Hello,
For some time I have wondered what the tuba scene was in Lithuania. If anybody knows of and tuba/euph players there please put them in contact with me. Thanks!
George
george@georgepalton.com
Tuba in Lithuania?
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notlap
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LoyalTubist
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I don't know anything about the tuba scene in Lithuania, except what it was like when it was part of the Soviet Union. The best way I have found to learn about tubas in countries I don't know well is to contact the symphony orchestras and military bands. Most countries do not have the excellent school band/orchestra programs which we (used to) take for granted in the United States. Some wind players begin at much later ages than we consider to be optimal--and they become excellent professional musicians.
________________________________________________________
You only have one chance to make a first impression. Don't blow it.
You only have one chance to make a first impression. Don't blow it.
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imperialbari
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Lack of a sufficient number of sufficiently good instruments was the main problem in the former Warsaw Pact countries.
Even in the richest one, GDR, they sold most of their best instruments to the West for $-convertible currencies.
A very good repairman friend, also salesman in my main Copenhagen store, John Petersen (ca. 1922-1990), told me, that even if I had held these same positions as a college and music-school teacher in GDR, as I held in Denmark, I would not have been eligible for the high-end GDR-made instruments, which I could buy freely for my students and myself here in Denmark.
A side effect of this odd lack-of-real-currency system, was, that Warsaw Pact countries to a very high degree swapped goods and services without involving money.
One sample is very brass relevant. GDR wanted to give its workforce very good holiday opportunities. Rumania and Bulgaria could deliver sunny beaches at the Black Sea. GDR could deliver high-end brass instruments for the good orchestras in the said Balkan countries.
But then the GDR was terribly afraid of the Balkanistos screwing up on them by reselling these fine instruments to the West. Hence they engraved them as if they were cheap student instruments. I am not positive about having seen this on tubas, but I have seen it on horns.
However the fundamental teaching in sight-singing and other musical basics was way above ours, especially in Hungary. The European education system is different from the American. Our gymnasium is at a higher level, or used to be so, than your high-school. The gymnasium teaches some math, physics, and linguistics, which you allocate to colleges and universities.
I mention this, because I some 20 years ago saw a GDR or maybe West-German TV-feature on the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. One of their featured soloists was this flabbergasting teenage girl on violin, who any day could have won a proper seat in the orchestra. But she was not allowed to do that until she had finished her Abitur (the German term for the final exam from their Gymnasium). She specialised in classic Greek and Latin plus some modern Western languages. You could tell a lot of dirt about the GDR (and I would be the first in the line to do so), but their educational system was excellent as long as it was not tainted with rotten politics.
Czechia had an author/playwright as a very prominent president after the independence. Which brings us back to Lithuania, which had a professor in music as its first president after the independency from the USSR.
I do not at all fear for the classical arts in the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). There is an abundance of very well founded musical talent, but they fight poverty (worse than the poorest parts of West Virginia in some areas). Crime and corruption also is a big problem. We are flooded with murderers, thieves, burglars, and scammers from all of the pre-commie countries. But also with high-end artists of the same national origins. A major problem in some of our orchestras is, that the members do not share one single language. Not German, not English, let alone Danish. But then the auditions are evaluated on musical values, not linguistic ones.
Some years ago we read some cries for instrumental help from a pro-tubist in a poor orchestra in Balkan. I contacted a well known US born tubist and designer located in my neighbour country to find a solution. What I learned was, that there are some instrument level charities happening. I do not personally take part in these, as what I most often am confronted with locally, is the crime aspects of the new Europe.
This is so sad. After WWII the US initiated, what we call the Marshall-plan. The plan was mostly directed towards the pre-war infrastructure of Eastern/Middle-Europe, but the commie governments refused that generous help, even if a large part of that plan mainly was about low-interest investment loans, which also would have boosted US industries.
One odd result was, that one of my father’s already wealthy brothers could stock up with farm machinery more fitting a land lot 5 or 10 times the one he actually owned. OK, even the family found him on the verge of being a bit too smart.
I am not preaching politics, but history. Something which is so terribly intertwined with understanding the arts.
Please allow for a final anecdote, which even is true:
The 19th century had some really great Danish landscape painters, which are almost inaccessible pricewise. But there also are 2nd and 3rd division painters of that period, which have had their works gaining fairly high auction prices.
The reason was discovered recently: A Russian art expert suddenly registered many more paintings by a Russian period top rate painter, than he possibly could have painted through several lifetimes.
Part of the scam towards the Russian new money guys was to buy the lower ranging Danish paintings, which were chemically identical to the Russian ones. They then had their specifically Danish traits painted over and their signatures faked. All with period compatible paint, chemically seen.
When I was young there was an English textbook called: How to bluff your way in music.
I never was good at the bluff-stuff, but then I made a living.
Klaus Smedegaard Bjerre
Even in the richest one, GDR, they sold most of their best instruments to the West for $-convertible currencies.
A very good repairman friend, also salesman in my main Copenhagen store, John Petersen (ca. 1922-1990), told me, that even if I had held these same positions as a college and music-school teacher in GDR, as I held in Denmark, I would not have been eligible for the high-end GDR-made instruments, which I could buy freely for my students and myself here in Denmark.
A side effect of this odd lack-of-real-currency system, was, that Warsaw Pact countries to a very high degree swapped goods and services without involving money.
One sample is very brass relevant. GDR wanted to give its workforce very good holiday opportunities. Rumania and Bulgaria could deliver sunny beaches at the Black Sea. GDR could deliver high-end brass instruments for the good orchestras in the said Balkan countries.
But then the GDR was terribly afraid of the Balkanistos screwing up on them by reselling these fine instruments to the West. Hence they engraved them as if they were cheap student instruments. I am not positive about having seen this on tubas, but I have seen it on horns.
However the fundamental teaching in sight-singing and other musical basics was way above ours, especially in Hungary. The European education system is different from the American. Our gymnasium is at a higher level, or used to be so, than your high-school. The gymnasium teaches some math, physics, and linguistics, which you allocate to colleges and universities.
I mention this, because I some 20 years ago saw a GDR or maybe West-German TV-feature on the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig. One of their featured soloists was this flabbergasting teenage girl on violin, who any day could have won a proper seat in the orchestra. But she was not allowed to do that until she had finished her Abitur (the German term for the final exam from their Gymnasium). She specialised in classic Greek and Latin plus some modern Western languages. You could tell a lot of dirt about the GDR (and I would be the first in the line to do so), but their educational system was excellent as long as it was not tainted with rotten politics.
Czechia had an author/playwright as a very prominent president after the independence. Which brings us back to Lithuania, which had a professor in music as its first president after the independency from the USSR.
I do not at all fear for the classical arts in the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). There is an abundance of very well founded musical talent, but they fight poverty (worse than the poorest parts of West Virginia in some areas). Crime and corruption also is a big problem. We are flooded with murderers, thieves, burglars, and scammers from all of the pre-commie countries. But also with high-end artists of the same national origins. A major problem in some of our orchestras is, that the members do not share one single language. Not German, not English, let alone Danish. But then the auditions are evaluated on musical values, not linguistic ones.
Some years ago we read some cries for instrumental help from a pro-tubist in a poor orchestra in Balkan. I contacted a well known US born tubist and designer located in my neighbour country to find a solution. What I learned was, that there are some instrument level charities happening. I do not personally take part in these, as what I most often am confronted with locally, is the crime aspects of the new Europe.
This is so sad. After WWII the US initiated, what we call the Marshall-plan. The plan was mostly directed towards the pre-war infrastructure of Eastern/Middle-Europe, but the commie governments refused that generous help, even if a large part of that plan mainly was about low-interest investment loans, which also would have boosted US industries.
One odd result was, that one of my father’s already wealthy brothers could stock up with farm machinery more fitting a land lot 5 or 10 times the one he actually owned. OK, even the family found him on the verge of being a bit too smart.
I am not preaching politics, but history. Something which is so terribly intertwined with understanding the arts.
Please allow for a final anecdote, which even is true:
The 19th century had some really great Danish landscape painters, which are almost inaccessible pricewise. But there also are 2nd and 3rd division painters of that period, which have had their works gaining fairly high auction prices.
The reason was discovered recently: A Russian art expert suddenly registered many more paintings by a Russian period top rate painter, than he possibly could have painted through several lifetimes.
Part of the scam towards the Russian new money guys was to buy the lower ranging Danish paintings, which were chemically identical to the Russian ones. They then had their specifically Danish traits painted over and their signatures faked. All with period compatible paint, chemically seen.
When I was young there was an English textbook called: How to bluff your way in music.
I never was good at the bluff-stuff, but then I made a living.
Klaus Smedegaard Bjerre
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jdsalas
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I'll second the situation in Latvia. There are some really great musicians but they get paid almost nothing for their work.
When I was teaching in Thailand I worked with a few Latvian musicians that were treated very badly by the Thai school administration. They pretty much had to lie down and take it because there was no way for them to make a living back home.
When I was teaching in Thailand I worked with a few Latvian musicians that were treated very badly by the Thai school administration. They pretty much had to lie down and take it because there was no way for them to make a living back home.
Last edited by jdsalas on Fri Jul 07, 2006 2:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.