(NAPSI)—Enabling K-12 schools to reopen for in-person learning is a high priority for parents, communities and governments. In fact, President Biden’s National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness was launched to fund COVID testing for teachers, staff and students in an effort to create a safer return-to-school environment.

Getting kids back to in-person learning will mean giving working parents a break, letting parents return to full-time work, reducing the expense of tutors or childcare and providing a near-normal learning experience.

Nevertheless, concerns linger over COVID in the classroom and the possibility of children bringing the virus home. School districts have looked at options for student testing but at the top of many lists is pooled testing. Here are some common questions and answers about that:

What is pooled COVID testing?

Pooled COVID-19 testing combines swabs from consenting individuals in a classroom and runs them as a single test. This can significantly increase testing capacity and lower costs. School personnel are trained to operate and monitor on-site sample collection, usually done weekly. In the event of a positive pool, the entire pool is quarantined and individually retested. But students who test negative can return to school immediately.

Does my child need to participate?

Participation is optional but according to district supervisors, most parents participate because regular, proactive testing can offer peace of mind. Knowing your child is in a COVID-free pool can make sending them to in-person learning less stressful. Proactive pooled testing alerts parents if a pool tests positive—which can be faster than finding out only after a child starts showing symptoms. It also means that parents know if a child tests positive, even if they are asymptomatic.

Can I trust the results?

Yes, in many states, pooled testing is already being administered by trained school personnel. Swabs are tested by Helix, a CLIA-certified lab, identified as having one of the most sensitive PCR tests on the market in an independent study conducted by the FDA.

Does testing my kids at school cost me anything?

No, having your kids tested for COVID at school on an ongoing basis doesn’t cost families anything. It provides a convenient way to protect all family members and creates a safer in-person learning environment.

How can I learn more?

For more information, contact your school and ask about pooled COVID-19 testing and visit www.helix.com.

by Peter Cates

Emil Gilels

In 1955, Russian pianist Emil Gilels (1916-985) made his debut in the United States, being one of a handful of musicians allowed to tour outside the Iron Curtain. His entourage, like other touring musicians from the Soviet Union, included several ‘friends’ who were KGB operatives prepared to shoot in case Gilels tried to seek asylum.

He made two recordings with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony – the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano Concerto and the Brahms 2nd – which were distinguished by an unusually refined technical virtuosity, delicacy but full-blooded musicality. He and Reiner, who was otherwise notorious for scathing sarcasm with orchestra members, had a most congenial relationship. (Many years later, Gilels was collaborating with the young Simon Rattle who made a mess with his conducting. Gilels jumped up from the piano bench and screamed at the young maestro for his stupidity. Since then, Rattle’s conducting has drastically improved.)

When Gilels was complimented for his playing during his first appearances, he replied, “Wait until you hear Richter.” He was referring to his good friend, pianist Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997) who first toured the U.S. in 1960. Richter was a big, broad-shouldered man with huge hands that swept across the piano with dazzling power, unlike Gilels who was shorter and had smaller hands.

Two outstanding Richter recordings are his ones of the 2 Piano Concertos of Franz Liszt and of Rach­ma­ninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto. I would also add his record of Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata, one that Gilels did very well with a much different approach from Richter.

Richter had a miraculous memory for the names of every single individual he ever met, no matter how briefly, and found it annoying. He also preferred doing free concerts for small groups in such places as a country church.

Both pianists have recordings accessible on YouTube.

 

 

 

by Peter Cates

Rudolf Serkin

Back during my college years, I considered Rudolf Serkin (1903-1991) my favorite pianist. He played with a most engaging combination of rhythmic muscularity, musical virtuosity, and fervent heart and soul in whatever work he was giving his total attention to. I grew up with his Columbia Masterworks LP of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic from 1962 (It contained recording session photos including one of Bernstein smoking a cigarette – he smoked four or five packs a day, had suffered from emphysema since he was 29, and was carrying air the last two years of his life before he passed away in 1990. For what it’s worth, Serkin was not smoking.). The performance blazed and roared with fiery passion and ethereal beauty especially in the slow 2nd movement. Other more lyrical performances of that work seemed tepid by comparison. Nowadays, I find the Emperor can stand a variety of approaches and have a few dozen different recordings.

I have previously written of my enthusiasm for the Brahms 1st Concerto and was then very dogmatically opinionated in musical preferences, and considered Serkin the finest interpreter of it. In April, 1974, I was the classical record buyer for the Kenmore Square Discount Records and heard that Serkin would be collaborating with the Boston Symphony under its then recently appointed music director Seiji Ozawa at Symphony Hall the next day in a Sunday afternoon pension fund concert. I called the box office and found out that tickets were still available, took a $2 cab ride to and from the hall, and, having only $20 to get me through the following week, paid $10 for my ticket, subsisting on baloney sandwiches with mustard on white bread until the following Friday pay day.

I had seen Serkin on television and was captivated by how he would hum at the piano and conveyed such joy. His hand movements were phenomenal to observe and my seat in the balcony would provide a view of them.

Before the Brahms, Ozawa conducted vibrant performances of Maurice Ravel’s showpieces, Menuet Antique and the complete Mother Goose ballet. After intermission, Serkin entered on stage with the conductor and, from his posture on the bench, seemed tired and frail during the five minute orchestral introduction. However, just before his entrance, the pianist sat up erect, flexed his fingers and gave the performance of his life. I was shaking with goosebumps and tears.

He recorded the piece four times – with Fritz Reiner and the Pittsburgh Symphony in 1946, twice with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra – 1952 and 1968, and with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1961. I have all four and cherish them for different reasons. Serkin was rarely satisfied with his recordings and welcomed the challenge of re-doing them, as did Artur Rubinstein.

Most of Serkin’s recordings can be heard on YouTube. His son, Peter Serkin (1947 – 2020), was also a very distinguished pianist.

Robert P.T. Coffin

More from Robert P. Tristram Coffin’s essay, Kennebec Crystals:

“Women swept past, little crepe bonnets cocked over the left eye and eyes like jets and blue diamonds. The ice was marked off into lanes, the racing sleighs came out. Horses came up the river, neck and neck, the flowers of their breaths festooned each side of them like garlands hung from high head to high head. Whips cracked, and shouts sent out long echoes each way. The chipped ice shone like splinters flying from a rainbow. Young men had young arms around waists of only 18 inches, and young people started off on the road to matrimony on the thinnest of bright steel shoes.”

More next week.

Of related Maine history interest is the Facebook page, Old Pictures of Forgotten Maine.

by Peter Cates

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) and Dimitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) are, for me, the three most outstanding 20th century composers to have emerged from Russia. I have written previously of Rachmani­noff and Shostako­vich and would like to focus on Prokofiev.

He was a child prodigy as a composer and pianist, dazzling many but also antagonizing them with his arrogance. For example, in performance classes, he would keep lists of his classmates’ mistakes.

His first ballet Chout earned praise from Igor Stravinsky and Maurice Ravel; later he and Stravinsky had a falling out for a few years but Stravinsky considered Prokofiev the greatest 20th century composer, next to himself.

In 1918, he left Russia because the chaos from the Revolution was leaving Prokofiev with little means of earning a living. With the permission of the People’s Commissar, he headed for the United States and achieved success as a pianist. He would also reside in France for several years but, for some mysterious reason, moved back to the Soviet Union in 1936, just as Stalin’s bloodbaths were cranking up.

His music did find favor with the authorities most of the time. However, in 1948, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978) were severely criticized by the government for ‘degenerate formalism’ in their music, the kind of criticism that could have deadly implications for them and their supporters. Such attacks were random, depending on Stalin’s fickleness and paranoia. Prokofiev made a sincere apology and then went on composing as he pleased.

During the early 1920s in Paris, Prokofiev met and married a Spanish singer, Lina Codina (1897-1989) with whom he had two sons, Sviatoslav (1924-2010) and Oleg (1928-1998). Starting in 1940, he began an affair with writer and librettist Mira Mendelson (1915-1968) and divorced Lina in 1947 to marry Mira (the courts ruled his first marriage as null and void because Prokofiev married his first wife in Germany and never asked the Communist government for permission.).

Three months after the divorce, Lina was arrested for espionage because she tried to send money to her mother in Spain. After nine months of interrogation, she was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor in Siberia and released in 1956, leaving Russia for good in 1974.

Because of high blood pressure and other health problems, Prokofiev suffered from frequent dizzy spells and, in 1945, fell, hitting his head on a staircase. He was forced to cut his composing activities down to one hour a day. He died on March 5, 1953, the same day as Stalin. Only 30 people attended his funeral, Shostakovich among them, while his coffin had to be carried by hand to the burial site because no hearse was available due to the lavish spectacle of Stalin’s funeral (among his pallbearers were Mao Zhedong (1893-1976) visiting from China, and KGB chief Laventiy Beria (1899-1953) who would be shot nine months later.).

The composer’s music was distinguished by tart, caustic and bracing rhythms, uniquely captivating harmonies and shimmering melodic beauty. For getting acquainted purposes, I would recommend his very famous Peter and the Wolf, 3rd Piano Concerto, 5th Symphony and Romeo and Juliet ballet. My special favorites are the sizzling Scythian Suite and 3rd Symphony from his earlier years and the magnificent 6th and 7th Symphonies from after World War II. Youtubes of his music are in plentiful supply.

Before he returned to Russia for good in 1936, the composer visited Walt Disney studios, in Hollywood, and was filmed playing music from Peter and the Wolf.

He became a devout Christian Scientist in 1924, believing it beneficial to his high strung personality.

He was also an accomplished chess player.

A quote – “I detest imitation!”

Robert P. T. Coffin
continued

Next paragraph from Robert P.T. Coffin’s essay, Kennebec Crystals:

“February came in murky. But the trotting horses of the Kennebec barns swung around at last and headed north: the thermometer went below zero and stayed there. Everybody began to breathe, again, and the grindstones started singing.”

Take note of the author’s ability to vivify the local scene of more than 150 years ago. One can picture the icicles hanging off beards, lips and nostrils, the inhalations of ‘murky’ air and the grindstones lifting their grating voices in harmony as the sparks fly in those work spaces.

More next week.