Greg Stepanich

Getting it all done: Desperately seeking strategies

If you troll the Web for the kinds of blogs I do, you'll find a good number of creative people who apparently are accomplishing a great deal in a very limited amount of time.

This makes me jealous, of course, because I've tried many a tactic to get all the creative work done I need and want to get done, and most of them seem to fall short. I think where I run into difficulty is not allowing myself enough downtime in the schedule, so that when I feel the need to blow something off, I can't do it without guilt.

Any and all suggestions for getting creative work done on a reasonably disciplined schedule will be accepted here. I'm hoping to hear some good suggestions.

I thought of this after a weekend in which I went through all the projects I've still got to get through this year, and it's daunting. For starters, more than a dozen new books await reviews, including:

* A new biography of Beethoven, written for Harper Collins' Eminent Lives series by Edmund Morris, whose previous books include bios of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Due out in October.

* A bio of British poet Leigh Hunt ("Jenny kissed me"), by Anthony Holden, whose biographies include one about Tchaikovsky. Due out in December from Little, Brown.

* Souled American: How Black Music Transformed White Culture, by Kevin Phinney. Due out in September from Billboard.

* More volumes in the Amadeus Press series on composers; the newest one, out last week, is David Hurwitz on Dvorak. This book has two full CDs from the Czech Supraphon label, much of it fresh material such as excerpts from his operas. In paging through the book, I find this bold assertion on Page 2:

Indeed, if one defines greatness as the ability to create a series of masterpieces over a broad range of musical media, then Dvorak was, demonstrably and without exaggeration, the greatest composer of the last half of the 19th century,

Now that's a big claim, but I admire Hurwitz for making it. He's done two other books on Mozart, one that tackles the instrumental works and the other that addresses the vocal. I need to do a piece that looks at several of these books for their music appreciation value; I can't think of a concert I've been to within the past two or three years in which someone didn't talk from the stage about the music that was going to be played. This is where the education is happening these days.

* I'm currently finishing the the newest book by Albert Murray, The Magic Keys, in which his protagonist, a jazz musician named Scooter, has signed up for grad school in New York and is trying to figure out exactly what he wants to do with himself. This is the fourth book Murray's written featuring this character. Also upcoming from me for the books pages: Novels by Paul Hond (Mothers and Sons), Susan Swan (What Casanova Told Me), and Elizabeth Hickey (The Painted Kiss).

Also had a busy weekend, concert-wise. I'll offer some brief thoughts, and hope to post a Web review or two in the next couple days:

* Saturday night, the third concert in the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival's summer series. An all-French evening, and an excellent one it was. The Chausson trio I talked about in my last entry has its Franckian weaknesses, in particular its repeated climaxes of cyclical material, but the performance by Lisa Leonard, Mei-Mei Luo and Susan Moyer was beautiful and absorbing. Also on the program was the Valse Très Lente of Massenet — played extremely slowly, but the tempo helped give this salon music a kind of cold purity that was very attractive. Another rarity was AndréCaplet's Légende, which was typical music of its period, moody and harmonically slippery but without a strong melodic profile.

The best piece on the program was the Gounod Petite Symphonie, a classic of woodwind literature played here with zest and a clean, crisp approach that highlighted Gounod's conservative instincts and his melodic wit. A delightful piece, well-played and welcome.

* Sunday afternoon, the first concert in a four-program series of informal organ recitals at Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal in Palm Beach. Full disclosure: Concert organizer Diana Akers came up with the idea for this series while I was talking to her about what was going on musically this summer, and we both lamented the lack of an outlet for area listeners to get acquainted with the riches of the organ literature. Next thing I know, it's Summer Sundays at the Console, a series of four programs on Sunday afternoons in July and August. I didn't have anything to do with organizing it, but I'm happy to see it.

Bethesda's Harold Pysher and Matthew Steynor, a British musician currrently working at St, Thomas Episcopal in Coral Gables, presented the first program, which lasted about an hour (there's a free-will offering to defray costs of printing and other expenses). Much fascinating music on the program, including Les Cloches de Perros-Guirec, by Marcel Dupré, with its extensive bell sounds, and Salamanca, a piece by the Swiss composer Guy Bovet that featured the Bethesda organ's drum sounds and some terrific variations of Spanish folk tunes. Both were played by Steynor, who proved to be a fine player.

Pysher offered two barn-burning French works for the opening and closing moments, starting with an Allegro vivace from the Second Sonata of Alexandre Guilmant, and ending with the Toccata in D minor of Albert Renaud. Powerful, grandiose works, beautifully played. Pysher also introduced a brand-new piece, the Variations on 'Hanover' by Michael Burkhardt, a professor at Carthage College in southeastern Wisconsin. A conservative but well-written piece that would fit comfortably into any church service; Pysher gave the premiere last week at the Sewanee Church Music Conference.

About 50 people were on hand for this first-ever concert, and it was well worth an hour on a steamy Sunday in July.

Next Sunday at 2 p.m., the series features three organists: Jack W. Jones of the Royal Poinciana Chapel in Palm Beach, Jeffri Bantz of the First Presbyterian Church in Pompano Beach, and Stephen Kolarac of The Cathedral of St. Mary in Miami and Temple Beth El in Boca Raton. The Third Symphony of the French composer Louis Vierne is on the program.

* And then there's the music I have to finish writing and recording for Web projects and friends. Again, if anybody out there has a good plan for getting everything done, drop me a line. I'd love to hear some strategies.