I've had vocal scores for Wozzeck and Lulu for years, but every time I put on a recording and started following the score, I had major anxiety attacks - how do you know if someone plays a wrong note? how does a singer find a pitch - that after about fifteen minutes I turned the opera off. In the late 1990s my late friend Dale Kugel, former librarian of Tams-Witmark, invited me to a dress rehearsal of Wozzeck at the Met.
It was one of the most enlightening afternoons of my life. The production and performers was wonderful, and the music was glorious. Removing myself from the analysis of the notes, I could simply enjoy the music for what it was, and i had never realized what beautiful score it is.