29 July 2010. A little close to the edge (meant quite literally). David's violin--the Dvorak Slavonic Dance No. 2, he launches in, impromtu, as if the arching studio ceiling had been constructed for that very moment. Stories--Fritz Kreisler (advising Brahms), Mischa Elman (a bit too slow), and David Oistrach (just right). "A late 19th century French instrument," David's own violin--and stories of his mother, born in Tartu, during the War, the family somehow making its way to a DP camp in Germany, then by ship to America... His grandfather, lost en route...
"It needs to be played like a dance..."
Connections and impossibilities. We reach out, but the clarity, the clarity remains an insistent challenge. Allusion and resonance--as in he music--the dance section already referring to an earlier time. The Austro-Hungarian Empire--these kinds of longings for the past seem to have come built in...
David hands me his iPod--he's listening, miraculously and in parallel--to the same Ardis recording of Voina i Mir... Beautiful Russian voice of Evgeni Ternovsky...
War and Peace. To remake the world...
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Dvorak's Slavonik Dance No. 2
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