Klarinet Archive - Posting 000147.txt from 1995/12

From: Claudia Zornow <claudia@-----.COM>
Subj: Wisdom from doublereed list
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 1995 17:23:50 -0500

A friend of mine passed this along to me from the doublereed
list. It was posted by bassoonist Charles Lipp, quoting a
well-known bassoonist named Leonard Sharrow. Perhaps it will
be relevant to the question that was recently posted regarding
burnout.

Claudia

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A couple of years ago I asked Leonard Sharrow if he still loved music.
He said, "Well, love is a difficult word to use after all these
years of playing... Sometimes, after a long rehearsal, you'll go to the
orchestra bulletin board and notice that there's an old standard like
the Brahms First coming up in a few weeks... So you'll go to the
librarian to get the part just to look it over ahead of time--even
though it seems you've played it hundreds of times... Then you find out
through the grapevine that the new guest conductor for that week is
trying to establish himself as having a direct phone line to Brahms and
the inner meaning of the piece... Finally, the first Brahms rehearsal
rolls around, and the orchestra manager comes out and introduces the
guest conductor, and you have the sinking feeling 'here we go again'...
"but then Brahms begins, and you hear the timpani behind you, and
you hear the strings all around, and they're playing those wonderful
harmonies, and you're right in the middle of it all, and you don't care
if it is the hundredth time because for you it feels just like the first
time, and all of a sudden you have to play the best you possibly can
play because the music is so great, and the sound of the orchestra just
carries you along...
"Well, I don't know, maybe that is love."
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