My best frenemy

Here's a little fictional story I made up that is inspired by events of recent history, but not necessarily based on them, nor on reality at all...

We met for the first time when we were 13.  We were complete opposites.  I was painfully shy and awkward, and she was bubbly and happy--an adorable girl with a beaming smile.

And how she could skate!  So soft, light, so effortless.  I envied her flexibility and her jumps, but what irked me the most was the way she seemed to be not thinking at all.  Everything just came so easy for her.

At our first competition together, I placed a distant second--she outscored me by nearly 30 points.  At first, I felt despair--how could I ever beat her, I lamented.  It's what everybody says--she's a genius!  And then gradually, I began to feel angry.  And I begin to hate her a little.  I told myself, one day, I WILL beat her.  I WILL be better than her!

And just when these thoughts reached a climax in my head, she came up to me, gold medal shining around her neck and beaming smile on her pretty face.  "Here, these are for you," she says, handing me a box of chocolates, wrapped in a beautiful ribbon.  "We should be friends," she says. "We're the only ones who are 13!"

"See you at the next competition!" she says as she turns and walks to join her equally sweet and beautiful older sister.

And as I stand there holding the chocolate, I am startled to find that I am smiling too. 

"What did she say?" my mom says, watching her go with a disapproving look in her eye.

"Nothing. She wants to be friends, that's all."

How could I ever have thought badly of her?

***

But soon after that, those jealous thoughts started to consume me again, and I forgot this little incident.

Because she had done so well on the junior circuit, she received a special exemption to compete on the senior circuit, and I watched in amazement and mounting envy as she won competition after competition, upsetting even the top senior skaters.

"We'll beat her one day, you'll see," my new coach Byron says.  "You'll be the best skater ever!"

And as the seasons pass, I start to believe his words.  We strategize to maximize my scoring potential--we avoid risks and play to my strengths.  And more importantly, I teach myself to be "expressive."  I memorize the movements of my choreographer, Daniel Wilton, I practice in front of the mirror, and I execute the motions perfectly in the competitions.

And the crowd and the judges love me.  Slowly, but steadily, I begin to win competition after competition.  She, my friend and rival, has become wildly uneven.  While I have settled on the elements of my programs, focusing on perfecting each part, she is constantly trying new things.  So she has become inconsistent, delivering moments of beautiful brilliance as well as complete meltdowns.

"She has no idea what she's doing," my mom scoffs.  "She doesn't understand what the judges are looking for at all."

She's almost making it too easy for me, I think.  She's not using her strengths--her beautiful positions, her lilting grace and elegance.  No, she has no idea what her strengths are.  That's the problem.  I laugh to myself.  She's totally clueless.  And yet, as I watch her land those nearly-impossible jumps and perform her exhausting and complex step sequences, I can't ignore a nagging feeling that she's a better skater than I'll ever be.  But that's not what the judges want, I think with a wry smile.

No, she has no idea how to compete, I think.  She skates too much from the heart, she doesn't know how to control her emotions.

***

There is little surprise when I win that big competition that comes only once every four years.  And it's a complete blowout--I've left her a distant second.  It's everything I've ever wanted.

I'm happy, but mostly I feel utterly exhausted.  She comes up to me backstage with another present--traditional sweets from her hometown.  "You skated so well! Congratulations!" she says, with her usual sweet smile.  She has been crying; she made mistakes and I bet she's mad at herself.  But there's not the slightest hint of resentment in her face.  She's genuinely happy for me.

And that kills me.  Can't she hate me even a little?

She turns and walks away to join her group of friends.  Her boyfriend puts his arm around her and pulls her into their boisterous, laughing circle.

I'm left alone with my mom and my manager.  And suddenly I wonder, was it all worth it?

How I discovered Julia Fischer

Well, I might as well take a moment to introduce someone who will undoubtedly appear prominently in my posts to follow--Julia Fischer, my favorite violinist.

***

This all started with a Washington Post article that I stumbled upon.  I don’t remember how I found this article, but I imagine I was reading up on my then-favorite violinist, Joshua Bell, who also happens to share my birthday.

The article, “PEARLS BEFORE BREAKFAST,” describes an experiment in which Joshua Bell played incognito in a D.C. metro station during rush hour, and was generally completely ignored by the busy commuters.

The author, Gene Weingarten, used the results of this experiment to lament the busy hustle and bustle of modern life, the lack of time to stop and smell the roses, our loss of appreciation for classical music, etc, etc.

(As a side note, Weingarten won both praise for the originality of his experiment as well as a Pulitzer Prize, but a few months later, he discovered that an almost identical experiment was conducted in 1930, with very similar results. Oops!)

Anyway, the first piece that Joshua Bell played was the final movement of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D Minor for Solo Violin, the monumental Chaconne.

Every once in awhile, I hear a piece that grabs me from my very first listen, and the Chaconne hooked me from the opening chord. (You can hear Joshua Bell’s version, complete with background noise, by clicking on the article link above.)

This is how the article describes it:

Bell decided to begin with "Chaconne" from Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor. Bell calls it "not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history. It's a spiritually powerful piece, emotionally powerful, structurally perfect. Plus, it was written for a solo violin, so I won't be cheating with some half-assed version."

Bell didn't say it, but Bach's "Chaconne" is also considered one of the most difficult violin pieces to master. Many try; few succeed. It's exhaustingly long -- 14 minutes -- and consists entirely of a single, succinct musical progression repeated in dozens of variations to create a dauntingly complex architecture of sound. Composed around 1720, on the eve of the European Enlightenment, it is said to be a celebration of the breadth of human possibility.

If Bell's encomium to "Chaconne" seems overly effusive, consider this from the 19th-century composer Johannes Brahms, in a letter to Clara Schumann: "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."

Pretty amazing stuff, right?  It certainly seemed so to me.

I desperately wanted a recording. However, Mr. Bell has not recorded the Chaconne, so I set off to find a version I liked.

I went to Amazon.com and discovered that I could compare several recordings side-by-side by browsing the mp3 downloads.  I’m not sure if this was on purpose or not, but for the sample clip, Amazon uses the same section of the song, so it was very easy to make direct comparisons. And what variety of tone and phrasing and tempo!

Well, by going through the list, I found one that I particularly liked—the version by Julia Fischer, whom I had never heard of.

I read the glowing reviews, did some research and discovered that not only was she a virtuoso violinist, but also a professional pianist, and more impressively, born the same year as me!

I ended up purchasing the CD (highly recommended) and several other of her releases, and that is how I became a fan.

You can read more about Julia Fischer and hear her playing that fabulous Chaconne here.

More on the fabulous Ms. Fischer to follow later!

Sprezzatura

The inspiration for this blog title came from this review of last year's Fall for Dance Festival:

Fokine’s choreographic talents were paid a much more impressive tribute by Diana Vishneva’s performance as “The Dying Swan.” From the moment she stepped on stage, one could feel the tragedy of her situation. The power of her emotive grace was palpable, even from three tiers away in the mezzanine gallery. Her face and gracefully broken angles screamed a slow resignation. This was a wonderful articulation of the Italian concept of sprezzatura: The glory of an incredible, technically skilled dancer applying all her skill to demonstrate the tragic beauty of a graceful death, while making it look effortless.

After reading more about the concept of sprezzatura, I realized it is something I value highly in all of the artists and athletes I admire: effortlessness and elegance over showy spectacle.  Hence the title.

However, despite the somewhat pretentious title, I plan to keep the tone of this blog rather informal, and post whatever interests me at the moment, whether it be ballet, or classical music or maybe even some delightful dessert I've had.  Enjoy!