The president told the audience at an evening concert in the East Room that classical music is "lifting hearts and spurring imaginations" all across the nation, and is something to be enjoyed by aficionados and the uninitiated alike.
The concert featured some of today's most important young and vibrant classical musicians: violist Joshua Bell, classical guitarist Sharon Isbin, cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Awadagin Pratt. And at an afternoon performance for the young musicians, the superstars teamed up with some youngsters of uncanny ability.
Pratt plunked himself down on a piano bench next to 14-year-old Lucy Hattemer of Cincinnati to perform a Schubert duet on the East Room's Steinway. Weilerstein, 27, was upstaged by her 8-year-old partner, Sujari Britt, a student at New York's Manhattan School of Music, on a duet by Italian composer Luigi Boccherini.
Bell, performing in shirt sleeves and jeans, introduced a Paganini duet with Isbin at the afternoon concert by telling the audience that the Italian violinist was "sort of like the Beatles of his time." He also showed that not even the pros are immune to the occasional flub. During his duet with Isbin, Bell inadvertently skipped a couple of lines, and jokingly pronounced it "the abridged version."
At the evening concert, Obama tried to put the audience at ease by telling the crowd that even President Kennedy wasn't always sure when to clap during classical performances and had to get a signal from his social secretary on when to applaud.
"Fortunately, I have Michelle to tell me when to applaud," he joked. "The rest of you are on your own."
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