Friday, January 4, 2013

The Nutcracker Trap




It's that time of year.  That time when satiated, bloated, and over-indulged we collapse in a surfeit of too many good things and vow to ourselves never to do it again.  I myself am suffering from a profligacy of Nutcrackers.  One too many Sugar Plum Fairies have danced in my head.  Too many Mirlitons have mirtiled.  Tchaikovsky's famous Nutcracker Suite is everywhere, the grocery store, the radio, the commercials on TV. You cannot escape.  Resistance is futile.  And so I succumbed to the triviality of it all and fell into my annual sappy music coma.

Years ago in college I played oboe in the school orchestra.  Every Christmas for four years we would drag out the Nutcracker Suite, rehearse ad naseum, and then perform it multiple times for the many Christmas concerts given on campus.  By the time we put it back in the dusty folders, I could hardly stand to look at the title.  Part of this, of course, was due to the lack of imagination in the oboe part.  All instrumentalists, whether they admit it or not, are to some degree biased by the quality of their individual part in any given piece, and Mr. Tchaikovsky didn't do much for the oboe section.  Other than a brief solo for English Horn in the Arabian Dance, we got nothin'.  So I enjoyed bad-mouthing Tchaikovsky, ruining his reputation, and forgetting him until the next year.

My last year of college I was asked to play in the pit orchestra for a production of the full ballet.  It sounded like sonic torture, but the money was good, so I accepted the gig and showed up at the first rehearsal, ready to dis the man.  The conductor raised his baton, and we began.  We played, and we played, and soon I was astounded at the beauty of the music.  Tchaikovsky left all the good parts in the ballet.  How many have ever heard the Snow Fairy music?  Or the Act 1 pas de deux?  "Peter Illych," I inwardly groaned, "What were you thinking?  The breadth, the depth of emotion, the angst, the fire and ice, it's all here, in the ballet.  Why isn't it in the Suite?"  Well, as I am not a medium, Peter Illych did not answer, but the fact remains that the dances in the Nutcracker Suite are not the best of the ballet.  Perhaps he was thinking of what would be an easy "sell," of what would appeal to the lowest common denominator.  We'll never know.

But I started to wonder how often do I do the same?  Do I always present the very best I have to offer, or do I sometimes go for the easy path, particularly if I think no one will care or notice.  It's so easy, when given any kind of assignment, to say, "Oh, this is good enough" when I should really say, "This is my very best."  What if every congressman always gave his very best?  Would we have had a "fiscal cliff?"  Even more ominous, what if Island Records demanded the very best of it's recording artists?  Would we have Justin Bieber?  At the start of a new year, I challenge us all to avoid the Nutcracker Trap and never settle for "good enough."  There's plenty of mediocrity in the world.  Put out the very best, always, every time.  Let's see what difference it can make.



                 My favorite version of the Nutcracker Suite with Les Brown and his Band of Renown.

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