Our Common Nature Recommends: Classical Music Happy Hour

But before I tell you more about it, I want to introduce you to a friend of Yoyo Ma's and the host of this new show, pianist, and then you will ask.

Hi! Hi, so nice to meet you and, uh, manny is fine.

“Is manny fine because sometimes when you're talking to a world-class pianist, it's like, do I call you?”

My stroll axe, do I call you? See, Munsen your manny? Yeah, at home my wife calls me "Hey you" uh, my, my grandkids call me Papa and most of most of the people I know call me manny. So take your time. We'll call it that.

Okay, well, yeah, some of those might be awkward, so I'll go with manny. Your new show is called Classical Music Happy Hour and it is from WQXR and Carnegie Hall. It's all about the joy that you find in chatting about music with all sorts of people, mostly musicians like Yoyo Wong, John Adams, David Hyde Pierce and our friend Yoyo Ma, is that right? Absolutely, these are all people that I am lucky enough to know because I'm a great fan of all of them.

They are incredibly interesting people and they tolerate my sometimes very silly questions. They tolerate the games we're going to play on the podcast.

“You look kind of games, do you play classical music can be fun?”

I don't know about fun, but it can be, it can be. Sometimes intriguing, things like, is it a composer or is it a cheese? Is it, you know, we get, we get over our, our speakers, you know, a sound. Is it an animal or is it an instrument? Funny and unusual ways that composers died.

Not exactly the most cheerful subject, but some of them really are very funny. Wait, do you have an example of that one? Well, there's, yeah, a couple actually.

There's one, a Jean-Baptiste Lule, who was probably the first actual conductor that we know of

and the way that they used to conduct was they would have a big stick that they would pound into the floor, making you know, boom, boom, boom, and he actually, he pounded this big stick into his foot, got an infection and died. So, so there are probably a number of orchestral musicians that don't feel so sad about it. Oh, my gosh, yeah, it's like when you take your metronome and throw it against the wall. But it's, yes, it was a man. Yes, exactly, yeah.

Oh, my gosh, okay, um, do you do anything else like do you, I don't know, like talk to listeners or go into performances or things like that? Well, we have a segment on each show where

listeners send in questions and I always say ahead of time that we will answer everything we

can and if we don't know the answer, which is most likely, we will make something up. So, it's a very informative show, just don't believe anything we say. Yeah, it's not the news people. No, definitely not. Definitely not. Okay, so it's not, it's not the news. It's classical music happy hour. Since it's called happy hour, what is your favorite drink? Well, if it comes to alcohol, it's usually a glass of wine.

But what a red. But what actually either? Or even, or even a mixture of the two, I'm open to anything. But I know that you're your love single malt whiskey, all kinds of all kinds of different possibilities. Okay, so our covenator fans, maybe you grab your favorite drink, join Mani and all of his friends for a little bit of music, Merry Mint and Conversation, and to give you a taste of what you could expect here is just a little bit of the episode with

“Yoyoma. And thanks. What are the questions that you get asked most frequently?”

Where to next? Yes, that's something that people ask all the time, right? What's the next thing you're doing? Or you've played this piece hundreds of times. How can you make it interesting? Right. Yes, that's the answer. Yes, that's the answer. Yes, it's as if a piece of music is a product that is, you know, it's all wrapped up in a particular way. And I think that music, when we're playing as if we were talking to one another, is a conversation. It's a living thing.

I don't know that. Well, maybe sometimes you do!

“Depends. Depends. But I'm sure like you, I think we probably both react the same way.”

Let's say you play with an orchestra and you play on Thursday, Friday, Saturday. The same piece at the same hour, you know, each concert eight o'clock, same conductor, same orchestra. But each performance is actually a different experience. Absolutely. For all of us, I think. Yeah, and that's why often I don't like to play the same piece with the same group for nights in a row, unless I know that people are not going to say let's do like last night. Right. Because that to me is death.

“Well, death is a little strong. Death is just about right for me. Yeah, okay. No, death.”

It's over. It's not alive. Okay. And so one of the things that I love about our playing together is that we play the same program a number of times. Yeah, yeah. We actually, we'll say to another, okay, how do you want to do a different way tonight? Yes. Why should tonight be different from last night? Just as an experiment. This is, we started this Mendelssohn song without words, you know, a nice beautiful rhythmic thing that I follow and we play together. But let's start and we haven't

prepared for this. The beginning of the Beethoven's first sonata. Oh, right? Now, and you'll see. Give me a minute. , okay. Okay. Again, we didn't look at one of the songs, but we didn't. Another, there were these long silences. How do we know? It's luck. It's luck. Because my question

is, how come we never did that when we were playing concerts? Ah. That's because we're really

relaxed. Yes, probably, right. No, seriously. That I find that being able to talk to an audience, to talk to you and then play, that takes us to the closest moment of intimacy of making music as if we were in our living room. There's no pressure that, oh, we must be perfect,

“which I think has become an industrial aesthetic in the maker space of making things,”

everything has to be perfect. That pressure is silly. Because what we're trying to do is to say, okay, we just took a risk. I just tried that on you and there was no pressure, but it was just when we're actually open to one another and feeling safe. And spite of the fact this is being recorded,

we actually come out with the right answer. Think about that. That's incredible. We're not

under pressure to do something perfectly. We're just open. And you can follow this show to get new episodes of classical music, happy hour. We will be dropping those episodes in the hour coming at your feed. So be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks. Classical Music Happy Hour is supported by Viking, exploring the world in comfort.