Bi-Monthly editorial
	January and February 2007 [2007-03-15] January 2007 began quietly for me at home. I had many new scores to prepare for concerts and upcoming recordings but I was mostly enjoying the winter calm. This was a marked contrast to La Folle Journée in Nantes at the end of the month and the first few days of February. It is remarkable to see and feel the enthusiasm of the more than 120,000 people who attend about 200 concerts during the five day period. On Friday morning I looked out of the window of my hotel room to see people starting to queue at 7:00 for the first of the morning concerts which began at 9:30. Conventional wisdom seems to be that classical music can only survive if it lowers it standards for excellence and performs down to a dumber and dumber audience. This is evident in what has happened to television since the arrival of cable and the commercial channels which are influenced by and in turns re influences our obsession with the false and empty values of meaningless celebrity, and above all our short term, throw- away society. Young artists have to make an immediate splash, sell the most records as soon as they are released or risk falling through the cracks to join other failed overnight successes into the abyss of the has-beens before reaching the age of thirty. This is not the ethics that drives this festival. It is quality, quality, and quality. Of course with so many artists and this year’s repertoire every concert is not of the same level but the intention is always to aim toward the goal of perfection. This is not the kind of festival where you can arrive and calmly start to rehearse. I must already be prepared before arriving since all concerts last 45 minutes and the time needed to get off and prepare for another formation, piano tuning and some discussion about lights, the on-stage rehearsal time is about 5-10 minutes and is not conducive to deep concentration. This year the theme of festival was L’Harmonie des Peuples. This included the many national schools which began to manifest their national flavor with Grieg from Norway, Berwald from Sweden, Fauré, Debussy and Ravel from France or Rachmoninoff and Tchaikovsky from Russia and others. I spoke to many other artists who felt as I did that it was difficult to choose from so many great composers. I have in my repertoire music from all of the above mentioned composers and more and could have made at least ten different programs but I choose Grieg, Sibelius and De Falla,a voyage from Finland in the north to Spain in the south of Europe. I will of course be back next year. In the end of February I should have finished the recording of Handel and Purcell arias with the Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble but my producer was ill so we will be doing it in May. I did however record parts of the last movement, Abschied of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde in an arrangement of Simon Stockhausen. The film, Disengagement, dircted by Amos Gitai will be filmed in March in Avignon, Tel Aviv and Cologne. I will be present one day for the filming also. The film stars Juliette Binoche and also features Jeanne Moreau. By the way: Aung San Suu Kyi is still under house arrest in Burma Darfur: the suffering continues Al Gore won an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth Is it not time that we become active to save the planet from ourselves and above all rid ourselves of the dependency on exports of oil and gas? Let’s think about about what each one of us can do! Until May, All the best BH
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