DECEMBER 13, 2023 – Today marks my 38th consecutive day of practicing my violin. I know this statistic is as interesting as my record of days-in-a-row of dental flossing (14,697), but for me work on the violin has special significance. First, it follows months of zero practice. Second, it’s produced results. Third, it’s driven by renewed purpose.
On one level, for me to be tearing away at the violin is laughable. A real violinist, even of modest accomplishment, could fairly perceive me as Don Quixote, my bow as a lance, my fiddle as Rocinante, and my choice of repertoire as the windmill. If I have noble sentiments about conquering the music I attempt to play, my deficient technique and unrefined musicality ensure a large gap between desire and reality; between my rendition of one piece or another and . . . objective greatness.
As I’m fond of saying, I’m just good enough to know how bad I am. This realization lands me in a kind of musical purgatory, but in my emulation of Cervantes’ hero, I find purposeful amusement and a large degree of gratification.
From 2010 through 2019, my friend, piano collaborator, and law school classmate, Sally Scoggin, and I produced an annual series of three winter house concerts. We were joined nearly every year by another friend and law school classmate, flutist Liza Cutter. Other lawyer-musicians joined the fray, as well, including a real (professional) violinist, Lydia Lui, professional flutist Heidi Torvik, and classical guitarist, Evan Everist. Two non-lawyer professional cellists—Laura Sewell and Lars Ortiz—also made guest appearances to round out Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in d minor one year. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of our “Fiddler Under the Roof” series, we commissioned two new works by composers Jeffrey Myers and Thomas Osborne from opposite ends of the country (New York and Hawaii, respectively).
In the course of assembling music for these series, I experienced the liberty of mediocrity. With mediocrity came license to stumble, stammer, crash and burn. I had no crystal to break, no expectations (besides my own) to dash, no critics to please. Wine was served to “take the edge off our mistakes,” as I pointed out to our exceptionally loyal sardines-in-a-can audiences, and to distract people from my mediocrity, I devoted considerable effort to building a laugh-laced but historically compelling theme bolstered by PowerPoint.
Though these events drew plenty of laughter, we took the music as seriously as our abilities allowed. But again, because I was first an entertainer and second a violinist, I could get away with musical murder—or at least with tilting at the windmills of music written by Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and company.
Covid interrupted our fun in the sun . . . er . . . limelight, as it were. My association with the violin plummeted in 2020 and 2021 and went wholly dormant in 2022. Only earlier this year was it revived when a neighbor assembled a local string orchestra to perform a slate of show tunes. It was enough for me to search the house to see where I’d last stored my violin—under the piano!
As much fun as the light fare was to play, it failed to re-ignite my practice discipline of the decade ending in 2019. Something more was required. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the “something more” started with my sister and brother-in-law’s end to their last remaining real estate tie to Minnesota: the sale of their spacious Minneapolis apartment.
My wife and I stopped by one evening as my sister was finishing the process of marking stuff and things for one destination or another: their New York apartment, our family’s place in Connecticut, or . . . Dumpsterville. As we wondered around the rooms, each in disarray, my sister pointed out a large cache of CDs sitting on a bookshelf. “Take what you want,” she said. I appreciated the gesture no matter how obsolete the gift.
As Beth and Jenny chatted away about other stuff, I combed through the CDs for “keepers.” Among them was an unopened one featuring Pinchas Zukerman performing Bartok’s Violin Concerto No. 2 and other works. I’d not heard any recording of that piece in years, perhaps decades, but during high school, I must’ve listened to it (Joseph Silverstein, at the time, concertmaster of the B(oston)SO, for whom my teacher, a close friend of Silverstein, asked me to play a movement of a Bach unaccompanied sonata) a thousand times. Back then—during a Bartok phase in my music choices—“the Bartok” was one of my favorite works for the violin. Time to go back in time, I thought, and recapture the sentiments that that concerto had evoked.
Several days later on a solo trip to the Red Cabin—just under a three-hour drive—I slid the disc into my (2017) car’s CD player. The opening five bars—the orchestral introduction—followed by the initial statement by the solo violin carried me straight back to my youth. I let the entire piece loop round and round for the entire ride, as I engaged in some heavy duty musical reminiscing.
In time, Bartok inside the car gave me an idea. The idea would require additional connections, but eventually they burst into open flame. That was 38 days ago.
Stay tuned for the fuller story (and an explanation of the featured photo above).
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
