Nina’s here.

Two days after she was scheduled to arrive at the festival, violist Nina Weber finally touched down.

Did she miss the string auditions on Day One? No. Via Zoom she gave rousing performances from her hotel room in Dallas. Did she come to the first official session with coach Toby Appel without any preparation? No. On their own volition, she and the other members of the quintet found time to run through some key passages of the Franck Quintet’s first movement.

Appel on point; no viola in sight. “Front the top.”

Here were 20 seconds with just the four strings. Cutting to the chase, these few intensely dramatic seconds commanded 23 minutes of the hour-long session when, finally, pianist Anthony Wu was “allowed” his dreamlike solo piano entrance.

A coach should instruct his “players” how to perform on their playing field, right? Not in the world according to Toby. Hardly any answers; really just questions. Our man Socrates would have been proud.

Appel: Describe how eleven 5 year-old-boys will think of this opening?

Cellist Ethan Blake: Like the opening of “Star Wars.”

Alright. Appel did request his team to try certain musical approaches. But instead of one coach dictating performance possibilities to five musicians, all six in this rehearsal room were charged with being the coaches.

For me, the most incredible aspect of classical music teaching sessions is that there are always ghosts in the room; the teachers of the teacher’s teacher might be coming along for the ride. Indeed, long-gone musical masters Pablo Casals and Janos Starker dropped in to share some of their wisdom. Such an indoctrination is a demand that this process be unbroken.

So it was that Appel had the members of this quintet critique and made demands of one another. Second violinist Isabel Chen had to instruct first violinist Anne Marie Wnek how to make her phrasing more potent; Ethan was told he was not being nice enough to Anne. What did he want to do about it?

Did you know that music speaks with consonants and vowels? Appel wanted to know what letter the string players thought their powerful opening commenced with. T was the first letter shouted out; another offered a P. I sat smugley across the room knowing somehow that it was actually a B. Bingo! To Appel, this attack left more room for dramatic development. 

Finally, Wu had the floor. But within seconds, violist Weber was literally all over pianist Wu exploring what he might be missing in his approach to creating dynamic musical revelry.

Appel had his turn of course and asked Wu to recount Sir Issac Newton’s three laws of motion. 

we first went with no.3 “for every action, there is a reaction.” While no. 2 law of force could no doubt have been put to use here it was the first law that Appel wanted Wu to consider: 

• First law of motion (Inertia)
• An object at rest will remain at rest, and an object in motion will continue moving in a straight line at a constant speed unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

Yes- physics and music are bedfellows. Appel wanted Wu to be that “unbalanced force” and to create a sense of movement where, perhaps, none might  exist.

Again:

Appel: Describe how eleven 5 year-old-boys will think of this piano opening?

Wu: A dream somewhere far away.

14 minutes later, the work on Wu’s first 32 seconds had ceased and the strings opening phrase was up  again. Don’t ask me to explain how he did it, but Appel equated the approach the strings were taking to a predictable bowl of fruit salad.

At the 40 minute mark, strings and piano were finally given the green light to play together… That's about 1:40 into the piece. 

No rest.

Ethan: I feel like we’re just waiting for things to happen.

Appel: Leading or following are no good.

The hour had run out. Appel was out the door on one of his many culinary missions (he is unofficial faculty chef for the festival). The Franck team had a lunch break. I was exhausted just by being there. I had to know.

“Was this enough? Is an hour hard to stay in focus for.”

The collective answer:

“We could have easily gone another half an hour.”

“We’re used to two hour sessions like this.”

The Franck team will have tomorrow to themselves to work- no Toby and, by their choice, no intrusive journalist (that’s me).

Back at it Thursday though…