Prior to the afternoon rehearsal of Frank Martin’s fascinating Petite symphonie concertante – one of those unfamiliar works that suddenly makes you sit up and say “What is that?” with a piano that comes in sounding like jazz, and then a harp and harpsichord joining in to form a neo-baroque cool daddyo combo – I asked violist Mo Jacob if he had recovered from last week’s still-being-talked-about performance of Black Angels at the Pulitzer.
“It took a couple days,” he told me. Not only was the work insanely difficult, Mo said, but he described it as one of the most emotional pieces he had ever performed.
