Retro-Blog 2008/1979 (ages 45/16): A Memory of Istvan Nadas and JoAnn Ross-Nadas from 1979

Sunday, May 04, 2008
     
Half-Remembered: Istvan Nadas
Current mood: sad
Category: Life

To say "half-remembered" may imply a diminution of the man, which I do not intend.  I intend only to acknowledge the shortcomings of my own memory in general, and the collective cultural memory evident through some initial Google searching.  I am sure Istvan Nadas is well remembered by many who knew him better, including his wife, JoAnn Ross-Nadas, who introduced me to him in 1979.  He passed in 2000, although I only learned this today. In Googling about trying to learn more about him, I found many brief references to him in the form of name-dropping in the resumes of many who had been his students. The only biography I found online did not mention his apparently short time living in McMinnville, Oregon, nor his wife.

That biography can be found here:

http://www.janiceclarkpiano.com/about_nadas.htm


What memories I do have of him were stirred as I was searching for recordings I might like of the Beethoven piano sonatas, and remembered that I had enjoyed his interpretations many years ago.
To the prejudices of my ears, only Nadas, and my older sister, played the first movement of the "Moonlight" with the appropriate sensitivity to the ebb and flow of dynamics and tempo that sound "right" to me.  I can only find one used LP on a site that doesn't even list which sonatas are included, but will endeavor to order it.  I suppose I could finally visit my sister, after a lapse of only about 20 years, on the pretense of securing a recording of her playing it.

I remember visiting his home, along with some fellow high school students,  in McMinnville, but don't recall if it was personally arranged or a school field trip.  At that time, he played for us a composition he wrote while in a German concentration camp in World War II.  Unfortunately, I cannot remember the piece in specific, only in the general impression, which was one of a great sadness I could only superficially internalize, as it spoke of depths of experience I could not have shared. I do recall there was a single note that would toll slowly like a funeral bell at regular intervals throughout much, if not all, of the piece.  It is sad, and seems a sort of injustice, that I can find no evidence of a released recording of this piece, or of any other original compositions he had made.

I knew just enough of the Holocaust to be afraid to ask him any questions.  I didn't know if he wanted to put himself through the trauma of remembering and describing, and I don't think I can ever really understand what it was like without experiencing something like it, and I hope I never do.  Years later, 911, viewed on TV from 3000 miles away was bad enough, and yet pales by comparison.  I still have to mentally turn away from those memories, unable to withstand confronting them directly.  I bought all of the documentary DVDs, out of some sense of duty to acknowledge history, but they remain shrink-wrapped.  So, in my very small way, I am now a little familiar with the conflicting motives to never remember and never forget.

My only other contact with Istvan Nadas was attending a series of concerts he played at a nearby college, during which he traversed the entire cycle of Beethoven's piano sonatas.

How does someone live such a full, dramatic and accomplished life, and yet leave such small ripples in our digital world?   How many other lives of similar substance have passed with as little acknowledgement?  I waste my squalid energies bemoaning the waste of my own imagined potential for greatness, yet those who do accomplish great things are often not given their due.Am I looking at life wrongly?  Am I expecting a different sort of world?

There was a period of time when I believe that JoAnn Ross-Nadas and I were something like friends, if that isn't an overly-familiar term for the situation.   I don't remember exactly how it came about that she and I would spend our lunchtimes together alone in an empty classroom, at a time when I had not yet been a student in any of her classes.  She was new to the strange and somewhat socially ugly tiny town of Dayton, Oregon, and I can certainly understand why she would prefer to avoid the teacher's lounge, which at lunch time was more crowded and smoke-filled and noisy than usual.   She may well have felt awkward in that sort of a hick-town tavern kind of environment.  But why was I the one student invited to join her personal, peaceful exile?

I only wish I could remember any part of the discussions we had.  Most likely much of it was about writing, as I did bring in my crappy little poems and essays for her to read and critique.  I was probably the only student in that school who flaunted any serious pretense of being a "writer"or a "poet".  That alone may be what earned me that private time with this intelligent and exotic woman.  I suppose there is no danger and little shame in confessing now that I had a childish crush on her.  My visual memory is the weakest, but I remember she had dark straight hair, kept medium-to-short length, and beautiful deep jade green eyes with flecks of brown.  As a reference of general impression more than specific resemblance, one might consult photos of Suzanne Vega.

If it was a friendship, it only lasted until I became a student in her Senior English class in a subsequent year.  At the time, I felt that she over-compensated for our prior friendship by being particularly strict and harsh with me in class.  However, I suspect that I was the one who truly betrayed the friendship by failing to understand and respect the necessary differences between our prior lunches and then being her actual student.  I'm sure I tested her patience unfairly, like the child that I was.  The class was nonetheless one of the few I had ever really enjoyed.  She assigned "Catcher in the Rye" for reading, which anywhere in the civilized world would be unremarkable, but in Dayton the book was banned from the school library, so she provided paperback copies to the class at her own expense.  I still don't know how much she had to suffer for that among her peers and superiors on the school staff, or with the school board.

The deepest regrets I have in my life are those weakest moments when I would make desperate and awkward attempts to fit in with my fellow students, parroting their idiotic and often racist jokes and comments.  I literally feel physically ill whenever I contemplate such ugliness coming from me, and such weakness of character.  Add to this the fact that I wasn't at all practiced in the low art of adolescent verbal graffiti, and would blurt the worst thing at the worst time in the most awkward way imaginable.  On the one occasion when this occurred in her classroom, I could feel her disappointment and revulsion like a punch to the gut.  Not like I was the one being punched, but like I had just sucker-punched one of the few people I truly admired and respected, someone whose approval I desperately craved.  Nothing was ever the same after that.  The lunches had long since ceased, but now she would not so much as look directly at me. Her notes on my assignments were now strictly terse and technical.   I deserved to be shunned.  I was an idiot.

Wherever she is, I hope she is well.  She has my sincere condolences for the passing of her husband, and my sincerest apologies for not being a better investment of her generous energies, intelligence and care.  Perhaps there were other students who turned out to be less of a disappointment.



(playbill for the concert series, doodled upon at the time by me, sorry)

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[Editorial Note 2015 (age 52): The web footprint of Istvan Nadas has improved greatly since 2008.  In particular, some out of print recordings have been digitized and posted to YouTube.]