Translations

I feel confident in transcribing his song, because he repeated it about seven times in his joyful little voice while sitting on his mother's lap on the crowded streetcar. The sleepy-eyed commuters and the jittery late-season shoppers shared quiet smiles, and he sang loudly, too young to care about what other people were thinking, with absolute concentration.

Danke Danke lydesstah
Hauauantautschuah!

He was practicing the cool new sounds from kindergarten, probably on the way to his next class to play and sing with friends, have snacks, take a nap, and learn more English. Charlotte, our impossibly beautiful next door neighbor, has already shyly showed me her My First English book, which she puts into her little backpack every day before heading off to class with the other three-year-olds.

Appa bufftau also hai

I can still remember the Christmases of my Lutheran childhood illuminated by a thin chord of magical sounds linking me to the disappearing speech of my grandparents. I can still remember the sounds I didn't really understand: yay air so glawver yulekvel, for dah bre Yesu firt. But I didn't lack understanding either. I was yay, air was being, Yesu will always sound the same. A window only cracked, a sharp lack I feel as on the train as in front of me that little man sings, wide open.

Laika tyment indeskai

In my icecold workplace people walk through the offices with warm smiles and sweet gifts. The world will always be both brutal and generous. Knowing this makes it easier to consider both remaining and leaving. Packing up after the show, I hesitate over my heels and the bouquet from Sunday's recital. I leave those uncomfortable shoes in my office and bury my face in the roses, which are coming home with me.

Thank you, little star.

dkz

Vielleicht...aber vielleicht auch nicht

1. We sit at the back of a balcony box behind and above the front of the stage in the Grosser Saal. The Commendatore is across from us and waves. The Monks from St. Augustine's file into the balcony past us to sing the opening chant. Even the early music bands in this town have a sweetness to their sound. Is that possible? Am I really hearing that hint of Schlag on gut strings? Or is it the wood of the hall itself, still vibrating with a hundred genius ghosts? Or is it the slightly slower tempi of these Vespers that allows slightly longer and more loved tones? Harnoncourt may not be the peppiest Monteverdian, but there he is at 81, in his house, with his band, and the two seraphim cry out to each other and time turns back on itself. Omnes, omnes generationes.

2. I walk through the thickly falling snow under the white and red Christmas lights, past the Stephensdom covered in white, past drunk crowds of friends laughing loudly and slipping on the ice. My glasses fog over when I step into the pub. He has fans, a table of young people who want to talk about guitars and take his picture. People throw their money into the upturned Stetson. I'm on a black elevator goin' down/Little Joe from Kokomo it rattles to the ground/The dice is laughing at the man that he throwed/You're goin' over to the lowside of the road. 


3. "I find it driven."
I play it again, the soprano waits, he stops me.
"Am I too fast?"
"No, it's not a tempo question - I just think each eighth note needs to be more suspended, not leading into the next. Otherwise it sounds too casual."
I smile. "Maybe that's my American Oberflächlichkeit."
He laughs. "No, no, it's not superficial! It's just too...directed, somehow. Maybe that's what's American about the way you play it, you have a goal. Beloved, hurry up!" Now all three of us laugh. He smiles, just barely: "For Americans, or for most people today, a love song is just, JA. But in this aria we need to hear, well, maybe...but also, maybe not."
Sylvia breathes and begins. Vieni ove amore per goder t'appella.


dkz

blues

So MtMn has been practicing a lot, but I was still surprised when he announced he was playing a solo gig at a local English-speaking hangout. a solo guitar gig. With singing. See. all of that is stuff he can do and has done throughout a long musical life of playing every style imaginable, but two hours of solo singing and strumming is something new. Saturday night was his debut, and it felt like another huge step in our current reinvention of our life. It was absolutely new to watch him singing the blues, Robert Johnson and Taj Mahal and the occasional Soundgarden, in a crowded cafe packed with people escaping the frigid night. At the same time, it was life as it always has been (or at least as it has been since 1983), me in a dark and crowded bar with friends watching him perform across the room. As I have a thousand times before, I settled into a chair and listened, watched strangers listen to him, let the detritus of a long and frustrating day wash away to the strains of "La Grange".

At 11:30 we walked, MtMn and MSMB and me, from that pub to the Stefansdom, ready to experience a real moment of Vienna weirdness, a performance of the Mozart Requiem that would end precisely at the moment of the composer's death. The performance of the piece was excellent, actually, good soloists and orchestra and a superb choir (check them out here - different performance but it will hook you on this group). I won't lie, I was dozing during part of it (it was late and freezing!). But here was the great Requiem happening in this beautiful space at the insane hour of midnight plus, and when at the end the priests came out with the bells and the incense and the cross to solemnly process through the church followed by all of the musicians...well, it was crazy, solemn and sincere yet kitschy and hilarious. 

Vienna in December is dark and damp and yet glowing with Christmas lights and the roasted chestnuts sold on every corner, and it greets me every morning with a tight little smile. Is it a movie set or a mirror? Half a world away my baby brother turns forty and my grandmother sleeps at Fort Snelling next to her veteran husband, and my heart runs back in that direction with every second beat. Yet here we are this morning in Glasergasse 3 (not at the opera house thanks to Immaculate Mary) with the window open to the sun-warmed winter air, drinking coffee and hanging out, making plans.

The pub gig might be regular. so he's practicing.

Jesus left Chicago and he's bound for New Orleans.
Workin' from one end to the other and all points in between.

Took a jump through Mississippi, well, muddy water turned to wine.
Then out to California through the forests and the pines.

You might not see him in person but he'll see you just the same.
You don't have to worry 'cause takin' care of business is his name.

dkz

Passing through

The last five days have redefined my whole idea of being "unterwegs", on a journey. I'm on one wild ride, unsure from moment to moment of time, day, temperature, century - of location in general. I'm either nailed to the spot or unmoored, and sometimes I experience both conditions simultaneously. It started on Friday when I got the news of my grandmother's passing. On Facebook. I hadn't heard any news in the morning, but there was my brother's status update casually glanced at the rehearsal break. I had half of my mother's number dialed when I realized it was the middle of the night in Minnesota. I called my bro, who had since gone back to bed, and so I returned to rehearsal. The next days were a frustrating mixture of poorly timed attempts to connect to my funeral-planning family (that seven hour gap is a nasty beeyotch when your heart is aching and everyone involved has a big to-do list) and extremely taxing rehearsals (it happens, art can be hard. Stop laughing.). It was exhausting, disheartening, and lonely.

But that's only part of the story. I was also filled with gratitude and joy because at home a few weeks ago, Grandma gave me the gift of two good days, great conversations, a special burst of energy. I could talk to my sisters and brother and mom and dad on my phone, on my computer, practically for free and for as long as we pleased (I'm old enough to remember precious, painfully rationed long-distance calls). And miraculously, I was there in the church briefly on Sunday when the funeral took place, thanks to Skype. I saw the beautiful faces of my family, their faces were in my home and my face was there at Vision of Glory Lutheran. I saw one nephew's nervous smile before he went to prepare for playing the piano during the service, and as he turned to go I thought, my goodness...at every family event up till now, I've been sitting at the keyboard.

We'd had a pianist as our dinner guest that evening with his flautist wife and their brilliant daughter, new friends that lit up a heavyhearted weekend with laughter and conversation. We enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast, ate with abandon, and did the dishes together. Normally I'm the kind of person who refuses help with washing up in my kitchen (control freak, duh), but this night I didn't. Earlier in the day, my sister had called about her eulogy; she was taking ideas from everyone in the family. One story she mentioned was about how Grandma and Mom did the dishes together and sang, as Grandma had once done with her sister. So I let my new friends help me with my dishes (albeit no singing), and there was something deeply moving about that, although I'm glad I didn't have to try and explain it. After they went home and my static-y Skype call was over, I opened both sets of windows to the snowy Viennese night and took a long breath of cold winter air.

Clarity and collaboration, there may be something to this pairing. It will be a while before I can write about this week with any of the former. The orchestra is finally here in our Giovanni rehearsals, along with our music director, and finally the piece begins to take shape. I'm playing the recitatives with two stunning partners, cellists who are splitting the performances. So there are three of us collaborating on this project, and of course the work is faster and light years better with the addition of two sets of ears, minds, and hearts. I rehearsed with one of the two gentlemen this morning, and that was ninety minutes of grace. Not only am I challenged to a new level of elegance by his musicianship, I was given the gift of his total engagement with and enjoyment of our work, of his profession. I asked him how many times he had played Don Giovanni. He smiled and mentioned that next season would be his last before retirement, and as we talked he spoke of his grandfather, who joined the Vienna Philharmonic in 1892, who played under Mahler and Strauss and who collaborated with Brahms. 

A quick email check before rehearsal contained glowing reports of the eulogy and the piano solo. Outside my windows it was snowing hard, and I had to hurry downstairs. Behind me my boss gave the downbeat, and the orchestra thundered on all sides the music that will outlive us all. 

dkz

Prunksaal

It means "Hall of Splendor", or if you are translating in haste for someone in the Kantine, "fancy room". I played a gig there last night, in the room of splendor of the Austrian National Library. The Nationalbibliothek is part of the Hofberg complex, the spectacular lodgings of emperors past, and it turns out that in addition to the great furniture and tracts of land, the Habsburgs also collected the occasional Buch.

80 meters long and 30 meters high, cathedral-like in dimension and jaw-droppingly beautiful, this is the former great hall of the Imperial library. Marble floors and pillars support the frescoed dome and the walls lined with centuries of thought written down in all languages. The first display case I saw upon entering the hall contained a 5th century parchment illustrating the mail routes of the Roman empire. It's like a pretend fantasy library from some great yet-unmade movie, Harry Potter meets the DaVinci Code.

See old Karl VI in the center there? Last night he was surrounded by life-size images of some very beloved Alfred Roller designs:

My colleagues and I were the entertainment for "100 years of Rosenkavalier". That wonderful piece is having a big anniversary in 2011, and a small, fascinating group of supporters had a preview of the installation last night. The Roller designs were just a taste. I stared for many minutes at some of von Hofmannsthal's original notes for the first scene between the Marschallin and Oktavian. He brought them to Strauss for an initial meeting, and as they talked together (no doubt over coffee), Strauss came up with a few melodic ideas. There they were, the opera's initial ascending horn call and the sighing violin answer, born as doodles in the margins of some hastily sketched dialogue. 

We performed in the unheated hall and then repaired to the comfort of a reception. I talked to a former Austrian Supreme Court justice, a diplomat, a professor of literature, opera lovers all. I was moved by the connection of this audience to this piece, and by their grateful connection to the performers. I walked back to the streetcar with the mezzo, a woman experienced in this opera but buzzing with anticipation over her first Oktavian at the Staatsoper, coming in just a few weeks (especially after talking to our audience members about who they've heard in that house!). 

And then at home, the messages were waiting for me. I found my brother-in-law on Skype. He was drying the big pot for the mashed potatoes that may or may not get made, waiting to hear if he should take my nephew on to choir practice or to the hospital where my mom and siblings had already gathered. My grandmother was admitted about a week ago, and Mom's gut feeling was that she wasn't coming home. Still, she had rallied in the last 48 hours, enough so that my uncle was planning to bring her home for the holiday. Yesterday things changed quickly, and now it seems that the liver cancer she's been fighting since the summer will take her soon, most likely during this holiday weekend. 

Some of the people who read this have met Alice. I wish you all knew her. She has lived a great life, an epic life. It started with immigrant parents, a mother who couldn't ever communicate well in English, two siblings who died young, the wish for education squelched by her father, a marriage ended after just five years with her beloved young husband's death, and the decision to leave her baby daughter behind in New Ulm and travel to Minneapolis for work. She was a single mother during the war, was terrifyingly poor, tough, and resourceful. She had a disastrous second marriage and a troubled third to a sad and loyal WWII veteran. She was a working woman until retirement, she took care of her grandchildren; she completed her GED at the age of 70 and nursed her husband through a long, relentless illness. She traveled the world and learned line dancing, she chopped her own ice out of her gutters, she was a terrible driver and has always been an avid card player. She came to Houston to visit me a few years ago, refused the airline's wheelchair and walked through Intercontinental, and insisted on going to Lakewood Chapel to see Joel Osteen. She's Rosenkavalier's younger sister by five years. She hasn't ever heard the piece, but I imagine she'd enjoy the music while recognizing exactly none of its privileged characters. 

It's Thanksgiving Day. My family's in a splendid room in Minnesota.

Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding

Wenn man so hinlebt, ist sie rein gar nichts,

Aber dann auf einmal, man spürt doch nichts als sie.

Sie ist in uns herum, sie ist auch in uns drinnen.

In den Gesichtern rieselt sie. Im Spiegel da rieselt sie,

In meinen Schläfern fliesst sie,

Und zwischen mir und dir da fliesst sie wieder, lautlos...

Allein, man muss sich auch vor ihr nicht fürchten.

Auch sie ist ein Geschöpf des Vaters, 

Der uns alle erschaffen hat.

Time, that's a strange thing.

When you're absorbed in your life, it's nothing,

But then, all at once, you're aware of nothing else.

It's all around us, it's inside us too,

It's flowing through our faces, in the mirror,

In my veins, and silently between the two of us...

Only, we shouldn't be afraid of it.

It's another creation of the Father who created us all. 

dkz

loop

Vienna doesn't get the riot of fall color that either of us grew up with in the midwestern US. Only occasional bursts of dullish red and orange vary the tired yellow of the trees, fool's gold indeed, drained even further by the leaden skies. The air contains a warning edge that spurs me toward my bike; how many more Sundays before snow makes a ride impossible? I pump up my tires and pedal, legs and heart working against a variety of dragging weights.

North along the Donaukanal, I'm not paying attention to much. Bridge. Subway station. Riotously colored utility plant, yellow tree, yellow tree, yellow tree. Familiarity is turning this part of the ride invisible. I start to ascend a ramp that will take me across two bridges to the long island in the middle of the Danube. Over the water now, the wind is colder, bracing, and I lean into it gratefully, happy to push into something that pushes back. Lean men in tight spandex rush past me on their light bikes, and I pass a couple jogging and talking leisurely together, running as though the sun is shining. Cars drive past us on the long bridge.

On the island, the mist starts to organize itself toward rain, and no one's around on the long paths but long-haul bikers and runners plus the occasional practicing skier with poles and rollerskates. We smile at each other in an uncharacteristic way, a small congratulations for freezing together. The sky seems content to fall down on us slowly, one small drop at a time. Yellow tree, yellow tree, yellow tree. But then, a startling long canopy of yellow, burnished, lovely. From the heights of mid-island hills are expansive views of the admirable buildings of several centuries across the river on either side, big spired churches and hotels like ships and structures of glass reflecting the water and vice versa. The wind blows sharply, and the smell of the dying leaves struck by the new cold rain surprises me. The wind brings water from my eyes, my eyes take in the majestic city, my legs work at the bike pedals, my heart works.

Up another ramp onto another bridge, over the wide Donau. A barge of trash that says ГABAHA passes a barge of containers. The wind picks up, fighting the roar of traffic from the other side of the barrier. There is a collection of tiny houses and gardens at the west end of the bridge. A woman is covering some plants with a tarp, a man is bent over the open hood of a car. I steer into the Prater, right into some kind of race, people with numbers pinned to their raingear walking and running down the Hauptallee, rock music and laughter and tents and tables with water. There are suddenly families again, intrepid kids on tiny bikes, old people moving at a stately pace or jogging trim and clear-eyed, groups of parents and children or friends taking up leisurely amounts of space, insanely well-behaved Austrian dogs. Yellow tree, yellow tree, yellow tree.

The bridge back over the canal leads to some of the third district's prettiest houses, ornate balconies and turrets above a path suddenly ruddy. Die letzten roten Astern trag herbei. By the Urania, observe how the rain means business. I opt to stay by the water , under the bridges. My big and big-tired bike is good over the occasional cobblestones. My legs shiver under my wet sweatpants. The hydrofoils to Bratislava wait in vain for customers, and the sullen white-shirted waiters are smoking in the rain, scowling in unzipped jackets with the hoods pulled up. LESS! screams the graffiti on the Leopoldstadt side, big pictures of bloated red-white-blue zombies and an exploding globe. The Sunday morning exercisers in midtown wear Saturday night heavily as they pant past me, earbuds in place.

Friedensbrücke, last ramp, Glasergasse. I lock my bike in the rain and step into my warm house on slightly rubbery legs. The sky keeps slowly falling.

dkz

smooth sailing

Why is my bike commute so awesome? It's partly my bike, which is a beauty. I went out to Cooperative Fahrrad in the Gumpendorferstrasse, a first-rate street name if I ever heard one, and bought myself a real cool old lady's bike. Like, if Miss Gulch one morning suddenly took a yoga class and got a mani-pedi, this is what her bike would look like: big and not fast and made for those rough Kansas rural roads (or the cobblestones of the Ringstrasse) and yet a snazzy white with unnecessarily cool leather handgrips. There's a bike path along the entire Ring as well as along the Donaukanal, so it's smooth sailing for me all the way to work. As the air gets cooler and the leaves start to change, the chilly mornings grow more precious, and the pedals beneath my work shoes and the wind in my face take me right back to Union Street and my first bike, my September path to Sibley Elementary, the thrilling freedom that came along with that first set of wheels, with getting there by myself. I feel giddy every time I ride, about twelve years old, tops.

No bike riding today, however, with the rain coming down and the gray fog of autumn beginning to settle over Vienna. Saturday started on the streetcar and continued in a morning of piano practice and an afternoon of "The Wire" episodes and Skyping with family. I looked at online pictures of the flooding in downtown Northfield, recognizing some familiar faces among the locals sandbagging a riverside bar against the rising water. I savored the memory of last night's dinner party which was full of great food, new friends, and lots of music (including MtMn). Tomorrow is my first recital at the Opera, with two young ensemble members.

Preparing to make music, taking a little leisure, keeping in touch with my faraway family, enjoying the company of engaging and warm people that generous fate puts unfailingly into my path. This could be a weekend at any time, in any city. There is sudden joy, sharp and unspectacular, in finding this familiarity.

The window is open to the rainy night, the wind in my face. Freedom.

dkz

hearing voices

Walking through a large repertory opera house will probably always be one of my favorite things to do. I finished up a coaching last night at 6 and opened my office window. On the Herbert-von-Karajan-Platz below, the live video transmission of Tannhäuser began, and the first burnished notes floated up to me along with the combined music of steps, conversations, and streetcars. Somewhere around the beginning of the Venusberg music I closed my email and walked into the hallway, where that same music took on a new, ghostly timbre as it traveled up from the theater five floors below. It grew louder and brighter as I passed the half-open door to the catwalk and faded as I entered a rehearsal room to check in on Pique Dame. Under the brilliant, busy piano whispered important voices, saving their effort and tone for the theater. Back in the hallway, I heard the mens' chorus from the half-open door. In the corridor that leads into the house itself, I couldn't hear anything, and then in the lobby outside the top balcony there was just a hint of Wagner, as though from a distant radio. Into the Kinderzelt, a tent on the roof of the opera house, where the children's opera rehearses: tinny upright, dead acoustics, young singers working to be understood by the kids that will fill the tent come Sunday. It was intermission when I headed back to the theater, where I had intended to hear the rest of the opera from my usual seat in the company loge. But I kept wandering, up to the catwalks for Act 2 and the backstage for Act 3. I took such joy in this evening, hearing the various musics of the house from the shadows. The intimacy of it, the privacy, was balm for my overextended spirit. The paying guests were at the party and I was a servant listening in secret, and that meant the grand house was truly mine.

Late in the evening, MtMn went down into our street to help our visiting friends get the luggage out of their car. I leaned out of our window, five stories up, and listened to familiar voices floating up to me, and waited for our guests to enter our home.

dkz

These three days

The first time I ever saw a Schubert song, I was in the basement of a house in Nürnberg. I was on a high school exchange program, and my guest bedroom was sonically insulated by thick floors and located right next to a room that housed a harpsichord and many books of Lieder. I stayed up late into the night reading through that treasure, discovering that world.

Then Saturday, I played "An die Musik" in in the city of its birth.

The first time I ever saw the word "Prater", I was curled up on the floor between stacks of books in the Arizona State University library. I'd ended up playing rehearsals for the music school's production of Cosi, and, bitten hard, I was poring over every score I could get my hands on. This score was huge, and I had just recently cracked the code of the strange use of German articles (Er? Ihr? Euch? for one person?). But "Prater" I had to look up. Later, when I finally worked on Rosenkavalier, I practiced the weird vowel combinations and alien consonant alterations (I ho hoyt a...what?) that I heard the experienced artists using.

Then Sunday, I walked in that there Prater, and I heard that sing-song talk all around me.

My first opera house was, lucky me, San Francisco's. There I learned what life in a great company could be. I watched a great orchestra develop, watched the chorus morph into something different each day. I was part of a young artist ensemble that worked like dogs and soaked up lessons from the great visitors, singers and directors and conductors. Later, I was part of the music staff, and that transition was the first of many growing up in this far-flung, professional and personal family.

Then yesterday, I took the streetcar home, having seen three operas in 24 hours, all of which included people I am training, have trained, have worked with, have known forever, was happy to finally meet, whom I have admired for years.

The details of each day are overwhelming, frustrating - but the takeaway!

dkz

Connection

Well, I'm about to start work at the Vienna Staatsoper. It promises to be the hardest job I have ever done. And here, where I've shared a lot of my mind and heart with y'all - well, there will be no sharing of the job. Can't be. Homey don't play dat. That will be strange, though, because the job and the dozens of people I need to get to know and learn to work with will take up the lion's share of my energy and brainpower.

This space, however, belongs to a net of strategies designed to keep me from getting lost in all of that.  Kim Witman wrote something that scratched at me hard this week, and I hope you'll give it a look. Like her, I think that part of the reason my work is good is because I lose myself in it. However, I've also spent the last year and change getting significantly less lost. I don't want to make the mistake of forgetting to live in this city that inspired so many of the musicians who inspire me. Of course they came here for commerce, as I have done - but Vienna offers much more than that, as big-city culturally bored as it sometimes tries to appear.

For instance, in the morning when I open my window, this is what I get to see:

And today, within the city limits, we went on a stroll that looked like this:

So really, as hard as things over at Das Haus might get - how can I possibly forget to see these things? I hope I can remember if I take the time to show them to you.

So thanks for helping me live here.

dkz