The Chorale in Israel - July 17

Well, our first Haifa concert was a bit of a challenge. We spent the morning exploring the old city of Jerusalem for the first time officially (although lots of people had already gone there on their own. There’s so much to see that it was frustrating to have to leave after such a short visit, but we wanted to be sure to get back to our hotel with plenty of time to rest and bathe before we left for Haifa. We departed with what seemed to be comfortable time to allow us to arrive an hour early, to work out seating, change, and warm up. But the traffic was awe-inspiringly bad. Think Holland Tunnel at 4:30 on a Friday. We crawled along so slowly that I was starting to wonder what they would do if we weren’t there by the time the concert actually started.
We made it with 25 minutes to spare, but as it turned out, we needn’t have worried. As we were all clustered around the stage door, we got a message: Zubin Mehta was still stuck in traffic and wouldn’t be there for another half an hour. This was a good thing, because we needed every minute we could get to work out logistics.
I suspect most Israeli halls don’t have a lot of experience working with a large chorus. They’re very thoughtful about things like providing us with water and tea, but they haven’t thought the whole thing through. For instance, no one at Haifa had realized that a group of 100 people in a strange place need some kind of liaison to explain things. When we arrived, we were told to go upstairs. So we did, and took possession of the first large room we found, even though it seemed too small. And it *was* too small, because it was the wrong room. No one knew we were supposed to be up a floor higher. No one showed us the entrance to the stage, so we had to find it ourselves—and it’s not always as obvious as you might think. Especially not in this case, because there was a section of audience seating diagonally to the left and to the right behind the stage. I don’t know how well they could hear, but certainly all they saw was our rear ends. And the announcements about Zubin Mehta’s progress were only in Hebrew, so most of us didn’t know what was going on. (Fortunately a few chorale members speak Hebrew, and orchestra members were also very kind about translating.)
We had believed that the same risers we had used in Tel Aviv would be in Haifa, so we assumed we would all just arrange ourselves exactly as before When we finally got a chance to see them, though, we discovered that it was actually the same risers, minus one little section. So we knew that a few people wouldn’t fit, but not how many. And we had no time to try them out. More disconcertingly, instead of stairs to climb up the risers, they had put out three chairs for us to walk over--upholstered chairs, which wobble when you step on them. So our various leaders huddled together to work out a plan of action, and then I got to explain to everyone (I make the announcements because I have a VERY LOUD voice) that some people might have to stand on the floor if they didn’t fit, and that everyone should please try not to break their necks when wobbling over the chairs, and that if there were any pitfalls we hadn’t discovered yet, we should all just improvise and cope somehow and prove what consummate professionals Which we did. I was very proud of us.
Zubin Mehta finally showed up (looking as unruffled as if he hadn’t just been stuck in a traffic jam for hours), and we filed on as if we knew what we were doing, with no accidents. And the concert went surprisingly well. All the chaos seemed to make everyone feel free to cut loose a bit The oboe player really "put a dreidel on it." The Bach soloists did much more elaborate embellishments than usual, and sounded the best they have yet. And in the Bloch, Zubin Mehta took some blisteringly fast tempos. Maybe it was just to make up time, but they were extremely exciting. It was flattering that he felt confident the chorus would be able to stay with him if he took unexpected tempos, and it was gratifying that we did, in fact, stay with him. So the evening of mishaps ended in triumph—but we didn’t get home to bed until almost midnight.

-- Janet Pascal