the spot.

If you would like to attend our concert on 12/19/15, please consider reserving your space in advance. You might even consider a CD! You can click here (Lukens Trio Kickstarter) to learn more about that. Thank you!