The Obamas’ classical soirée - Page 3

In November Anastasia Tsioulcas experienced the President's arts outreach ideas at the White House

President Obama greets young musicians at the White House (credit: Rick McKay/White House photo office)

Sharon Isbin and Joshua Bell perform (credit: Rick McKay/White House photo office)

“Many of the beautiful concertos and sonatas you’re playing today,” said the First Lady, “were written hundreds of years ago, long before CDs and computers and MP3 players were ever invented. The only reason we know what they sound like is because the great composers of history scratched those notes into parchment with quill pens.”

Parchment? Quill pens? Is this what classical music is in 2009 to the mainstream – a museum-ready, high-culture oddity? The players and few critics in attendance were obviously ebullient that “our” music had received the Obama imprimatur, even for one day (the White House promises that this will not be the last classical music-geared event during this administration).

But there was also an unmistakeable whiff of self-congratulation: that at long last, at least here was a White House that Got It, even if the musicians didn’t do anything in particular to sell this particular art form. In fact, it’s rather hard not to think of the stark contrast between this event and the corresponding White House jazz day, which featured the Marsalis clan – Ellis, Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo and Jason – all of whom know precisely how to make jazz appealing to a broad audience.

As famously erudite and globally cultured as he is, President Obama made no secret that classical music isn’t part of his regular purview. In his remarks before the concert began, he admitted that, while President Kennedy relied on his social secretary to let him know when it was appropriate to clap at classical performances, “I have to rely on Michelle.” A knowing laugh broke out among the audience, whose members included Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, actors Ed Norton and Kerry Washington and White House senior advisor David Axelrod.

Even so, the Obamas were extremely gracious and engaged hosts. Lined up in the front row at the evening event, alongside their parents and maternal grandmother, were the Obama girls, Malia and Sasha. Meanwhile, President Obama was the very first audience member to leap to his feet after performances by eight-year-old cellist Sujari Britt, who played a Boccherini duet with Alisa Weilerstein, and the 16-year-old marimba-player Josh Yoder, who transformed Saint-Saëns’s The Swan into a duet arrangement, also with Weilerstein.