We were all Students Once…

    We all were students once, and we hope the best of us keep learning throughout our lives.

     In the summer of 1987, I was in my 3rd year as an undergrad at Juilliard and jumped at the chance to audition for the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in northern Germany, which promised the opportunity to play and study with Leonard Bernstein. Apparently, so did Marin Alsop. Ah, the music world is so small.  Little did we know how our paths would cross again some 20 years later.
      In addition to the normal diet of the orchestral and chamber music repertoire we were required to study as students, as players in the Schelswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra we were also the training ground for the young conductors from all over the world who had been chosen to study with Leonard Bernstein.  Among them, was one Marin Alsop, a very confident and talented young American woman amidst the gamut of men who had come to learn from the master.
      As far as my own experience with Lenny (as he had everyone call him) goes, suffice it to say that the summer of 1987 was a turning point for me. I had been selected to be the concertmaster for the orchestral tour with Bernstein conducting, in which the program would mainly consist of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Now I had played this piece before in high school, as a sub in the back of the fiddle section for the Florida Symphony Orchestra, in Orlando, Florida, my hometown, and again on tour with the Juilliard Orchestra.  However, playing it as Concertmaster with Bernstein on the podium presents a whole new experience to one’s nervous system. Add in the fact that a lot of the other musicians had never played the piece, and I was definitely in the proverbial hot seat. Lenny took the piece from the ground up and put it together part by part. I’ll never forget his first words to us in rehearsal. “People, this piece is about   (long silence) Sex.” You could’ve heard a pin drop among the blushing faces of the players who were mostly 18-24 yrs. old. “It’s about the rejuvenation of life that happens in the spring, it’s about being so in touch with life that you feel you’ve got to hug a tree!  We’ve got to hear the sound of primordial ooze!”  This was a man who knew how to talk to young people. This was emphasized by his ability (as a man of 69) to out-party most of the 20 yr. olds around him that summer- me included.  By our first concert for the tour that would take us throughout Germany, the orchestra had the piece down… almost.
      I think it might have been our 2nd or 3rd concert on tour, that a heart-stopping event took place. Something that would’ve terrified any professional orchestra.
During a concert, Lenny turned two pages instead of one in the score of the Rite of Spring and began conducting music that had no relation to the music on everyone’s page. The brass came in where they thought he meant, followed by a nervous wind section, followed by a gaggle of lost string players, it was a cacophonous mayhem for what seemed like forever. Having played the piece many times (and having learned it especially well for Bernstein) my musical instincts took over and I jumped in where the brass was playing, and literally pulled the entire string section (and subsequently the winds) along with me. The whole orchestra got back on track after what seemed like hours, to finish the concert to an extended standing ovation.  Lenny was backstage after his usual 15 curtain calls, and I walked off-stage to see him. He immediately grabbed me in a bear hug and said, “Oh my angel…Thanks for saving my A--!”  I knew I shouldn’t have used a score, I know this piece like the back of my hand. I’m never using a score again!”  Later, after several summers of observing me he said, “My dear, you are a born leader. You can’t learn that.” That comment, along with numerous tidbits of knowledge I learned throughout my 4 summers with him, contributed greatly to my transition from student to professional musician.
    And so goes my brief but memorable brush with Lenny. I subsequently played for him the following summer again in Germany in 1988 (which included a concert in Moscow) , and at Tanglewood in Massachusetts in 1989 and ’90. The Tanglewood Orchestra was scheduled to tour Europe with him the summer of ’90, but his failing health prevented us from going. He died October 14, 1990, when I was living in New York and preparing for my Baltimore Symphony audition. You could open your window that night and hear the city sob.
     There are very few encounters in a musician’s life that shape them forever, and my brief summers with Bernstein are on the top of my list.  Who knows how many students will leave this week’s performances of The Rite of Spring and Alpine Symphony with much the same sentiment regarding Maestra Alsop. The teaching legacy of Leonard Bernstein, Ms. Alsop’s inspiration and teacher, is alive and well at the Meyerhoff.

Ellen Pendleton Troyer

Here is a video of Marin and Lenny at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival:
(Click the play button when it appears. It's a large file - please be patient)
(If you don't see anything, click here instead).

Stills from the video: