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You had dinner with Eschenbach?

Maybe I should have signed up for lessons!

"You never know unless you ask."

I don't know what Snufflelufigus' connection to Eschenbach is, but you never know what's possible unless and until you start it.

While in grad school, the Berlin Philharmonic was in town on tour. Their rehearsals are normally closed, i.e., nobody's in the hall unless they're with the orchestra or are union stagehands. My conducting teacher had begun working on it a while before, though, and with special consent of Claudio Abbado, the members of the conducting studio were allowed to attend the rehearsal (that's a whole new thread in itself!)

After rehearsal, we (the studio) were going to go to lunch together to talk about the rehearsal. I said, "Why don't we ask Abbado?" The answer was a collective, "Ha! Yeah, right!" While we were standing there figuring out where we were going to eat, Abbado came out of the hall. I walked up to him, thanked him for allowing us into the rehearsal, and asked him if he'd like to join us for lunch. At the end of a very brief conversation, he invited us to join him for lunch, and treated us all.

This was prior to his illness, and he was in a great mood, didn't seem to want to talk shop very much, and lit up the most when talking about his grandchildren and family.

It was a great experience. You never know unless you ask...

(Walter Cronkite was similarly very pleasant...)