Is it really worth while?

I am an enthusiastic listener of classical music and, putting aside all the crap that's uploaded there, I love the youtube web site because there you can find some gems that are extremely difficult to come across otherwise. The other day, for example, I stumbled upon a collection of HD video clips where I found one of my favourite pieces: Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra in E-flat major, K. 364 (320d). The performance was quite good, with perfect image and sound. Since this is not an easy piece to find, even in CDs, I thought it was nice to share it with my two children who, happily, also like classical music. I sent the link to both of them via email. After a day or so, I received a reaction from my daughter: "Strange, there are no women in this orchestra".

The clip was with the VPO (Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra), conducted by Riccardo Muti, with Gidon Cremer (violin) and Yuri Bashmet (viola) as soloists. I tried to explain to my daughter that this was a known fact, that the VPO does not take women in their ranks. I have always despised this policy and never truly had this orchestra in my heart, despite the fact that it is considered to be one of the finest in the world. Moved by curiosity, triggered by my daughter's quick reaction, I decided then to do a little research on the VPO to try to understand a bit better the reasons behind their strange policy.

It appears that the "all-men" policy was true until 1997, and currently the orchestra boasts four (!) women in their ranks. Big deal, the women have now a representation of 3% of the players! This is an improvement, but a very tiny step toward what we see in other prominent ensembles. Besides that, there seems to be heavy criticism and claims implying that the orchestra does not accept members belonging to ethnic minorities. Although applicants to the orchestra are asked to play their auditions behind a screen, when they are revealed to the eyes of the jury their appearance is of major importance. Thus, there is a story going around about an applicant that qualified himself as the best and, as the screen was raised, the jury discovered he was a Japanese. The musician was not engaged, because "his face did not fit with the Pizzicato-Polka of the New Year's Concert"!

More recently, in 2003, Yasuto Sugiyama, a world-class tubist from the New Japan Philharmonic, was hired.  From the beginning, it appears that Mr. Sugiyama’s appointment was controversial, creating problems within the brass section.  Mysteriously, he was told that he did not pass his trial year at the State Opera (mandatory) and was fired.  Soon afterwards, the same Mr. Sugiyama won the tuba audition for the Cleveland Orchestra, one of the leading American orchestras known, among other things, for its impeccable brass section!

Someone connected to the orchestra (no names here) tried to explain that their profession "makes family life extremely difficult, so for a woman it’s almost impossible". Even in 1987, when he said that, this reasoning was already ridiculous. He claimed also that there are many orchestras with women, so why not having an orchestra with only men? And he goes on with even more ridiculous assertions that a woman shouldn't play like a man, but like a woman, whatever this may be.

However, the rigid policies of the VPO go beyond male chauvinistic rules. In the string section, for example, the instruments belong to the orchestra. Unlike other orchestras, they don't allow personal instruments. This, apparently, is to ensure the orchestra's unique string sound. But other famous orchestras such as the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam and the Cleveland Orchestra in the US, just to mention two, managed to have also a "unique sound" that is recognized and well-loved all over the world, without these constraints. So, what's the point?

In 2008, the British magazine Gramophone, one of the most prestigious publications in the genre, put up a panel of top international classical music critics together and ask them to come up with a list of the world's best orchestras. The Concertgebouw came first, followed by the Berlin Philharmonic in second place. Vienna ranked third. It is a darned good place, but they were nevertheless outclassed by two other ensembles with mixed participation. Was it really worth while all their fuss about keeping it only a men's club? Wouldn't they be able to be as good the "normal" way, like the others?

Anyway, ranking an orchestra is almost an absurd idea since listening to music is a highly subjective thing. All one can say is that there is a bunch of ten or so ensembles that consistently perform at the top level. For the rest, it's your personal taste and experience that makes you prefer one to the other. I have had myself wonderful experiences with the Concertgebouw playing Brahms and Mahler, Cleveland with Mozart, the Staatskapelle Dresden with Bruckner, St. Petersburg with Russian composers and the New York Philharmonic with American music. All these became my favourites...

The fact remains that the essential role of any orchestra is to promote music through its art and formation, thus becoming a symbol to all man and women, making music accessible at all social levels. It is an intellectual activity and, at least in this area, there should be no discrimination. Still, I agree that a woman's brain functions differently than ours. But in this case, I wholeheartedly join the French and shout: "vive la différence"! My experiences of working in a mixed environment were always excellent and, when a manager, I kept striving for a proper balance in my team, though not always successful because my profession, regrettably, does not seem to attract women...

Thomas Jefferson's famous phrase in the US Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal", is not politically correct anymore. We have come a long way since, and it should now read "all men and women are created equal". The VPO is a great orchestra, but so are 10 or 20 others, without applying absurd and rigid policies. The proud Austrian ensemble should join the 21st century and take part in the evolution of mankind. An orchestra is probably the best example of a large group of men and women getting together in peace and with discipline, to provide the public with one of the most beautiful achievements mankind has ever produced: music!

Missed Opportunities

I made the acquaintance with my friend P. due to a tragic coincidence. My wife S. was a very good friend with his wife, who at the time was very ill with brain cancer. They spent a lot of time together, and my wife did everything she could do in order to help P.'s wife until the time of her death. A few years later, my own wife succumbed under the same awful disease. United by the tragic end of our wives, P. and I became friends.

We didn't see each other very often, but one evening P. and I decided to go out for dinner and then watch a Woody Allen movie in a cinema that was located inside a shopping center that no longer exists, near the Central Station of The Hague. After the movie, we walked together to the main lobby looking for the entrance to the parking, where we had left our cars.

At a certain point, a young man approached us and asked me:

- I'm sorry, Sir, but I wonder if you could spare 5 euros for me to get a bed in a hostel, for the night. I have some money, but it is not enough. Yesterday I slept outdoors, but I felt very cold...

It was the beginning of November, and the days were indeed rather cold for the season. I inspected him quickly: he was young, simply dressed but clean, he had no heavy coat, and he looked straight into my eyes.

I grabbed my wallet and searched inside for some change. I could come up with 4 euros and 20 cents, the rest of my money being only large bills.

- This is all the small money I have, but it gets you very close to what you need. Good luck with the rest! - I said to him.

He thanked me and turned to my friend, with hope in his eyes. My friend brusquely waved him away, nodding his head in a sign of refusal.

As soon as the young man walked away, my friend commented with a bit of embarrassment:

- I didn't feel like giving him anything. We never know if they are telling us the truth or not. How d'you know if he's not going to spend it all in drinks or drugs?

I replied, very calmly:

- Well, put it this way, my friend: if he's telling the truth, both of us are happy; he's happy because he'll sleep in the warmth tonight, and I'm happy because I helped him. If he's lying, I can't tell; the problem is his, not mine. I'm still happy because I'm left with the impression that I helped someone in need today.

My friend didn't seem very impressed with my philosophical reply. We both continued to the entrance of the parking, where we shook hands, said good night, got into our cars and headed back to our homes...

While I was driving home, I remembered that this philosophical attitude of mine started after a similar situation that had occurred with my wife S. long time ago. One day she was strolling along the Leidsestraat in Amsterdam, when a student stopped her to ask if she could give him some money because he was very hungry; he hadn't been able to eat anything the whole day.

She took 5 euros out her purse, saying to him:

- I hope you are not lying to me and that you're going to use this to eat.

A few minutes later, on her way back, someone caught her attention by frantically shouting and waving at her, from the other side of the street. It was the same young man that had asked for the money a little while ago. He was standing in front of some food joint, with a large smile on his face and pointing to a big hamburger in his other hand. That day, two people were very happy.

She told me later that when she related this encounter to her best friend, she reacted:

- But 5 euros is a lot of money to give away! Only you could do this sort of thing. What if he was lying?

S. was a gentle and generous person; she didn't care whether the fellow was lying, she only hoped he didn't. I loved her very much, and I have learned from her how to trust my instinct and do what I thought it was right, regardless if the other party was indeed being truthful or not. I find this to be a positive attitude, and I have been practicing it since. After all, 4 or 5 euros are a very small price to pay for the risk of giving to a stranger the benefit of the doubt, and for spending the rest of the day feeling great, with the sensation that you have helped someone in difficulty.

Isn't this so much better than a missed opportunity?

Driving without a license...

It is a fact that we do with computers what we wouldn't dare doing with cars, i.e., allow the person to buy a car and starting using it without knowing how to drive...

I am confronted with so many basic questions from friends and acquaintances that I wonder how they manage to get along with their computers. Probably they don't, which is a real pity. The personal computer became an indispensable tool in every home, just as Bill Gates dreamed of. The problem is that if schools are now preparing the young generation to properly use a computer, nothing much is being done for the adults who got caught in the technological hype and didn't have this opportunity.

The other day, for example, a dear friend of mine asked me if I knew of a good OCR program to capture the text he had scanned to a JPG image. Nobody ever explained to him that if he wanted to scan some text to be OCR'd, he should have saved it as TIFF instead, not only because it offers lossless compression but because most of the OCR packages prefer this format. For him, JPG became the synonym of any image, regardless what kind of image it is. I am certain that he doesn't know the difference between JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and so on...

This friend is a retired engineer, very intelligent and still very sharp, but never had the opportunity to go through a basic introduction to computers where the different image formats and their utilisations are explained. It is a flaw of our system that produces high tech equipment and forgets to initiate the public on how to make the best out of it.

The same happens with digital cameras, for example. How many people buy the most expensive DSLR just to put it in AUTO and use it as a snapshot camera? Do the manufacturers really think that putting a high powered digital camera accompanied by a flimsy user guide in the hands of a snapshooter will transform him or her into an amateur photographer?

The system is inadequate because it does not provide much choice in introductory courses. There are books, but apparently most of the people ignore this fact or are not willing to invest some of their time in self-learning. I would love to see the television playing a better educational role in this area, but I believe this is a dream that, contrary to Bill Gates', will never come true.

I guess that, with regard to computers, we are experiencing a transitional period and this problem will disappear by itself in a few decades when at least all those who went to school will know how to properly handle a personal computer.  Then we, the so-called "experts", will be left alone.  In the meantime I keep helping my friends with pleasure and patience, but the snag is that they get used to this treatment and will never learn, as they should, how to take care of themselves...