I keep getting asked about the Punk Rock Orchestra. Short answer: there isn’t a functional PRO at this time, or if there is one, I’m not a member of it. Soon after I joined, there was a management crisis and several last minute rehearsal cancellations, leading to disgruntled musicians. Our last practice was in May, with a new conductor. Attendance was bad: I was the only cellist who bothered showed up. A month later, an e-mail went out that we lost our practice space, and since then I haven’t heard any updates. It’s a pity: I was looking forward to scrubbing out the bass line for “Schwartzenegger Über Alles” (arrangement of a Dead Kennedys song), perhaps for a performance timed for the fall gubernatorial election. And now I have a tube of purple hair gel that I don’t know what to do with.

In the mean time, I substituted another, less punkish musical endeavour: I signed up for a workshop put together by the Chamber Musicians of Northern California, held yesterday at UC Hayward. The last one I attended was in February, 2001, so it’s been a while. This time I was in for piano for one of the two workshop days. When they told me I was going to be in a trio and asked about music choices, I immediately went for the first Brahms piano trio in B major, Opus 8. This was just before I left for Vancouver for Canadian Thanksgiving, so I got back late the Tuesday evening after, I had twelve days left to learn it.

I picked the Brahms mainly because I happened to have the music, and because I’ve tinkered with the first page and liked what I heard. Otherwise, I didn’t know then what I was getting into. I grew up not liking Brahms, but the last piano concerto I did was his first one in D minor, and I had great success with it. (Too bad I never got to play it with orchestra - financial cutback victim - that’s another story.) After having lived with it for two weeks, I’m happy I learned the piece. It’s a fairly difficult piano part, but proved to be tractable in the two weeks. As a piece of music it’s a very interesting mix of early Schumann-esque Brahms and late period Brahms. Even though it’s Opus 8, the commonly performed version is the one he revised much later in life at the insistence of Clara Schumann. The original version still survives and it’s interesting to compare the two, to see where the youthful overexuberance was trimmed away, leaving behind a mature and better work.

The workshop was yesterday, and I was partnered with a good violinist and an even better cellist, who did a great job of sight reading the difficult cello part. I was fortunate: like most things in life, chamber music is best when it’s a partnership of equals. CMNC workshops have a system of self ranking, meant to ensure that you play with people of equal calibre. The first workshop I went to, I self ranked as “advanced”, and ended up unhappy at playing the Schumann piano quintet with musicians who were struggling through the string parts. So this time around, I signed up as “professional”. I apologise for this insult to friends who actually make a living at piano playing, but the general CMNC rule seems to be inflated self rankings.

Still it’s obviously been a while since I played chamber music: the coaches pointed out the problems I was having with ensemble balance. I was told to leave the lid at full stick, so I’d like to blame that, but the fact remains that the Brahms trio is densely written in the piano part and easily overpowers the lower violin registers. Something to work on for the next workshop - maybe I’ll go for the “Dumky” Dvorak trio and go through another two weeks of forearm pain all over again.