Janos Starker - Still Alive



I heard Starker play Kodaly's complete Sonata for Unaccompanied Cello at the Banff Festival in 1976. Why is the Third Movement here today? Apart from it just seeming like a 'cello sort of day' here in Penicuik, it was a day of 'putting pieces together'. Rostropovich died a few weeks back so I've been thinking about cellists. Madpriest has been talking about ferrets. So I'm thinking about cellists and ferrets. What unites cellists and ferrets? Well, sir, I wrote a story once upon a time which contained both Janos Starker and a ferret. It was prompted by the concert I saw at the Banff Festival - the way Starker lifts his bow at the end of the movement as if to tell you that the piece of music is over - as if you might not know. I had come down to the Banff School of Fine Arts after having finished high school in the Yukon Territory - not exactly Canada's cultural heartland. I felt terribly outclassed by everybody there at the School and imagined that these little cues were meant for dummies like me. Years later I wrote the story. It still needs some work.