Clark Brody Memorial

A couple weeks ago, I went to a service in honor of the life of Clark Brody, former principal clarinet of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Clark Brody was born on June 9th, 1913 in Lansing, Michigan.  He studied clarinet first at Michigan State University, and then at the Eastman school of music.  Before he played with the CSO, he was in the Air Force Band and concert orchestra during World War II, and he also played with the CBS Symphony Orchestra from 1941-1950.   He was principal clarinet of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1951-1978 and played under the baton of  Rafael Kubelik, Fritz Reiner, Jean Martinon, and Sir George Solti.  He also was a clarinet professor at Northwestern University from 1972-1995.  He died at the age of 98 in 2012.

I take piano lessons from Mr. Brody's niece Barbara Rubenstein, so I have had the opportunity to hear a lot of stories about Clark Brody.  It is very interesting to learn about both the personal and professional sides of an individual.  I attended the memorial with Barbara and sat next to her during the service.

The service was a very elegant celebration of Mr. Brody's career.  Many people spoke about Mr. Brody and the impact he had upon them.  I especially enjoyed his son, Robert Brody's, very graceful words about his father.  The younger Mr. Brody described an incident in their life when they were travelling.  They were walking through a park where there were many lepers who were obviously suffering.  One of the sick men had fallen off a bench, and many people were walking past him ignoring him, even though it was obvious that the man was trying to get back onto the bench.  Mr. Brody picked up the man, and put him on the bench, made sure he was okay and wished him a good day, as if it were the most natural and expected thing to do.  John Bruce Yeh also spoke about Mr. Brody and how he was very supportive of the 19 year old John Yeh when he first took up a position with the orchestra.  Mr. Yeh talked about how Clark Brody showed him how to play in an orchestra and guided him through his first few years.

Several people performed at the service.  There was a clarinet ensemble made up of former colleagues, friends and students of Clark Brody, and Charlene Zimmerman performed the 2nd movement of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with Toni-Marie Montgomery accompanying.  Charlene Zimmerman is the principal clarinet of the Chicago Lyric Opera.  I have never had the privilege of hearing her play before, and I found her quite wonderful.  She played with a sweet, singing line, and it was one of my favorite interpretations of the 2nd movement.  I think I may have to start saving my money for Lyric tickets...

A Fist Fight at Symphony Center!!

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Chicago Symphony Center to watch the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) perform and to take a lesson from John Bruce Yeh, assistant principal clarinet.

The lesson with Mr. Yeh was amazing.  We worked on the sonata for clarinet and piano by Martinu.  The two main things he focused on were finger position and phrasing.

Mr. Yeh started the lesson by having me play a little.  he stopped me right after I got through the most technically difficult part of the piece.  He said that I wasn't sealing the holes of the clarinet properly by first landing on them with the tip of my fingers and then flattening my knuckle to cover the entire hole.  Mr. Yeh told me that I had to make sure that my fingers always stayed curved and right about the holes.  I actually keep my fingers flat and farther away from where they should rest on the clarinet.  If my fingers are not right above the holes and my knuckles aren't bent, then the clarinet will not seal right away when I place my fingers on the keys, making technical sections much harder.  Good advice!

The other thing we worked on was phrasing.  Mr. Yeh wanted me to play like a string player.  This means that all of the different slurs or bow strokes need to be made clear with the tongue.  It also means that I have to make each slur in the Martinu its own phrase.  He also noticed that I was giving the long notes a crescendo, and he didn't like that.  Mr. Yeh said I should crescendo on the moving notes and decrescendo on the long notes.  I've not hear this advice before, so it was really good to hear.

After the lesson, I went to the concert.  It was a night of Brahms with Muti conducting.  First, Pinchas Zukerman played the Violin Concerto in D major and then we heard Brahms Symphony no. 2 in D major.  The concert was really cool!  The CSO played the Brahms 2nd Symphony.  I loved the whole thing, but my favorite part was the last movement.  It really ends on a bang.  The CSO brass and woodwinds are so amazing!  I loved the big brass finish at the end.  And Mr. Williamson, the new principal clarinet, was fantastic.

The best part of the Brahms was the last movement, but the most interesting part of the night happened after the 2nd movement.  The end of the 2nd movement is very quiet and dies down into nothing.  The audience was silent -- no one was even coughing, when suddenly two loud thumps were heard in succession.  Everyone looked around to see what could have made that noise.  I could see a commotion in one of the boxes, but I wasn't sure what was happening.  Muti handled it well and moved gracefully into the 3rd movement after making certain that everything was all right.  I thought maybe someone had had fallen or gotten sick or something.

I found out a couple of days after the concert that what we heard and saw was actually a fight in one of the boxes!  A 30 year old man and a 67 year old man were arguing over seats.  Eventually the younger man lost his temper and started hitting the older man!  The thumping was the sound of the older man falling down, I think.  After the incident, the 30 year old ran away.

Other than the disturbance, it was a wonderful evening.  I hope I will have more lessons with John Bruce Yeh in the future.  He is a great teacher.

Muti Comes to Chicago



The buildings were decorated with lights that spelled out
Muti and CSO.

 On Sunday, I went to a free concert of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  It was free because the CSO was introducing their new conductor Riccardo Muti.  Riccardo Muti is a really famous Italian Conductor.  Muti was the principal conductor of La Scala, the famous Italian opera house from 1986-2005.

We got to the concert just before it started, because we came from the performance at the Spertus Museum.  It very very crowded.  There were 30,000 people in Millenium Park to see the concert.  We didn't have a good view, because there were so many people crowded around the Pritzker Pavilian.  Only my sister Rowena got a glimpse of Muti, because I put her on my shoulders so she could see.  She got excited about seeing the cello section too, because she plays cello.

This was our view.  We couldn't even see Muti!

They played a Verdi opera and "Les Preludes" by Liszt for the first half of the concert.  I wanted to see the second half of the concert, but I couldn't, because Sam and Nathan and Ari who were with me were really hungry and needed to get dinner.  So I missed the Overture to Romeo and Juliet by Tchaikovsky and Respighi's "The Pines of Rome" which featured John Bruce Yeh playing some really great clarinet solos.  I was really sorry to miss that!

I was sad to miss the second half of the concert, but it was really fun to be there with so many Chicagoans who must love classical music.