15-Feb / 0 COMMENTS

If you meet a guy whom you love as much as I love this man- you go ahead and you marry him!

 

Like a lot of other musicians, I spent my Valentine’s day and part of the night away from my own Valentine. My husband was at an important pre-project brain storming meeting in Amsterdam, with people who came all the way from Sweden. I’ve been singing in a Valentine’s Day concert in the Oude kerk in Veenendaal. I was invited by the Veenendals kamerkoor to sing a few Purcell songs, as well as the solo soprano role in Eric Whitacre’s five Hebrew songs (the version for choir, a soprano soloist and a string quartet). All in all it’s a very normal thing to happen. It’s only a few weeks ago, when I received the scores to the Whitacre songs, that I saw the coincidence. On the first page of the edition I read the composer’s dedication to Hila Plitmann, his wife. Seeing her name on the score, it jumped out to me that I heard her name before.

 

Grammy award-winning soprano Hila Plitmann was one of the prodigious students of Penina Schwartz, my teacher back in Jerusalem. From time to time Penina would tell me about her, how great she is, how she won a scholarship to record a demo, how she sent that demo to Julliard School (as I remember it) and how she got in. The stories went on. I remembered something about her meeting a nice composer, how they both fell in love and how she married him. If I remember correctly I think my teacher mentioned he was doing very well, but I never knew his name.

 

How funny and fitting to be singing Hebrew love songs that were written for a soprano from my own city and studied with my teacher. With these past conversations with my teacher coming back to me from the dusty, yet loving place where I put them in the back of my mind, another conversation came to mind. I remember one time where she said in a serious tone”You have to marry! Too many singers’ lives are lonely. With work and travel, many of us don’t find others to share a life with.” At which point her husband came into the room to tell her she had an important phone call she had to take. When he went out of the room, she turned to me and said “If you meet a guy whom you love as much as I love this man- you go ahead and you marry him!” It was quite a ridiculous thing to hear at the clueless age of 16-17. It got stuck in my head nevertheless.

 

Funny the things you realize you still remember. It’s these small coincidences that make you feel like you’re doing alright where you are.

Eric Whitacre Hila Plitmann Penina Schwartz Veenendaals kamerkoor