Here are some thoughts that have passed through my head during the last couple of days of rehearsals:
- Mozart really is a great composer (Norman Lebrecht notwithstanding)
- Composer John Adams just might have the best copyist in the business
- Choruses will, without fail, laugh at all the conductor’s jokes
- Playing softly is much more difficult than playing loudly
- The Robert Levin completion of the Mozart Requiem is way cool
- The Lacrimosa movement from the Mozart Requiem is the most beautiful piece of music ever written
- I wish I could play the Ravel Violin Sonata
- Cellist Stephen Kates and violinist Berl Senofsky may be two of the most underrated great musicians of all time