When I wrote to the Classical MPR staff asking for suggestions regarding athletic composers, it became clear that music and sport is an almost inexhaustible topic. This week, we're shining a spotlight on athletic performers, and next week we'll look at some great pieces of classical music inspired by the wide world of sports.
Vanessa-Mae, of course, has been the most headline-grabbing classical athlete of late, with her failed, then tainted, run at Olympic glory on the ski slopes. Even if she didn't grab gold, though, it's safe to say that the violinist knows her way around the slopes almost as well as she knows how to navigate the neck of her instrument.
At least one noted classical musician had a stint in sport not just in the manner of Mike Tyson, but of Don King: as John Birge informed me, Brazilian pianist Joao Carlos Martins sustained a soccer injury in 1969 and retired from music for several years, occupying himself with activities including managing prizefighters.
John also cited a local example of a musician who knows the score (in both senses of the word): cellist Peter Howard, formerly of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, has also worked as a hockey coach. Another mentor to young athletes was Luciano Pavarotti: as a young man, Fred Child notes, Pavarotti was a fantastic soccer player as well as a high school gym teacher.
Then there are the Takacs Quartet: the Hungarian-American string players met during pick-up soccer games when they were in music school.
Conductor Semyon Bychkov, as Performance Today associate producer David Malley notes, may be the best-known classical musician to have played professional volleyball: in his Russian home town, Bychkov played for the Leningrad Dynamos.
Of course, there are risks to being a classical musician who also plays sports: conductor and cellist Han-Na Chang was an avid basketballer in school, but after sustaining a hand injury just a week before a concert, she had to abandon her hopes of balancing both balls and bows.
On the other side of the field, there are those who are best-known as athletes but who are also skilled musicians. Eddie Basinski, who played shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 40s, was an experienced violinist — though his manager didn't believe him until he walked into the Ebbets Field clubhouse one day playing Strauss waltzes. He once performed a spontaneous recital between two games of a doubleheader. "I got a tremendous ovation," he remembered, "and had a good doubleheader too."
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