Musical America Blogs

by Sedgwick Clark

April 22, 1972, was American composer Elliott Carter’s night to remember, when 2,800 listeners at Carnegie Hall cheered a stupendous performance of his Variations for Orchestra (1955) by Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony. Solti brought him to the stage and the audience went wild. They were called out by the audience five times, with their faces more aglow with each appearance.

By an amazing coincidence, Lorin Maazel was leading the New York Philharmonic in the Variations at exactly the same time over at Lincoln Center. I caught Monday’s subscription concert, and while it’s iffy to accurately describe the performance qualities of such a complex piece after 40 years, I recall it as being flat as a pancake — as deserving of its tepid audience response as the CSO’s acclamation was two days before. Maazel motioned for Carter to stand in one of the boxes on the left. The audience paid barely any heed, so I shouted “bravo.” The composer turned in my direction, smiled, and bowed, Maazel walked off the stage, and the applause stopped as if sucked into a black hole.

To complete my anecdote, the Chicagoans had originally programmed the Variations in the Boston concert of their East Coast tour, but a standard repertoire work was substituted at the last minute. The Globe’s esteemed music critic and Carter aficionado, Michael Steinberg, was so miffed that he refused to review the concert, sending a stringer instead.

(Postscript, Solti wanted to record Carter’s Variations and couple it with Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra, but Decca/London would have none of that, pairing the latter with Elgar’s Enigma Variations.)

Carter’s post-war music was undeniably thorny, but I rarely missed a New York premiere. His early Boulanger-inspired, Coplandesque folk nationalism was not distinguished, and he himself knew that he needed to find his own voice. That happened in his 1950 First String Quartet, as Allan Kozinn noted in his perceptive Times obituary (November 6, 2012). Difficult as his music may have been to grasp at first, it rarely failed to pay dividends on rehearing, especially when Pierre Boulez was conducting.

Carter’s death of natural causes at age 103 on November 5 was not exactly a surprise, but it was unexpected nevertheless. His astonishing Indian summer output and good cheer whenever I saw him and his personal assistant, the clarinetist Virgil Blackwell, at yet another premiere seemed boundless. His last local appearance was at two performances of his Two Controversies and a Conversation last June at Symphony Space for a New York Philharmonic Contact concert. He was in a wheelchair, and his voice quavered a bit when interviewed, but my word what genes he must have had!

According to Zizi Mueller, president of the New York branch of Boosey & Hawkes, Carter’s publisher in his last years, we may look forward to the premieres of American Sublime, for baritone and mixed ensemble, written for James Levine and awaiting the maestro’s first performance, and Epigrams for piano trio, written for another of his champions, pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Also, the American premiere of Dialogues II, written for Daniel Barenboim’s 70th birthday and first performed at La Scala in November by the pianist, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting.

And to think that we named Carter Musical America’s 1993 Composer of the Year soon after he turned 85 because we didn’t want to be too late!

by Sedgwick Clark

December is a special time for us at Musical America because we have the great pleasure of honoring a group of the finest musicians in the world and introducing the latest issue of our annual Directory. At our Awards party Joy to the World reigns, we forget about our typos, gnashing of teeth over cancelled bookings, dried up press outlets, and orchestra deficits.

Last night (Thursday, December 6) was no exception. Our five 2013 awardees were eloquent and humble in their expression of the art to which they have committed their lives. They are:

Musician of the Year: Gustavo Dudamel

Composer of the Year: David Lang

Instrumentalist of the Year: Wu Man

Vocalist of the Year: Joyce DiDonato

Educator of the Year: José Antonio Abreu

As always on this favorite annual night of my professional life, I felt honored in being able to present the awards to such incredibly musical artists who have made my distinctly unmusical but appreciative life such an immense pleasure night after night in New York’s concert halls for the past 44 years. I don’t mean to slight the first four of the artists above when I say that I had an extraordinary reaction when Maestro Abreu arrived with his large family and associates. We shook hands and he smiled and spoke warmly of how pleased he was to be here, and I just lost it. To be in the same room as the conductor and teacher hailed as creator of the most imaginative approach to music education in our time was simply overwhelming. I sputtered a few ridiculous words of our pleasure to have him here and had to turn away. Thinking about my reaction, the only word I have been able to come up with to describe him is “saintly,” a word that astonishes me I could utter.

Oh, well . . . .

The very first issue of the Musical America International Directory of the Performing Arts in 1961 hailed a single Musician of the Year on our cover, Leonard Bernstein. In 1992, the number of artists was increased to include a Composer of the Year, a Conductor, an Instrumentalist, and a Vocalist. The thinking was—rightly so—that there are so many extraordinary musicians deserving of recognition that we should widen the field. Since then, awards have gone to Ensembles, Educators, Collaborative Pianists, and an Impresario as well.

Years ago, the late Audrey Michaels called to tell me that bookings of one of her clients, the violinist Cho-Liang Lin, had increased noticeably after being named Instrumentalist of the Year (2000). Nothing has made my time at Musical America more satisfying.

Looking Forward

My week’s scheduled concerts (8:00 p.m. unless otherwise noted):

12/7 Carnegie Hall. Venezuelan Brass Ensemble/Thomas Clamor.

12/8 Zankel Hall at 1:00. El Sistema lecture and panel. Leon Botstein (keynote lecture), José Antonio Abreu, Gustavo Dudamel (panelists), Jeremy Geffen (moderator).

12/8 BAM Harvey Theater at 7:30. Anonymous 4. David Lang: love fail.

12/9 Juilliard School. Willson Theater at 2 p.m. Juilliard Opera/Mark Shapiro. Britten: Curlew River. Vaughan Williams: Riders to the Sea.

12/10 Carnegie Hall. Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela/Gustavo Dudamel. Revueltas: La noche de las Mayas. Chávez: Sinfonía india. Orbón: Tres versiones sinfónicas.

12/11 Carnegie Hall. Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela/Gustavo Dudamel; Aquiles Machado, tenor; Gaspar Colón. Baritone; Westminster Symphonic Choir. Esteban Benzecry: “Chaac (Maya Water God)” from Rituales Amerindios. Villa-Lobos: Chôros No. 10. Antonio Estévez: Cantata criolla.

12/12 Symphony Space. Ensemble for the Romantic Century. Jekyll and Hyde. The drama of Dr. Jekyll and his demonic double unfold in a psychoanalytic tale of horror in turn-of-the-century Vienna. Featuring music by Mahler, Schubert, Schumann, Webern, Berg, Zemlinsky, Brahms, Pfitzner, and Schoenberg. Written by Eve Wolf.

by Sedgwick Clark

Gardiner’s “Authentic” Missa solemnis

I was driving with a friend over Thanksgiving weekend, and we tuned in during the middle movement of a Sibelius Violin Concerto on Sirius FM. I was quickly enthralled by the soloist’s rubato and technical command and declared him to be “an old Russian violinist.” When I heard the double basses’ pianississimo in the last five bars, barely audible yet with firm tone, I had no doubt: “This is the 1959 Heifetz with Hendl and the Chicago Symphony.” Indeed, it was. But what pleased me more than my good guess was that for years I have considered it inferior to the violinist’s 1937 recording with Beecham. The later recording’s freedom, especially in the finale’s wild accelerating into climaxes and subsequent backing off as the temperature cools, bothered me in my youth, but last week I reveled in it. The recording hadn’t changed, but I had!

I keep hoping I’ll change in my appreciation of “period” performances. Alas, except for a couple of pages at the beginning and end of the Adagio section of the Credo, where he managed to elicit momentary meaning and emotion, John Eliot Gardiner’s performance of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir at Carnegie (11/17) was his typically punctilious reading of notes on the wretched-sounding, so-called stylistically correct instruments that many find to be illuminating. With Colin Davis’s awe-inspiring interpretation with the London Symphony Orchestra’s modern instruments last season indelibly imprinted in my memory (10/27/11), Gardiner’s puny conception couldn’t hope to compete. The Times’s new lady on the aisle, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, filed a more welcoming point of view on 11/19.

Frühbeck’s “Charmingly Unstylish” Mozart

Far more to my liking, on 10/26 with the New York Philharmonic, was Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos’s charmingly old-fashioned account of Mozart’s Serenata notturna. In the Menuetto’s Trio, for the four principal strings, he didn’t even conduct but sat back and smiled while they played. (George Szell conducted solos.) Frühbeck was Musical America’s Conductor of the Year in 2011, and I went backstage to say hello. “I loved your Mozart!” I said in greeting him, and he laughed broadly. “Well, you know, that’s the way we all played Mozart when I was young. I know it’s not the way young conductors do it today, but I like it that way. The Philharmonic is such a great orchestra, and I love to conduct them. I’m going to do Heldenleben next season,” he confided with great relish.

Frühbeck had looked fine back in June, when he conducted Carmina burana, but not now. He had lost weight and walked to the podium with great effort and sat while conducting. I spoke with a friend in the orchestra, who told me that he had had stomach cancer; but his doctor assured him that his recent surgery was completely successful, and she said that he had conducted as if he had a new lease on life. The Philharmonic musicians played their hearts out for him in Mahler’s First. Next summer he will conduct the Boston Symphony in Mahler’s Third in the opening weekend at Tanglewood.

DiDonato’s Drama Queens

Kansas mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato is irresistible, a self-evident statement to the some 2,800 music lovers who delighted at her catchily dubbed “Drama Queens” recital a couple of Sunday afternoons ago (11/18). The program encompassed a selection of arias from Baroque operas that depict queens and royalty, including works from Orlandini’s Berenice, Cesti’s Oronotea, Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, Radamisto, and Alesandro, Giacomelli’s Merope, Hasse’s Antonio e Cleopatra, Porta’s Ifigenia in Aulide, and Handel’s Giulio Cesare, plus orchestral works by Vivaldi and Scarlatti. She’s presenting this recital internationally for the next year, and Virgin Classics just released her recording of it. Her backup band, Il Complesso Barocco, with Dmitry Sinkovsky as director and violinist, was ideal.

Philharmonia on My Mind

Everyone at Avery Fisher Hall was talking about the ravishing sound of the Philharmonia Orchestra. It wasn’t that Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting Mahler’s Ninth (11/18) and a semi-staged version of Berg’s Wozzeck (11/19) was small potatoes. The Philharmonia has a noble tradition for its beauty of sound. Created just after World War II by Walter Legge primarily as a recording orchestra, its timbre was honed by Furtwängler and Karajan in many recordings that have never left the catalogue. Klemperer was its most visible leader from the mid 1950s through the end of the next decade, with memorable concerts and recordings during that time by Giulini and Frühbeck de Burgos. But its direction and reputation had begun to falter during Klemperer’s decline in the late 1960s, which led to a freelance image buoyed by occasional appearances by such notables as Boult and Barbirolli.

But no one could remember when the orchestra last played in New York. The most recent I could recall was in November 1971, when the orchestra was named the New Philharmonia and Avery Fisher was still called Philharmonic Hall: Lorin Maazel led crack renditions of Sibelius’s Seventh, Delius’s Paris, and Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin Suite, conducting the latter’s hectic final dance with his rear end.

Calls to Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall’s Archives revealed that the Philharmonia graced Fisher Hall most recently in January 2002 with Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting. Prior to that were concerts in March 1988 and January 1990 conducted by the orchestra’s then-principal conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli, an interesting but variable maestro. The ensemble’s most recent New York appearance was in a pair of Carnegie concerts in October 2003 with Christoph von Dohnányi (in works by Bruckner, Wagner, Haydn, Brahms—no wonder I didn’t go), a maestro whose sole distinction, to my ears, lies in performances of the New Vienna School and complex 20th-century works.

So perhaps the way to get the orchestra noticed is to play compelling programs, eh? I have no doubt that E-P wanted the audience to make the connection of Mahler’s final completed symphony (1909) with Berg’s first opera (sketches begun in spring 1914, orchestral score finished eight years later, premiere performance by the Berlin Opera under Erich Kleiber on December 14, 1925). In other words, had Mahler lived, the late-Romantic language of his valedictory Ninth Symphony would have developed into the ripely atonal world of Berg’s Wozzeck.

In the Mahler, Salonen’s tightly knit opening movement was most impressive, avoiding the incoherent sprawl of many current performances. Still, the triple-forte climax, which Mahler marks “with utmost violence,” could have been more cataclysmic (where was the tam-tam?). The middle movements lacked character, and the finale was shapeless. The brass did not always avoid the Fisher Hall glare but otherwise played with distinction. Woodwinds were infallible throughout, with honors going to the bassoons and contrabassoon. And the strings! Their consistent beauty of tone, from whispered pianissimi to massed fortissimi, and attention to Mahler’s frequent portamento indications were the highlight of the afternoon.

In Wozzeck the next evening, the Philharmonia was simply astonishing, conjuring up orchestral wonderment that even surpassed the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra under James Levine. However—and it’s a big however—Salonen allowed the orchestra to cover the singers so often that their only recourse was to bellow (the Berg Bark?). Of the major roles, heard from audience right in Row V, only Angela Denoke’s touching Marie and Tijl Faveyts’s cheerfully demented Doctor went unscathed. In the end, frustrating though the vocal balance may have been, the tradeoff of hearing Berg’s orchestral writing played so magnificently won the day for me. And if a recording was made in London before setting off on tour, the engineers can fix it in the mix!

Salonen is the Philharmonia’s current beau, and judging from the clamorous audience response he may turn out to be what the orchestra-lovers’ doctor ordered. Lincoln Center already has two major Brit bands as regular tenants—the London Symphony and London Philharmonic—and it would behoove Jane Moss and company to add the Philharmonia to its stable ASAP.

Looking Forward

12/1 Avery Fisher Hall. New York Philharmonic/Alan Gilbert; Gil Shaham, violin. Steven Stucky: Symphony. Barber: Violin Concerto. Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances.

by Sedgwick Clark

Atlanta Symphony/Spano

My broadest exit smiles so far this season occurred the same week at Carnegie Hall featuring programs with a chorus: the Philadelphia Orchestra and Westminster Symphonic Choir (Joe Miller, director) under Yannick Nézet-Seguin in Verdi’s Requiem on 10/23 and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (Norman Mackenzie, director) under Robert Spano on 10/27.

The first, about which I enthused in this space on 10/25, is one of those pieces one simply cannot miss at Carnegie. The Atlanta program was equally enticing in its own way, a satisfying amalgam of works laced in jazz rhythms and irresistible melody: Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, and Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. Ensemble was occasionally wayward in the Copland, but the two choral works were knockouts. If the Psalms lacked the composer’s manic energy, Spano’s spacious warmth offered numerous beauties in this most affecting of Bernstein’s concert works; the use of a countertenor (John Holiday) in the second-movement solo provided more vocal assurance than the prescribed boy sopranos I’ve heard, although one might argue that a certain innocence was lost. Best of all was the Belshazzar, in which Walton’s episodic structure was given welcome continuity without ever shortchanging the work’s pagan exhilaration. It completely surpassed a hectic affair in 1976 at Carnegie by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under Georg Solti, the only other live performance I recall hearing. That this fine orchestra is confronting a $20 million deficit and that musician ranks will be reduced along with a 20 percent cut in salaries is shameful.

Cleveland Orchestra/ Welser-Möst

My word, the Cleveland Orchestra makes a beautiful sound under Franz Welser-Möst these days (11/13)! The downside is that I don’t recall ever hearing so many dropped programs and undefined thumps at a concert. W-M’s overly refined Beethoven Fourth was ho-hum. The Grosse fuge later in the program was much more involved. But it’s not really a “nice” piece, Franz, and I’m afraid the sumptuous Cleveland strings will pale in memory next to the electrifyingly precise Minnesota/ Vänskä earthshaker in March 2010. The gentlemanly rendering of Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy at the close seemed positively perverse with such an interpretive engine available to him. I remember a Comissiona/Baltimore performance in the ’70s that blew the roof off of Carnegie; afterwards, as I raved about it to friends, my date interjected, “Gee, I wish you’d get that excited about me!”

Aimard’s Debussy and Schumann

I was surprised at how much this esteemed pianist went in for washes of color rather than clarity in Debussy’s Preludes, Book II (11/15). A pianist friend didn’t like it at all, and Zachary Woolfe in the Times leaned toward Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s Debussy program the week before. The latter not being one of my faves, I didn’t subject myself to his “freedom” of expression, but I did enjoy Aimard’s performances, even if a certain sameness crept in after awhile. (Admission: I think the Book I Preludes are more inspired and individual.) But Aimard’s reticent Schumann, while perhaps hewing to the letter of the score, doesn’t move me, and I think that inserting the five posthumous etudes in the middle of the piece makes it interminable. Play the five independently if you must (but they are still not top-drawer Schumann).

Adès’s Grey Tempest

With all the encomia over this Brit darling of the critics, Thomas Adès, I expected a new operatic masterpiece at its final performance this season (11/17). True to form, local reviewers raved en masse. But, great heavens, what a disappointment: colorless (Shakespeare?), dynamically squashed, melodically tepid. Would that Hurricane Sandy, which struck six days after this operatic tempest’s debut, had packed such a paltry punch! Give me an operatic treatment of MGM’s 1956 sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet, based loosely on The Tempest, with Louis and Bebe Barron’s “electronic tonalities” for the music.

Perhaps my esteemed colleagues were taken with the Brittenisms scattered throughout (Midsummer Night’s Dream?). I spoke with one who, when challenged, said he might have gone overboard in his praise because he doesn’t want to discourage new opera at the Met. I’ll try again in the eventual revival and hope to be embarrassed by my comments herein. In the interim, Peter G. Davis’s informative and positive review on this Web site (10/25) may provide more than my visceral reaction.

by Sedgwick Clark

Nearly three years ago, December 6, 2009, President Barack Obama said these inspiring words at the Kennedy Center Honors presentation:

“In times of war and sacrifice, the arts — and these artists — remind us to sing and to laugh and to live. In times of plenty, they challenge our conscience and implore us to remember the least among us. In moments of division or doubt, they compel us to see the common values that we share; the ideals to which we aspire, even if we sometimes fall short. In days of hardship, they renew our hope that brighter days are still ahead. So let’s never forget that art strengthens America. And that’s why we’re making sure that America strengthens its arts. It’s why we’re reenergizing the National Endowment of the Arts. That’s why we’re helping to sustain jobs in arts communities across the country. It’s why we’re supporting arts education in our schools, and why Michelle and I have hosted students here at the White House to experience the best of American poetry and music.”

Yesterday, President Obama was reelected to a second term. He defeated a man who had looked directly into the camera at the first presidential debate and said that despite the fact that he loved Sesame Street‘s Big Bird, he would withdraw all government funds from PBS. Sesame Street is out of my viewing slot, but I was well aware of what that threat meant. I can’t imagine that there were not millions of other voting arts lovers who were not similarly offended.

Looking Forward

My week’s scheduled concerts:

11/7 Carnegie Hall. Midori, violin; Özgür Aydin, piano. Beethoven: Sonatas Nos. 2, 6, and 9 (“Kreutzer”). Webern: Four Pieces, Op. 7. Crumb: Four Nocturnes (Nightmusic II).

11/13 Carnegie Hall. Cleveland Orchestra/Franz Welser-Möst; Michael Sachs and Jack Sutte, trumpets. Beethoven: Symphony No. 4; Grosse Fuge, Op. 133. Matthias Pintscher: Chute d’étoiles for Two Trumpets and Orchestra. Scriabin: The Poem of Ecstasy.

11/14 Juilliard School. Peter Jay Sharp Theater. Juilliard Orchestra/Alan Gilbert; vocalists. Mozart: Così fan tutte.

by Sedgwick Clark

Hurricane Sandy left a humbling amount of destruction in its wake, including a breath-catching sight in midtown Manhattan: a construction crane dangling 1,000 feet above West 57th Street, just east of Seventh Avenue, across from Carnegie Hall. Traffic was cordoned off between Sixth and Eighth avenues on 55th through 58th streets, bringing Carnegie concerts to a halt until the crane is brought down. It was initially thought that the street could be reopened when the crane was secured to the scaffolding, but second thoughts determined that the whole kit and caboodle—crane, cab, and 90-story scaffolding—would have to come down and then be replaced for utmost safety.

How long the replacement would take varied in several reports. But on Thursday, November 1, protests by consulates of international hotel guests and pleas from apartment residents within the restricted area grew to the extent that they were allowed to enter their rooms briefly for selected belongings and pets, accompanied by the police, according to a report in Bloomberg Businessweek. This indicates a long haul at the very least, which will change the status of concert appearances this season by many favorite artists on Carnegie’s stages.

For a time the hall was optimistically announcing the cancellation of concerts day by day, but late on Thursday it e-mailed a press release covering concerts through November 5. Among 11 concerts rescheduled, cancelled, or moved to alternative venues, Murray Perahia’s annual New York recital, scheduled for 11/2, was handily moved to Avery Fisher Hall on Sunday, 11/4, at 7:30. But the Belcea Quartet’s first of three Beethoven quartet concerts on Saturday, 11/3, in Zankel Hall was rescheduled for Tuesday, 11/6, “pending the reopening of West 57th Street in Manhattan”—most likely wishful thinking under the circumstances.

Ticketholders were encouraged to check carnegiehall.org for the most up-to-date information. 

Free Mozart from the New Jersey Symphony

I wonder if New Jersey Governor Chris Christie likes classical music? He has displayed such a statesmanlike profile in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy that nothing would surprise me from now on. His state’s fine orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony, has just announced that this weekend’s all-Mozart concerts at the State Theatre in New Brunswick on 11/3 at 8 p.m. and at NJPAC in Newark on 11/4 at 3 p.m. will be open to the public at no charge on a first-come, first-served basis. Works on the program are the Violin Concerto No. 3, Symphony No. 29, and Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364. Augustin Dumay is violinist and conductor; Frank Foerster is violist.

Another Yannick Angle        

I’ve always enjoyed others’ opinions whether I agree with them or not. As it happens, George Loomis and I largely agreed about Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s Verdi Requiem with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. When I e-mailed George to say how much I had liked his review (Musicalamerica.com, 10/26), he replied: “I don’t think I’ve ever been to a Verdi Req where the focus was so much on the orchestra.” Perhaps that’s one reason I liked the performance so much (Musicalamerica.com, 10/24). I have admitted before that vocalism is not my strong suit, but it certainly is (one of) George’s, which is why anyone interested in the arts should read as many different opinions as possible.

George concluded his review with a good point I had forgotten: that Yannick had held up his arms to silence applause when the last note of the “Libera me” died out—but for too long, and one could sense the audience champing at the bit to register its approval. It was pretentious. Giannandrea Noseda got it just right last fall at Lincoln Center after his devastating performance of Britten’s War Requiem: about 20 seconds.

Botstein Overreaches

Music Director Leon Botstein’s celebration of the American Symphony Orchestra’s 50th anniversary was typically ambitious—two monumental works identified with Leopold Stokowski, founder of the ASO: Charles Ives’s Symphony No. 4 and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (“The Symphony of a Thousand”), with Stoki’s 1969 arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner thrown in as an opener. Ticket prices matched 1965’s: $1 to $7.

Three of the Ives Fourth’s movements had been performed previously—Nos. 1 and 2 conducted by Eugene Goossens in 1927 and No. 3 by Bernard Herrmann in 1933—but Stokowski’s was the premiere of the complete, four-movement work (1910-25), on April 26, 1965. Coincidentally, one of the 83-year-old maestro’s assistant conductors for the Ives premiere—José Serebrier (the other was David Katz)—was downstairs in Carnegie’s Zankel Hall leading the American Composers Orchestra in Ives’s Third Symphony and other works. I had planned on attending the ACO but, alas, I heard about the Botstein concert the morning of the concert and was able to get a ticket.

The Ives is still a rarity these days, with the complex rhythmic layering of its second and fourth movements still requiring considerable virtuosity. I’ve heard Boulez/New York Phil, Ozawa/BSO, and Dohnányi/Cleveland of the Fourth in concert; the first and third of these had much to offer technically but were hardly idiomatic. The Stoki and Serebrier recordings remain superior. It was announced on Bernstein/Philharmonic programs in the Sixties and Eighties but to my knowledge was never performed. Botstein’s performance was surprisingly accomplished technically, but it was emotionally unsympathetic, especially the lovely third-movement Andante moderato, and devoid of the folkloristic American elements that Stoki unearths in the busy second movement. It was also awfully fast—27 minutes; six minutes faster than the timing listed in the program.

Stokowski led the American premiere of Mahler’s Eighth in 1916 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and gave it a notable reading in 1949 with the New York Philharmonic, preserved on several sources, including a historical broadcast set of the symphonies released by the orchestra, which, incidentally, I produced. The Eighth is an extraordinarily difficult piece to unify and was neither memorably played, sung, or conducted. Imagine, Maestro, if you had given the rehearsal time you took for the Ives and applied it to Mahler’s gargantuan symphony. You could have worked to honor the composer’s pianissimo directions. Loud portions, such as the end of the first movement, might have been more than a chaotic noise. You might not have had to stop twice in the second movement’s instrumental introduction, and more than that, you might have had time to invest it with some meaning.

by Sedgwick Clark

Tuesday night’s first Philadelphia Orchestra concert in New York was exciting for several reasons. First and foremost, it featured a Verdi Requiem in Carnegie Hall. For others, it was a proving ground for Yannick Nézet-Séguin as a simpatico music director for the Orchestra at last. A short, compact, 36-year-old Montreal native, with a penchant for ugly ties, he veritably bristles with quick-step intensity, and the Philadelphians were with him all the way.

From the opening pianissimo notes, played at an achingly slow tread, to the most eruptive attacks in the Dies Irae, the players never made an infelicitous sound, never forced their tone or scrunched their bows. The winds were more forwardly balanced and exhibited more character than I recall from this ensemble in Carnegie (perhaps from playing in Verizon Hall, where their clarity is extraordinary). The brass were never rasping or overbearing, and those glorious strings held their own in the most massive Verdi tuttis. For the conductor’s part, the music always breathed but never to the point of distortion. There was no point making or personalization of the line, just good, solid, communicative musicianship, well within the boundaries of tradition—even in his opening Molto Adagio (cf. Reiner’s recording) rather than Verdi’s simple Andante (Toscanini).

Of the vocalists, mezzo-soprano Christine Rice stood out for her expressive shaping of phrases. Soprano Marina Poplavskaya was the most dramatic, soaring in her high register and contributing a rivetingly personal Libera me. The men were less impressive, singing at a generally unvarying forte most of the evening. Bass Mikhail Petrenko was not always audible in ensembles, and Rolando Villazón was often effortful. One pulled for the Mexican tenor in (I believe) his return to New York after several years of vocal problems, but the two inaudible trills in his “Hostias” solo were only the most conspicuous disappointments. The Westminster Symphonic Choir, directed by Joe Miller, sounded exceptionally impressive, with the basses especially sonorous.

Throughout the Philadelphia Orchestra’s administrative and artistic discord of the past decade—which included a five-year mismatch with Christoph Eschenbach, bankruptcy, four years of often distinguished performances with Charles Dutoit as interim “chief conductor” while the Orchestra looked for a permanent music director, and a new administration under Alison Vulgamore that paved the way to fiscal balance—the players remained on top of their form.

And now we’re on to the Yannick (pron. Yan-NEEK) Years. Philly audiences are turned on again, and we’ll be listening with interest for enlightened programming and a sense of conductorial structure in the symphonic repertory—a major downfall for some of our most talented young conductors. The ball’s in your court, maestro.

Talk About a Great Program

On Saturday night, Robert Spano brings the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus to Carnegie for Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, and Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. See you there!

Looking Forward

My week’s scheduled concerts:

10/26 at 7:30. Zankel Hall. American Composers Orchestra/José Serebrier; Sharon Bezaly, flute. Serebrier: Flute Concerto with Tango. Narong Prangcharoen: The Migration of Lost Souls. Milica Paranosic: The Tiger’s Wife. Gabriela Lena Frank: Manchay Tiempo. Ives: Symphony No. 3 (“The Camp Meeting”).

10/27 Carnegie Hall. Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/Robert Spano. Copland: Appalachian Spring. Bernstein: Chichester Psalms. Walton: Belshazzar’s Feast.

10/29 Juilliard School. A Celebration of Rudolf Firkušny. 7:00 Paul Hall. Bach: Chorale Prelude, BWV 659, Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (arr. Busoni); Liszt: Transcendental Etude, No. 9, La Ricordanza (Eduardus Halim, piano). Chopin: Andante spianato et Grande polonaise brillante (Avner Arad, piano). Janáček: Piano Sonata, 1.X. 1905 (Charles Albright, piano). Martinů: Fantaisie et toccata (Sara Davis Duechner, piano).

10/31 Carnegie Hall. Mariinsky Orchestra/Valery Gergiev. Shchedrin: The Little Hunchbacked Horse Suite. Shostakovich: Symphony No. 6. R. Strauss: Ein Heldenleben.

Dear Friends of Muncie,

If all goes well, the editorial section of Musical America Directory will close today, and I’ll be able to turn to yet another episode of “Why I Left Muncie.” Keep the faith!

SAC

by Sedgwick Clark

At night after watching Jon Stewart and Colbert and checking out TCM’s midnight film, I’m often up proofreading or writing captions during deadline. I was up until 5 a.m. yesterday morning finishing details for the last article of the 2013 Directory to go to the designer. Last night I had looked forward to a good night’s sleep for the first time in months, and the light was out by 2.

My wife can sleep through any alarm on the market. The other day I noticed a cream-colored conical protuberance about three-quarters of a foot high on her bedside table, and she explained brightly that it was her new alarm clock. It gradually lights up the room like the sun rising and birds begin to chirp – definitely something new in a second-floor rear apartment in Manhattan. If that doesn’t do the trick, it also has a radio. “What’s WQXR?” she asked. “96.3,” I answered, knowing full well that it has a new frequency since the Times sold the station a few months ago; I just can’t remember it.  

This morning I experienced her alarm for the first time. Sometime after 8:30 I became aware that the bedroom had become flooded with light and birds were chirping as if a tiger had entered the room. It was about the same time that the workers arrived to continue pointing the building and their drilling and pounding began. (I’m not making this up.)

As I stumbled out of bed, I asked if at least the bird noises could be slowed down and reduced in volume. “No,” mumbled the woman who won’t watch my DVD of Hitchcock’s The Birds because it scares her, and she fell back asleep.

Stoki in Philly at 100

My fellow ARSC member Don Drewecki reminded me of a momentous occasion in the history of American orchestras: “It was 100 years ago today that Leopold Stokowski conducted his first concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra.  And on that day, a new era in American Orchestral Supremacy was ushered in.”

Howard H. Scott, Noted Record Producer

It’s no exaggeration to say that Howard Scott produced some of the most important recordings in history. Glenn Gould’s 1955 Bach Goldberg Variations, the Fleisher/Szell Beethoven piano concerto cycle — which belong in any serious collection — come immediately to mind, but my own personal favorite was a Stokowski pairing made during his return to the Philadelphia in 1959, nearly 20 years after he had last conducted the orchestra: Falla’s El amor brujo and the conductor’s “symphonic synthesis” of music from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, surely two of the most erotically charged performances ever commited to records — and in stereo too, which allowed the full panoply of Stokowski’s extraordinary music-making with this amazing orchestra to be captured in modern sonics for the first time.

I had the pleasure of many lunches with Howard as he regaled me with stories of Szell, Fleisher, Stoki, Gould, Stern, and many of the great Columbia artists he recorded. We have Howard’s ballsiness to thank for the complete Beethoven cycle. They were scheduled to record just the Fourth and Fifth but finished the sessions so quickly that Howard decided on his own to suggest to the artists that they record one of the others (I forget which one) in the time left. Now that three were “in the can,” and with such superb results, Columbia decided to finish the cycle. It’s still the set that I’ll take to my desert island.

Howard died on September 22 at age 92.

by Sedgwick Clark

Gustavo Dudamel’s recording of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony will restore your faith in life. Quite simply, it is the most thrilling newly recorded release I’ve heard in decades.

This Mahler Eighth must be seen to be believed. With a mind-boggling choral phalanx of 1,200 on risers, the combined orchestras of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, eight soloists, and lord knows how many more choristers tucked into the nooks and crannies of Caracas’s Teatro Teresa Carreño, the work handily earns a new nickname as the “Symphony of Over 1,400.” Deutsche Grammophon has released it on Blu-ray, conventional DVD, and CD, but forget about the latter format unless you want to listen in the car or on a walk in Maiernigg.

I sat transfixed last Saturday night watching a Blu-ray on a 60-inch Panasonic plasma TV with a Bose sound system in a large room, wishing I had had the presence of mind to catch its HD theater engagement earlier this year. But even a home viewing was overwhelming, with every last chorister clearly etched and instrumental timbre true. The camera work, attributed to Michael Beyer (video director), was remarkably musical: none of that frenzied American brand of a new angle every second, which made last week’s New York Philharmonic Live from Lincoln Center broadcast unwatchable.

The Eighth was the climax of Dudamel’s complete (numbered) Mahler symphony cycle shared between the two orchestras in L.A. and Caracas last January and February, except that in the Eighth the orchestras performed together. He was leading the Eighth for the first time. It’s a great performance—as masterly as his LAPhil Mahler First video is callow. Perhaps most astonishing, even allowing for the magic of digital editing from two performances, the playing and choral singing are amazingly clear and precise.

If it doesn’t sweep the Grammys in every eligible category, I’ll eat all the Mahler recordings in my collection.

Looking Forward

My week’s scheduled concerts:

10/5 Carnegie Hall. Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Riccardo Muti. Dvořák: Symphony No. 5. Martucci: Notturno. Respighi: Feste romane.

5/10 at 7:30. Avery Fisher Hall. New York Philharmonic/Alan Gilbert; Robert Langevin, flute; Nikolaj Znaider, violin. Nielsen: Flute Concerto; Violin Concerto. Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 2 (“Little Russian”).