heroic pants

Music is a powerful memory stimulant. Just a few notes of a melody can transport you to the time and place when you first heard the tune, or trigger other special associations. You may share a special song with that special someone, or like our Pops conductor Mike Krajewski, have your own theme song.

Today on stage during a Discoverer concert (a series of concerts we give for fifth graders from local school districts), I became locked in a reverie that took me from Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony No.3, to a palace in Vienna, to a classic pantless anxiety dream that unfortunately was all too real.

About twelve years ago, my string quartet had the honor of winning a special Austrian award for chamber musicians, the "Prix Mercure." We were to play a special concert at Vienna's Lobkowitz Palace, and receive our award at a presentation following the concert. The trophy itself turned out to be a ceramic boot-signifying Mercury, I suppose -and from then on giving new meaning to the term "getting the boot." The concert was held in the very room where Beethoven's Eroica was first premiered. Though as a string quartet we weren't performing it, I did manage to play a few lines from the viola part of the symphony into the historic space, putting myself in the shoes of a violist long gone. The room itself is actually quite small, not much larger than the stage of Jones Hall. Orchestras back then were smaller, and instruments not nearly as powerful as they are today; but the marble walls and floors probably did much to fill the hall with the glorious sounds of this heroic work.

So there I am on stage, in Houston in 2006, recalling the peaceful greenish-bluish hue and sonorous resonances of the Eroicasaal not only in 1994, but also my 1994 imaginings of 1804...when my brain comes to a dead halt-on my pants. Our cellist had packed all of our concert clothes in the groups' garment trunk before setting out on the 2 hour drive from the small town where we had been staying. All, that is, but the bottom half of my outfit. Which left me, dressed in khakis and a t-shirt, in front of the concert hall an hour before the show was to start, armed with the phrase "Entschuldigen Sie bitte, konnen Sie mir bitte Ihre Hose/Rock leihen (Excuse me please, can you please lend me your pants/skirt)?" and "shopping" for prospective outfits from incoming concertgoers. The good news: I didn't get slapped, or arrested. Bad news: no one going to the concert was Rita-size. Ultimately I ended up wearing the dress pants from a visiting American professor. So to Professor Bob, wherever you are-I'll never play the Eroica without thinking of you... and sorry you had to spend the concert pantless in the dressing room, it really sounded great! All that marble, you know.