Bach. My musical culture is broad, to say the least. I know a lot of music and my sphere keeps expanding all the time. But I always come home to Johann Sebastian Bach, the composer who defines a league of his own. Am I just another brainwashed Western liberal who has been blinded to the manifest excellencies of Zelenka and Biber while hewing to the academic party line about Bach? Nah. The older I get, the more miraculous Bach seems, the more appealing, the more satisfying. And I’m just fine with Zelenka and Biber, thank you very much.
Baltimore. My home for several years during the early 1970s. I lived in the Mount Vernon area, a mix of grand old houses and urban blight. But I never explored the city much; I was too busy at Peabody, for one thing, but also Baltimore wasn’t a place that invited free discovery; it was like roaming around unshepherded in Oakland. I haunted the Enoch Pratt Free Library over on Cathedral Street, a fairly short walk from Peabody, and knew where to go if I needed a pair of socks or the like. I had a piano gig for a while in Towson, a long bus ride away. But I never got to know Baltimore.
Bartók. I discovered Bartók in my early teens, courtesy of Georg Solti conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in the Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, and Philippe Entremont playing piano concertos 2 & 3 with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. Eventually I entered a deep relationship with his piano music, especially during my undergraduate years when I studied the Piano Sonata, Out of Doors, the Etudes and the Improvisations. For about a decade my former piano teacher Nathan Schwartz and I played the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion; I still have a recording from the Conservatory’s Chamber Music West summer festival with Jack van Geem and Barry Jekowsky as percussionists. Man, we nailed that sucker. I remain a die-hard Bartók afficionado; even if the initial thrill has been replaced by warm familiarity, the love remains steadfast.
Beethoven. There’s a reason that Bach and Beethoven are never far apart in top-rank listings. I have been drenched in Beethoven since early childhood and no sign of wearisome over-familiarity has arisen. I spent three weeks lecturing on Beethoven’s symphonies this past winter for the Fromm Institute, and I was just as fascinated as ever. About the same time I gave a Symphony lecture on the 2nd Symphony and the Triple Concerto. Absorbed, thrilled, and challenged yet again. LvanB just never runs out of surprises, even if in his personal life he was such a schmuck that he regularly neglected to empty his chamber pot. Yeech.
Books. Such a reader I am, such a book collector. I purged myself of an entire wall’s worth of paperbacks because I was running out of room in a three-bedroom Victorian flat. That problem has lessened now that I have discovered the joys of e-books and the have-it-right-now ease of Amazon’s Kindle. When I first met my editor at the San Francisco Symphony, he asked me how I had become such a good writer, unexpected given that I’m an academic and a musician, neither field promising much in the way of readable prose. I read, I told him. I read a lot. I have always read a lot. That’s how you learn to write: you read. But that’s how you learn just about anything that isn’t a purely physical skill. You don’t need classes and teachers. Just books. Books are civilization.
Boredom. Not a problem for this guy, never has been, never will be. I had a knack for keeping myself occupied early on. Some thought it antisocial, but it never was. I’ve just always been self-directed. Most of the time I’m living in a dizzy whirl of obligations and appointments and deadlines. Even now, during my summer vacation, I’m up to my elbows in projects, some of them contractual, and others just for my own pleasure and edification.
Bowers and Wilkins. My speakers of choice from an unimpeachable English marque. I’m proud owner of two pairs of B&W beauties—805Ss in the office, 803Ds in the living room, and P5 headphones for on-the-go listening with an iPod/iPhone. You gotta hand it to B&W: they saw computer-assisted miniaturization coming and they stepped up to the plate with the cool Zeppelin iPod dock, followed by the supreme MM-1 desktop computer speakers and the sweet P5 headphones that are made for life on the road. As they became an Apple-cool player in the digital sphere, they didn’t forget their core constituency of hardcore audiophiles. B&W recently refreshed the entire 800 Diamond line and have brought out a new entry-level-high-end model to fill the price point vacated by the 805s when updated diamond-core tweeters pushed those formerly $2700 speakers to $5000. There’s nothing dull or staid about B&W. Most importantly, they make lusciously musical speakers that can be had at a (relatively) reasonable price given the economies of scale that accrue to a major manufacturer.
Budapest Festival Orchestra. I’m an ardent fan of the BFO. That isn’t to say that there is any danger of the dazzling young Budapest orchestra replacing the San Francisco Symphony in my affections. The SFS is my orchestra, period. One has room in one’s heart for multiple loves, I should hope, and the BFO has a big place in this music-loving heart. Just recently the BFO brought out an exquisite Schubert Ninth that fully honors and upholds a stellar track record. I find it reassuring that in our unsettled musical world, a relatively new outfit like the Budapest Festival Orchestra can emerge and succeed so well. Musicianship, passion, imagination, and courage. No gimmicks. Just terrific playing under the close leadership of Iván Fischer, in an orchestra-conductor symbiosis that has become rare in today’s guest-conductor-propelled world.
Buddha. I don’t practice as regularly or as assiduously as I did, but I’m steeped in Buddhadhamma at the mitochondrial level. There’s no going back to a pre-Dhamma me. Sometimes I feel impatient with what I view as Buddhist silliness—adherence to fossilized cultural behavior, uncritical acceptance of nonsense, drippy sentimentality masquerading as compassion. But that’s all behavior and not Dhamma. Essentially it all boils down to the profoundly simple idea that my emotional development is entirely in my own hands.
Bullies. I was a little kid, distinctly undersized until I finally shot up to normal height in high school. But even then I was a welterweight, nor was I even remotely athletic. So I was a target more times than I care to remember, although most of the time the bullying stayed in the verbal realm. A few times during the past 30 years I have been fully justified in flunking a strutting macho pig of a student—and oh, how I have enjoyed it!