023: What does my future hold?

Here at Stand Partners for Life, we get a lot of questions about the future: what happens if I’m not playing concerto X by age Y? What will happen if I study with teacher Z, or go to school– I ran out of letters!

So even though we can’t give definitive answers to these questions, they’re still great questions! And one listener email in particular sparked a discussion about success at an early age, the importance (or non-importance) of conservatory for winning an orchestra audition, and lots more.

Along the way, we also answer listener questions about sight reading in high positions, as well as “contextual intonation”: changing your pitch based on what’s going on around you, especially in the orchestra!

And we start out by talking Twelve-Tone: Nathan’s upcoming performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s fourth String Quartet, and whether or not it’s “real music”. Daniel Barenboim considered him one of the most important composers in history. Does “most important” equal best?