The Shostakovich

Once upon a time I was a girl with a violin and some talent.  I was good.  I don't talk about it much now because it's part of who I was and not so much who I am now.  Frankly it embarrasses me when one of my co-workers tells other people what a great musician I was back in the day.  Ok.  So I was the number violinist in the city.  There.  I said it. 

But before I reached that point in my musical career I was a shy eighth grader who auditioned for a special high school orchestra that was going to perform at a music festival in Chicago.  I made it (not a shock actually) and was among the rows of first violin players at the conference.  My sister was also in the first violin crowd.

Our crowning piece for our concert was "The Shostakovich."  Just the name was daunting!

We worked all summer on our repertoire.  We had a little of this and a little of that.  But "The Shostakovich" was clearly our big challenge piece.  It was probably the longest piece most of us had played to that point in our lives.  We had sectionals and small group rehearsals.  We had tough directors who were so passionate.  They wanted us to get it.  They knew we could get it.

The trip was scheduled for mid-December.  It was a huge to-do.  We were a huge orchestra and then we had all the music teachers and a host of parents who went along to chaperone.  We stayed at the Chicago Hilton.  Somehow my sister and I lucked out in a big way.  We had a very large room with twin beds on one side and some other bed on the other side (I cannot remember now?) plus we had bathrooms on each side of the room.  There were just three of us in the room; the fourth girl became ill with mono and was not allowed to travel.

While we were in Chicago we went to The Parthenon (delicous baklava, incredible flaming cheese, and home of the never empty glass of water).  We also went to the symphony one night (someone in the row in front of me almost fell asleep, the first chair cellist grunted while he played and the conductor hit the swinging microphone above his right hand on stage--we were tired and those things humored us).  We practiced.  We went sightseeing.  We practiced more.  We listened to other groups perform.  We practiced again.

Finally it was our turn on stage.  I remember very little about the crowd or the rest of our performance.  But I remember the smile on our conductor's face just before "The Shostakovich."  We got a big grin and a "relax--you're almost done" whispered to us.  It helped relieve the pressure before we tackled that monster.

I'm quite certain we weren't quite this flawless in our performance.  But it sure felt like it.  The absolute exuberance of completing that piece, well, I can't say I've ever felt quite like that since.  Sheer joy and pride throughout that orchestra that night.

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I must add one final note to this post.  As I wrote it I realized again that I am the only one left from our room on that trip. My sister died almost 6 1/2 years ago from a rare cancer.  The violist who roomed with us died almost 20 years ago from bone cancer.  So hard to believe they are both gone.  We were devastated when Greta died.  Just unreal