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In the morning my favorite driver of the whole trip, Sasha (the one who told me the day before that, yes, LADA was a Russian make of car, and no, they were not good cars at all), came to drive us from Karaganda to Astana. Lee-Ann, Zaori (our translator), and I rode in his van while the other three were in the other driver's van. Sasha was the only driver who ever actually came in and listened to our concert. I only know this because he told me we played well afterwards, something which of course took me about five minutes to understand, in part because it was the last thing I expected to hear from our driver!
(Members of Al Farabi and Phoenix Quartets rehearsing the Shostakovich Octet)
Along the way we stopped and saw two drunks stumbling down the road arm-in-arm, carrying a huge (and mostly empty) jug of vodka. They were straight out of Russian literature, and for us Americans it was fascinating! Susie took a picture of them, which was kind of tricky since the last thing we wanted to do was have to have a conversation with them. They looked as though they had been stumbling down the road, drinking and singing songs for days.
We also saw an overturned truck and a man trying to save his cargo of vegetables. It was so heartbreaking, because this load of vegetables probably represented his season's income. I'm sure that with the poor condition of both roads and vehicles this kind of accident happens from time to time. Having seen some of the economic hardship of rural life in Central Asia I feel all the more fortunate to be able to make my career in music. These people never had the chances I have had because they have a totally subsistence lifestyle.
When we got to Astana we realized that we were all too cheap to pay the exorbitant hotel lunch prices, so Joe, Susie, and I struck out with the Lonely Planet guidebook to have pizza, of all things. The first pizza on the menu was "Pizza Margherita," which seemed normal enough, so Susie ordered that. Joe just ordered the next one down because he figured the second one on the list couldn't be that strange. Imagine his surprise, then, when his pizza arrived with chicken, apple, and orange! But all in all it was fun, and we felt very adventurous going out on our own and trying to use our five words of Russian to interact with the locals.
Then we were off to the Academy of Music to rehearse some Shostakovich with the Al Farabi Quartet, formerly known as the String Quartet of the Kazakh National Academy of Music, or KazNAM. We had been looking forward to seeing those guys for months, and it was not a disappointment! Their rehearsal style was so different from ours. (They more or less led the rehearsal because Bagdat was playing first violin, and he knew the piece better than the rest of us.) Everyone was very polite and well behaved and defers to Bagdat. We worked out bowings and articulations and then played through slowly for intonation. It was so much less detail-oriented and personal than our rehearsals tend to be, but it was still effective and rather refreshing.
Even though I had heard of the dearth of sheet music in Central Asia, I was still shocked to find Yerzhan reading off of a part that his girlfriend had written out by hand!
For dinner we went to Raisa's (the Al Farabi's teacher) with Jim Kenney (the principal officer from the embassy). Bagdat drove Susie and me in his SUV, and we listened to Eminem as we drove through the most modern parts of Astana. It was very cool.
Dinner was amazing, and Raisa is such a wonderful woman! She stuffed us full of incredibly tasty Russian salads and appetizers and then served manty, which are like dumplings.
- Michelle
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