Chapter 8 - Opportunities and Challenges

Summary

After the traditional days of mourning (Shiva), I returned to Dallas to resume a full schedule. Besides the regular duties at my three places of employment, I planned for the end-of-the-year music festival. I thought it would be fitting to do two evenings of music: one dedicated to my father's music and the other a performance of Ernest Bloch's Sacred Service. At that time I had befriended the Harrell family. Mack Harrell, the famous Metropolitan Opera baritone, was teaching voice at Southern Methodist University, while his wife Marjory Fulton Harrell was a professor of violin North Texas State University. The Harrells had three children two boys and a girl. The youngest son, Lynn, was studying the cello and was making quite a name for himself. One day Mack called me to ask me to take Lynn as a theory student. Even though he loved to practice the cello, he did not like to do theory exercises, no matter how much I tried. As is well known, he became one of the world's greatest cellists. Whenever I meet him, he tells me how much he regrets not having taken the theory lessons more seriously. In exchange for teaching Lynn, I asked Mack to be the soloist for the Bloch Sacred Service, and he immediately accepted my invitation. The perfor¬mance was one of the highlights of my Dallas days. We did it mostly in Hebrew, except for a few sections that Bloch himself had recorded in English. I sent a recording to Bloch and he wrote me a beautiful letter, saying that this was truly a definitive performance and that Mack's interpretation could not have been better. The celebration of my father's music was equally successful. We did ex¬cerpts from all of his sacred services, especially Music for the Synagogue, which was the piece commissioned by the Central Conference of American Rabbis when we first came to the United States.

Walter Hendl attended the performance of Bloch's Sacred Service and, at the reception afterwards, asked me to consider writing another work for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for the 1956-57 season. He did not have to ask me twice. I started work that summer on my Second Symphony, with a desire to dedicate it to the memory of my father.