November 2004 Archives

Around the hall we are always attuned to what our future music director is up to. It’s not that we’re stalking David Robertson. He’s a magnetic fellow. He draws attention. He has an incandescent capacity both to inspire and to engage. He’s curious and caring, and he has an artistic mind that moves a few steps ahead of the rest. He’s cool.

Robertson’s in town this Sunday to introduce Olivier Messiaen’s sublime Quartet for the End of Time, with David Halen, Diana Haskell, Melissa Brooks-Rubright and Peter Henderson performing, at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, Tadao Ando’s great minimalist shrine that works remarkably well for chamber concerts. Robertson’s back in St. Louis for the top-secret New Year’s Eve concert, and then Dvorak and Bartok with his wife Orli Shaham January 7 & 8 -- the first SLSO concert of 2005 -- then Berlin and Zurich and Paris for the rest of January. Robertson’s on most orchestras’ most-wanted lists.

Just last week he was conducting the New York Philharmonic. Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times has a habit of writing raves whenever Robertson is in NYC, and he did no less than that in his review of November 27. The SLSO marketing department has been gleefully highlighting prime blurbs for future use, although you can’t do much better than Tommasini’s closing lines: “Mr. Robertson becomes the music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra next fall. Lucky St. Louis.”

If greed is good, envy is better. Here is the link for the full review: http://www.saintlouissymphony.org/dr/dr8.htm

A small, dedicated crew of SLSO staffers began their Monday morning back from the holiday weekend decorating the hall for the season.

Note: If you read the article “High for the Holidays” in Sunday’s New York Times and saw yourself in that story, I suggest you either stop reading at this point or medicate now!

It is gorgeous. Garlands of pine (or faux pine – Faux! Faux! Faux! says Kris Kringle) with red ribbons hang from the balconies and wind along the banisters. Red bows dangle from crystal lamps; wreaths adorn the walls; trees decorated with hunter’s horns and red and gold balls anchor the stairwells. The foyer sparkles. You expect Johnny Mathis to enter.

Note: I like Johnny Mathis. His Christmas album is one of the best ever.

It is quiet in Powell Symphony Hall the day before Thanksgiving. This is a very family-oriented organization, and most of the staff takes vacation days this time of year. It is also a food-oriented organization, and although the deluge has not begun in earnest, in the coming weeks there will be plates of cookies, cake, brownies – homemade no less – on almost every floor. Time to start taking the stairs again.

I’ll be back in on Monday. Have a great holiday.

After Leonidas Kavakos made most of the string section and almost the entire audience swoon with his performance of the Korngold Violin Concerto (he would have made Jascha Heifetz – who premiered the work in St. Louis in 1947 – proud) he retired to the Green Room, and rather than settle into a stiff drink or ask for a ride back to the hotel, he took up his instrument again and got to work practicing for the next gig.

It was a brightly transcendent concert, Saturday night with Gilbert Varga and Leonidas Kavakos. Who’d expect such an old war horse as the Beethoven 7 to sound so sprightly, so alive, so fresh? A lot of that had to do with Varga. Not only is he a conductor who knows the work and how he wants it played – leading from the podium without a score – but he communicates his exuberance to the musicians. “Varga smiles a lot,” Amy Oshiro laughs, calling from New York City this morning on her cell phone. “He seemed so happy and excited to be working with us.”

Before the exhilarating Beethoven, there was the swoon-inducing Kavakos playing the Korngold Concerto. “He’s incredibly inspiring,” says Oshiro. “He’s so knowing artistically. He’s true to the instrument; he lets the violin be the showpiece.”

The orchestra played the Beethoven 7 with great vigor and joy. “We were sweating,” says Oshiro. From her perspective of the first violins, “Perspiration was on everyone’s forehead. But after it was over, backstage, we all felt invigorated, not tired.”

Yesterday musicians and staff gathered in the foyer of Powell for a farewell to Kathleen van Bergen, who moves to the Philadelphia Orchestra in December. Kathleen and her husband Chris will be much closer to family in the Philly-Jersey area. In keeping with the Philadelphia theme, cheese steak, cream cheese and pretzels were on hand for the send off.

As the head of artistic at the SLSO, Kathleen has had some years few would envy. No music director, no money – to name a couple complications. The fact that she is 12, or some such ridiculous age, has meant a lot of responsibilities have fallen on a young head. Yet here the Orchestra is, making great music, on the verge of beginning a new adventure with a brilliant new music director. So something right happened.

She goes to an admirable orchestra with an exciting music director in a city where people are – as is said of Philadelphians – “rarely mistaken but never in doubt.” She can handle them. Good luck, Kathleen. Come back when you’re old enough to drink.

David Halen says it took him years to overcome the Eugene Ormandy records. When he was a kid in central Missouri, he played along to the Ormandy Philadelphia Orchestra recordings of Beethoven. “There were two textures, brutal and restrained,” David told me as we walked back in the rain from our Wolfgang Puck lunch at the Contemporary. That was the Beethoven he knew, and the Beethoven a generation knew.

We were talking about how a musician goes back to the basic repertoire again and again and keeps it fresh. “That’s the great thing about guest conductors,” he said. “One will clarify something about the rhythm, another will emphasize texture. The main thing is that you’re always finding ways to make it better. If you don’t, you die.”

You learn there are other ways to play Beethoven. You slough off the Ormandy of your youth for new sophistication. David says that in rehearsals with Gilbert Varga for the Seventh Symphony, “He’s really lightened it up. He’s told us to play it as if it were written by Haydn, with that kind of jocularity.”

We get back, damp and a little bit late. The two-minute call for the musicians to return to the stage for rehearsal has just been made and David rushes upstairs to get ready.

Meanwhile, backstage, one of our violinists gushes over guest artist Leonidas Kavakos, who is playing the Korngold Violin Concerto. “We’re swooning in there,” she says. “The sound that comes out of that violin…,” and she swoons some more.

In conversations with various musicians over the last couple months, I have often asked of a soloist how he or she deals with the “greatness” factor. If you are playing the Mozart Fourth Violin Concerto, and you know Mozart probably played this himself, and you know every great violinist, and every not-great violinist, has played this piece, how do you stand on the stage without your knees wobbling what with all that legacy on your back? How do you play the Beethoven “Emperor” Concerto knowing Serkin and Gould and Rubinstein and Barenboim all played it in St. Louis before you? Where do you get the nerve?

Nearly every musician I’ve spoken with responds in a similar fashion, such as Julia Fischer did this morning. She plays the Beethoven Violin Concerto the first weekend of December. She is 21 years old. Yet with the utmost confidence, not a tremble in her voice, she said she doesn’t think about it. The music, the conductor, the orchestra, the hall, the audience – these are the factors that are paramount. It all comes down to problem solving. The mighty Beethoven? Fuhgettaboutit.

A work is played as it is lived in that time, in that situation, with these variables, so, in the ideal, it is always made new. Of course, any performer has to find a way to keep it fresh after playing a work hundreds of times. Ray Charles did it with “Georgia.” Rudolf Serkin did it with the “Emperor.” The SLSO will be doing it this weekend with the Beethoven 7.

I regrettably was unable to attend the Berlioz Requiem weekend, held in honor of the late Maestro Hans Vonk. I hear of incredible sounds, incredible visuals with singers and musicians stationed at surprising places around the hall.

This weekend I spent some time with the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet’s new CD Guitar Heroes, which is made up of songs in homage to guitar greats such as Norman Blake, Jimi Hendrix, Pat Metheny, Django Reinhardt, Chet Atkins, Los Romeros, and others. I spoke with Bill Kanengiser of LAGQ this morning. He was on his cell phone in an LA supermarket at 7:45am California time. The first thing I asked him, “You must be the one with kids.” He is.

He says that the program they play Dec. 10-12 is partly in homage to Los Romeros, who played the Rodrigo concerto with the SLSO a few times. But I had to divert our discussion a little bit away from the upcoming concert to thank Kanengiser for putting a Frank Zappa dedication on the CD. They won’t be playing “Let’s Be Frank” at Powell, but anybody who plays Zappa deserves recognition.

I will be away from the office Tuesday. I’ll report back to you on Wednesday.

This is what happens when you interview two engaging, bright, charming violinists in one day. You touchtone your way to Salzburg, via an operator who first thinks you’re calling Scranton or some such place, but finally a hotel receptionist is saying something to you in a language that doesn’t sound anything like what Governor Schwarznegger speaks.

Then there is this ebullient, friendly voice – Leonidas Kavakos – who is thrilled to talk about the Korngold he’s playing next week. He says the nicest things about the orchestra, how St. Louis has the most supportive musicians with the loveliest, most rich tone. He talks about how Gilbert Varga is an ideal conductor to be working with since he knows the violin. Varga is a violinist himself and the son of the great Tibor Varga, “steeped in the Central European tradition” says Kavakos.

Kavakos says he is so honored to be playing this work that received its world premiere with the SLSO and Jascha Heifetz nearly sixty years ago. He speaks Heifetz's name like it is one of the sacred words, nearly taboo to say out loud.

He talks about how he was invited to play Korngold as part of a documentary that was filmed in Europe. It sounds as if Korngold is getting a bigger rebirth of interest than in the United States. Kavakos calls the violin concerto romantic but with a real intelligence. He’s awed by the harmonies the composer creates.

It’s one of those interviews where you know the subject could go on for another half-an-hour and say smart, interesting things, but for your purpose you’ve got enough and say thanks, see you when you get here, and know that this is a musician that is going to be really fun to hear.

Time passes. You go to have coffee with Alison Harney, Principal Second Violin, who plays the Mozart Fifth Violin Concerto, with Nic McGegan conducting, in January. And she, too, has intriguing things to say from the violinist realm. “It’s in there,” she says of this concerto she has known since she was twelve. You mention the violinist you spoke with earlier in the morning and Harney exclaims, “He’s brilliant.”

And the tape winds along in your recorder. You walk back to the parking lot knowing you’ve got good stuff to transcribe later in the week.

Time passes. You rewind the tape, knowing that you interviewed Kavakos in the morning and then Harney in the afternoon on the same tape. You hit play and all you hear is Harney as she begins her story of life as a prodigy in the Mojave desert.

You taped over Kavakos. You can't go on. You go on.

I had the pleasure of talking to violinist Leonidas Kavakos yesterday, catching up with him in his hotel room in Salzburg for an interview that will run on the website soon. Kavakos performs the Korngold Violin Concerto next week, a work that received its world premiere in St. Louis with the SLSO and Jascha Heifetz in 1947. Kavakos was well aware of the historical lineage of the piece, and expressed a sense of honor to be playing the work with the SLSO as part of the 125th season celebration.

Kavakos has been here before, and is spoken of warmly around the hall. “He’s brilliant,” fellow violinist Alison Harney told me.

The Korngold is lush, passionate, and not just like movie music, because some of it is movie music, as the composer incorporated pieces from his film scores into the composition. I mentioned to Kavakos that I thought it was great music for a date, and he entirely agreed. So next Friday and Saturday will be your nights for necking at Powell Hall. Discreetly, please.

Standing at the perimeter of the very full stage, before the start of the first Berlioz rehearsal with Andrew Litton and the orchestra, is Kathleen van Bergen, VP and Director of things artistic, in a fabulous pair of gray shoes. For this and other things she will be missed (she departs for the Philadelphia Orchestra and a similar position – if not even more stylish shoes – at the end of this month).

If the Shostakovich called for special stage-hand strategies last week, the Berlioz is such that there are (almost literally) musicians hanging from the rafters. Horns at the back of the house; horns from the balcony. Berlioz, like Shostakovich, was a genius for composing sounds that were not heard from an orchestra before. And from chorus as well. Greg Turay, who sings tenor for this concert, says prepare to be “washed over with sound.”

This morning Scott Parkman and the orchestra took about 2000 grade-school children on a voyage to Spain, which included music by the Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov. This shows not only how strong the influence of Spain has been on the artistic imagination worldwide, but that the idea of cross-cultural is not something new.

Scott is great with the children, and he’s great with the orchestra as well. Although not long ago after a Kinder Konzert, as the children and chaperones were noisily filing out of the hall, backstage I saw one musician shaking his head and say of Assistant Conductor Parkman, “He sure does stir them up.” A compliment, I think.

One of the pleasures of the live orchestral experience is not only the remarkable sounds you hear, but the visuals. This especially was obvious last weekend with the Shostakovich Eight. Not only does Shostakovich provide shocking contrasts of tone, emotion, and rhythm, but to see the musicians make those shifts happen is jarring in its visual power. In the phenomenal first movement of the symphony, a phrase is repeated again and again that sounds like the mill of history grinding. And to see the strings bent on this phrase, playing with an intense drive – brutal, incessant, beautiful – it was a marriage of sight and sound that was not sweet but bitter, and yet a sensation toward which you were drawn inexorably.

In a recent, and highly unscientific, poll of musicians and staff, a number of folks have been anticipating this weekend’s concerts. Eva Kozma, the young new Assistant Principal Second Violin, told me that the Shostakovich Eight was a symphony she greatly looked forward to playing this season. We have a select group of Shostakovich fans working in the house. “I love all Shostakovich symphonies,” could be a refrain.

The Shostakovich biographer and scholar Laurel Fay has referred to the present time in classical music as Shostakovich’s “Mahler moment,” meaning that the Russian composer is being freshly “discovered” as Mahler was 50 years ago. Conductor and educator Leon Botstein presided over a Shostakovich festival at Bard last summer, and told andante.com: “Benjamin Britten was Shostakovich's only friend in the West after the War. So we wake up in the 21st century and there he is: Mahler's heir, every bit as surprising as Mahler was thirty or forty years ago. It turns out he's the 20th century's Mozart: its central musical figure, writing in every genre, even knocking Stravinsky off his pedestal.”

Mahler’s heir. The 20th century Mozart. Knocks Stravinsky’s block off. All this and controversy too. Shostakovich is hot.

I will give my wife the last word. After listening to a recording of the Shostakovich Eight, she informed me, “That’s totally goth.”

We’re going to the concert Saturday night. I don’t know if we’ll be dressed appropriately black. I’ll file my impressions on Monday of what looks to be a powerful, dramatic, even overwhelming night of music.

On a morning for the first rehearsal of the Shostakovich Eight, there is more than the usual mad rush on stage and backstage. “Have you seen …?” “Where is ….?” “This stuff has to be moved.”

After conductor Stefan Sanderling arrives smiling, friendly, eager and confident, all settles and the first dusky strains begin.

Stage manager Mike Lynch is back in his office putting away power tools with which he and his crew had been making a fair amount of whirring and buzzing and other such last-minute racket. Every piece calls for something special in the stage logistics department, and Shostakovich Eight calls for some extra special. “All those clarinets,” Lynch tells me, “and the horns.” Shostakovich calls for -- get this -- two piccolos, four flutes, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets plus an E-flat clarinet and bass clarinet, three bassoons plus a contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and a tuba. Making a space for all those players is part of Lynch’s job. “You never really know how many parts are doubling, if any, until they show up, which is why we’re out there before the first rehearsal putting in extra risers, a box for the trumpets.”

And when it’s done, it’s all calm. Sanderling says good morning, glad to be back, and the first dusky strains begin.

The violinist Tai Murray performed a Young Adult Concert with the Orchestra and conductor Scott Parkman for many busloads of school kids junior high and above this morning. She’s an ideal fit with such an audience, being in her early 20s herself yet displaying the sort of mature presence that you wish most young adults would have. She played the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and grabbed the students’ collective attention in such a way that they demanded more. And so she gave them an encore.

Last Friday I was upstairs doing an interview with Andrea Drinkall for the December Playbill. Andrea holds the official title of Orchestra Personnel Manager, but does not mind if the term “musician wrangler” is used to more accurately describe her occupation. As I suspected, the most difficult part of the profile was to enumerate all the things that Andrea actually does. “Anything that has to do with the orchestra on stage that is personnel related,” she told me, as the abbreviated version. That includes, among other things, the hiring of extras and replacement players and their travel arrangements, rehearsal schedules, auditions (today it is horn players), hiring letters, putting together the musicians’ rehearsal and concert schedule booklet, and so on until Andrea pointed to a bulletin board filled with schedules and rosters – “That’s my job,” she said.

In walked Joe Kleeman. Joe played double bass with this orchestra for over 30 years, retiring just a few years ago. Joe is a big, barrel-chested guy with a great sense of fun. He can hold a small audience of friends for hours with tales of backstage high jinks, or some of the mishaps of SLSO tours in the days when musicians often stayed with local families in small towns around the country.

Joe is also very good at getting to the point. Andrea told him, “We’re trying to explain what I do.”

“Very simple,” said Joe. “Everything goes through you. The audition process comes through this office. This is where an orchestra is built.”

Then he added one of his favorite personal memories of the Orchestra. It was during a tour through Europe, he told us. The Orchestra played in Vienna, and it was at a time when the Vienna Philharmonic had just hired its first woman player – this was just a few years ago, by the way. “I was looking over at our second violinists, they were bowing like mad, and at the time I think there was only one male in the section. And I felt so proud of them, and so proud of what we’ve done here. You feel really good about things like that.”